Dr. Tim Bean
Appearances
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
They're pretty big. The ones that we have in Northern California, it definitely takes two arms to lift a large adult porcupine.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, and fleece and jacket and anything else that you can use to protect yourself.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Not that many. So it turns out dogs are just really stupid. It's really hard to get quelled, especially when they're anesthetized. Like I said, you do have to push it in to engage the release. And so... When you're handling them and turning them over to examine the underside and stuff, you'll definitely get quills that kind of just come out and stick in your shirt.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
But to get truly quilled, it happened a few times to my students. I never got one really deeply embedded in my skin.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Um, all kinds. That's a really interesting question. I think the stereotype of wildlife ecologists is generally people who would rather be around animals than other people. And so I guess that goes sort of doubly for people who want to be around a quilled animal, but yeah, all that, you know, it's, it's a mix of undergraduates and master's students and they've all been just incredible.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I mean, like so excited to work with the species and so curious and the porcupines we were studying just seemed to elicit this like really incredible curiosity about the species and the place they were living.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
You know, I would go and visit and go up like during the summers when we were doing the research and they would be back at the field house and like, they would just not stop talking about porcupines. It was like, they're making dinner. Like, let's talk about this porcupine we saw today. Like after dinner, like let's think about this other thing that we haven't talked about.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I was like, you guys need to take a break from thinking about porcupines.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
That was like, to follow up on that, that also, for me, when I was like 20, I was camping with my sister and some friends on the Appalachian Trail. We were sleeping in this lean-to. And all night, there was this bizarre sound coming from underneath the lean-to. Nobody slept. We were afraid to look to see what it was. And we just could not figure out what it was.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And then like years later, she called me and she was like, I was just watching this nature documentary and it was porcupines having sex. That's the noise that we heard all night long.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
So yeah, I think that's another appeal of porcupines is I just think everybody, especially ecologists who have been in the field for a long time, just have this sort of like, they have a story or a curiosity or a question that they maybe never got around to researching. But yeah, everybody's got one.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Their reproductive system is weird, so I can walk you through it.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
So female porcupines are either pregnant or lactating 11 months out of the year. Oh, God. They have, like, for their body size, one of the longest pregnancy periods of any mammal. So they're pregnant for about seven months and then lactating for four months, and then they have a month off and then do it all over again.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
but they're only in estrus for like 12 hours every year. Wow. So what happens is they send out some pheromones in there or some kind of olfactory signal in their urine to say, I'm about to go into estrus. Like if there's any males around. And so that again is where the big nose comes in as I think males who are a couple of miles away can smell that.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
So the males start congregating. And then there's a period of competition where generally the largest, I think one of the older males generally dominates and wins access to the female. Other males go away. And then the male who wins pees on the female, which is documented in Marty Stelfer's Wild America episode, The Prickly Porcupine. You can see it for yourself if you really want to.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Which is thought to stimulate estrus to actually happen. And then copulation takes about one to five minutes, and then they're doing it for about eight hours, and then they go their separate ways for another year.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I imagine so, yeah. So they'll do it and then take a couple minutes off for an hour off and then get back to it. Wow.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
How are they getting that? Well, I think that's what the peeing on the female does. She goes into this sort of pre-estrus period that's like, I'm almost ready, and then... It's going to take a while for the males to get over here. They are pretty slow. Yeah, they're slow. It's going to take them a while to get there and figure out who's going to be the one with access.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
So I think that's sort of the function of the peeing on the females. Once all that's sorted out, now it's time to trigger the actual estrous period.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
It's the, Rose delicately puts it, the typical mammal position. Of course. Like the way dogs do it. So she lifts her tail, which again, the bottom of it doesn't have any quills on it. And then the male gets behind her and the bottom of their stomach doesn't have quills on it either. So it's sort of like quill-less area to quill-less area. And then he enters from behind.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, and that's probably partly why they don't have quills on the base of their tail and on their stomach as well. The other interesting evolutionary thing about the quills is they're antibiotic and antibacterial.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
So you would sort of think that from a defense perspective, it would be great if they infected a mountain lion or a fisher or something that's trying to attack them, but because they quill themselves so much, the thinking is they evolved these antibacterial properties so that they wouldn't infect themselves or their mate.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
They can be pretty long-lived. So Rose documented one that was like 20 years old, and they can live to 20 or 25 years in captivity.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
If you live in a snowy area, that's kind of the best time to see them because their tracks are so clear. And so finding their tracks is a great way to find one. Otherwise, they create these nip twigs. So they'll sit in a tree and eat leaves all night. And they'll break a branch off, eat all the leaves, and then drop the branch to the ground.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
So if you know what you're looking for, like a tree with a bunch of branches with leaves stripped off of them, that's probably a good place to look up. Otherwise, yeah, or just wait for your stupid dog to find one.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Jim Beam, yeah. And then sometimes like Kim for some reason for to-go orders. It's confusing.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I just saw a paper that said that it was pretty breed-specific. Yeah.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
German Shepherds and Rottweilers. Those are ones that are more, you know, somebody went through old vet records and said, oh, these are the breeds that are more likely to do it. They stink. So porcupines have this really unique warning odor that smells like nothing I've ever smelled before. Really? And so I think dogs are definitely responding to that.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah. As long as it's not Mr. Bean, I'm fine.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
The chemical composition supposedly has components of walnuts and pineapple or coconut or something. But like... You got to take that and like ferment it in a dead rat for a while to really get it. It's like sweet and musky.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I guess to the point where it's like, okay, I'm getting a signal. There's a porcupine hidden in the tree above me somewhere. I think I can smell it. Yeah, great.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
It definitely makes your day. It's great. I mean, you know, it's like you're walking around in the middle of summer at night in this beautiful dune forest. Like that's good enough on its own, but you don't really know when you're going to find the next one. And you're kind of struggling to get as many callers out as quickly as possible. So... seeing one is awesome.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I mean, that's like, you know, that's true for any wildlife. I think whenever you're hiking and you're like, Oh my God, there's a bobcat on the trail. You're out there by yourself. And then suddenly you're with a porcupine. It's amazing. Yeah.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
They don't hibernate. I mean, summer, just for practical reasons, that's when students and I are not in class. But generally, they're nocturnal, and then they sleep in the day. But they're out year-round. They'll congregate in dens in colder areas to keep warm, but they're still out in the middle of winter trying to get food.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, well, we'll get to that, right? Yeah.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, Teddy's the best. I mean, what a great ambassador and such a sweetie. And of course, we were all like, when are we going to hear these noises?
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Forget the smell. If I can be out here listening for the smacks and the chomps and everything.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah. He's a real esthete. Yeah. I think what's happening is those are the noises that a baby porcupine, called a porcupette, makes when it's nursing.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, I think that's what makes them so compelling, is they are dopey and lovable and sweet and almost apologetic about the fact that they're unhuggable.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I think that what's happening is those noises are stimulating milk let down in the mom, which means they're stimulating the exact chemicals you're talking about, like serotonin and oxytocin. And so I think what's happening with Teddy is delayed adult, whatever. He just never lost that function from being a baby to being an adult, and he still makes those noises.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
But we generally don't hear them in fully grown, wild adult porcupines as much as we would like to.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
It's mostly about avoiding them. So I don't think there are any animals that are good, at least for North American porcupines. I don't think there are any predators that are good at dealing with the spines. But mostly we talk about mountain lions and fishers. Mountain lions, it's like a cultural thing. So the mom will teach her children how to eat porcupines if they're going to do it.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
You have to learn how to do it. And I think mountain lions will flip the porcupine over and then go at the stomach where there are no quills. I mean, mountain lions are like meticulous cats, so they'll also scrape off all the quills once the porcupine's dead and consume it.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Fishers are a big weasel, and they attack the face, which also doesn't have any quills until it's dead, and then they'll eat through the stomach. There's some cool papers from Wisconsin that suggest that martens, the smaller weasel, will eat baby porcupines by coming up under the snow.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
They'll tunnel through the snow and somehow hear the porcupine or see a porcupine and then tunnel under and then come up and get at the stomach that way. And like other stuff like coyotes have been shown to learn how to catch porcupines and I think some other species as well, like maybe owls.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
When I started this research, I was literally to the point where I was Googling, how do you pick up a porcupine? And there's a self-help book called How to Hug a Porcupine, Easy Ways to Love the Difficult People in Your Life.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I think it's mostly the belly, except for fishers who are just mean like every other weasel.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I'm sure it varies by species. I don't know that there are a lot of studies for every species. For North American porcupines, there's 30,000 quills. That's the number that everybody uses. And I have been desperately trying to find, there's two separate papers where people have counted quills on North American porcupines, and they both came up with about 30,000.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Both of them, the introduction reads like somebody's getting punished. They did something wrong, and their advisor was like, just go count quills.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
In terms of average, as far as I know, only two people have ever counted all 30,000. So hard to come up with a comparison.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, welding gloves, like thick, heavy leather gloves is generally the recommendation. There's a spot under their tail that doesn't have any quills, and their tail is super strong. It's almost like a fifth thick.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And I cannot emphasize enough how cute porcupettes are. And photographs do not capture the... Oh my God, they're so small and so cute and just have no idea how painful they could be. But they are born with quills, but the quills haven't hardened yet. So the quills are soft and they're born, I think, head first so that the quills are sort of pointing backwards in North American porcupines.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
So they're coming out not against the grain. And then within a couple of hours, the quills will harden.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
That's a great question. I'm guessing it's like having a wet fingernail.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that you could. I think it's the proverbial needle in a haystack trying to find a single quill in the leaf litter. But if they're fighting, like if the males are fighting, or in some circumstances, the females are more territorial and they will fight over territories. then they will quill each other.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Or if a porcupine falls and a bunch of quills come out, that's, I think, a more likely scenario where you might just find them in nature where they've come out in sort of a pile rather than just a lone quill.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
appendage that they use to help climb and so that's generally how people try to pick them up is like get your hand under the tail and grab them there and then you can kind of pick them up but at that point like you got to anesthetize them if you're really going to handle them and measure them and put a collar on and all that stuff
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I am not a vet. I think that if there's a lot of them, I think they'll anesthetize them first and then just pull them out. I was reading that there's, you know, some people talk about cutting them, like clipping them ahead of time to like let air out or pressure out or something. And I think that might be sort of an old wives tale.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And you got to just kind of go through with pliers and pull them out one by one and as soon as possible. Otherwise, they'll start migrating into the body and causing real problems.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, I mean, I think every species has sort of a root personality, right? I mean, I think it's okay to anthropomorphize in that sense. Weasels are different from horses, are different from cows, and porcupines definitely have a type. They're kind of slow. They're pretty sweet. They seem pretty chill.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
No, their junk is hidden away most of the time. So it's actually like retracted into the body, which makes it easier to climb, right? Like they're right up against the tree when they're climbing.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
But then within that, I mean, like every other species, like dogs or cats or humans, like individuals have total personalities, like the angrier ones and the sweeter ones and the dopier ones. And so there's real variation that you can tell between them.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Sorry, I meant to add, they're basically sloths, right? Sloths are also folivores, which means that they get very little energy from their diet. And that's why they're so slow. And the only way to avoid predators for sloths is to be up in the tree and camouflage as much as possible.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
North American porcupines are like just sort of another evolutionary solution to getting food from leaves as your main diet sources. Like they also are pretty low energy and not super smart, but rather than camouflage, they have all this incredible defense mechanism.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Well, they're nocturnal. So I think that's like an issue with zoos in general for porcupines is they're probably just sleepy.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, it's sort of a mix. I have not seen them socializing with other forest creatures. But, you know, I mean, the mom is with her porcupette for plus months, and they are, you know, she's teaching them, like, here's how you climb a tree, and these are the preferred foods that we like to eat. And then there are certain situations where they will hang out together.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Whether it's in places like California where they're sharing those willow patches or in places where it's snowy and cold and they'll share a den with each other. But they seem, I think, I would say generally kind of indifferent to one another if they're not aggressively defending a territory. Yeah.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I think in most places it's like rock piles or downed trees or like hollow living trees or standing dead hollow trees. And so that's a really important part of porcupine ecology is in places in winter where they need a den, like But that could be a really limiting factor for porcupines is not having enough dens or enough shelter.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
In California, in this dune system, they were in these burrows in the dunes. We didn't witness it, but it really seemed like they were the ones that were digging out these burrows in the sand and maintaining them themselves.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And Oldest Rose, again, I just keep coming back to him. His book is so wonderful, but he was talking to a summer camp owner, and the summer camp owner was like, why do only the boys' cabins have porcupine damage on them?
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And Oldest Rose is like, because boys are peeing on their cabins. Wow. So all vertebrates need to maintain a one-to-one ratio of potassium to sodium. It's critical. Potassium and sodium ions are used in nerve and muscle cell function. And a lot of herbivores, plants, tend to be really high in potassium. And so herbivores...
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
almost universally face this problem of how do you get enough sodium to balance the huge amounts of potassium that you get through your diet. So yeah, porcupines are one of those, and they will seek out salt, sodium, wherever they can find it.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And Rose and a bunch of other people use salt blocks to attract porcupines so they could catch them.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah. And he was saying it was like a shed outside of his cabin that he would just put these salt sticks out and porcupines from kilometers around, once they learned about it, would come in to take advantage. Yeah.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, no, it's totally real. And for rodents in general, like we deal with that with jackrabbits, like they're always chewing on various lines and stuff. And I'm not totally sure on the chemical composition for the underside of a car in general. But for porcupines, especially the further north you go, you know, cars are going to be covered in salt.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
So like we distribute a lot of sodium on the roads and which is a problem for porcupines who are salt-driven in early spring, and it results in a lot of road kills. But I think that probably also is an attractant. If you're driving around and you get a bunch of sodium splashed up to the underside of your car, that's probably also attracting them.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
We don't really know. And there's just not a really great funding source to study this at scale. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence from Western North America that they seem to be declining. There was a graduate student in Montana who set out to do her thesis on porcupines and then couldn't find any. And so her thesis kind of shifted gears there.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, they are. They're modified hairs. So they're made of keratin and you sort of look at the evolutionary lineage of porcupines and There's like the species called spiny rats that have spines that are closely related. And then you can kind of see like other porcupines have less evolved quills.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
There just seems to be a bunch of people everywhere are noticing, there aren't as many porcupines as we used to see. And in New York, they've gone through a couple of scabies outbreaks, which is really horrible and awful for them and pretty devastating for the populations.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, so in summer when there's leaves on the trees, they eat the leaves and then fruit like apples and stuff like that. And then in winter, there's no leaves left. And so they have to scrape the outer bark off and then they consume the inner bark, which is like a terrible nutritional strategy. They lose like 25% of their body weight.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And then you've got the North American porcupines that have these really highly modified quills that are really awful if you get them in you.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
But by damaging trees, they become pests for timber operators. And so both the feds and private timber companies spent the entire 20th century hunting and killing porcupines all over the place. So that's another reason why they're declining. But the benefit is you get all of these dead and decadent trees and trees that are falling down and trees that are exposed to fungus and stuff that
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
almost surely contributes to diversity. Bugs are getting access to the inner bark. That's drawing in woodpeckers. Woodpeckers are then creating cavities in the trees. That's providing holes and dens and stuff for other mammals.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, up through the 50s. I mean, I think Vermont's killed like 100,000 porcupines per year, you know, just in one state every year with a small bounty on their skins. I think or hope that this next generation of ecological foresters are beginning to appreciate the fact that some of these species that damage trees are contributing to overall diversity, and maybe there's a balance between them.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
cutting every tree down and killing every porcupine and maybe leaving some so that they will help increase the health of the forest. And mountain lions are doing fairly well in Northern California and other parts of the Northwest.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
So North American porcupine quills have backwards facing barbs. The quill itself is sharp. It gets in you. And then there are these backward facing barbs that make it very difficult and painful to pull back out. And then they also, the backward facing barb means that if you don't pull it out, the quill will start to work its way into you further and further or your dog.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Cannabis growing uses a lot of rodenticide because porcupines come, not just porcupines, but rodents in general come and gnaw on their water lines and probably eat their crops. And so that's a huge issue for a lot of species now is the
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
widespread application of rodenticide on both public and private lands and it goes up the food chain do you think with the cannabis farms are they just getting cooked are they just so baked uh yeah sure yeah i think a lot of animals probably are taking advantage of that yep interesting
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I need to unwind. It seems really hard for porcupines because I had this student where we put this accelerometer on the porcupine and it was like, the accelerometer is not recording anything. It could be sleeping or walking or eating and the accelerometer is not moving at all. They're so chill to begin with that I can't even imagine what it would be like to be high.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
That is on the to do list. So California, I think lists it as a species of special concern, which is like the first step before getting on the endangered species list. which means that it's now eligible for additional funding.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And that's sort of where we're at, is there's a bunch of researchers across the Western US who are noticing this problem and starting to think about, okay, how do we actually count porcupines?
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And how do we get enough data longitudinally through time to see that they really have declined, not just from this sort of elevated baseline that we saw in the 60s and 70s after all these clear cuts, but truly are disappearing from large parts of their range where they really should be. There's still lots of places. There are still lots of porcupines.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
It's not like a hair on fire situation, but if I had more time and money, that would definitely be a priority, would be just documenting and knowing how they're doing.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I brought some to put on video so I could show you. So it's and it's a combination of like, yeah, well, the North American porcupine quills that I've collected, and then also people just give me quills, right? Like, I found this one or like, I'm a friend's a zookeeper and had these extra like African crescent porcupine quills here have some. We actually ended up with the research we were doing.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
My grad students, Kara, Apple, and Persa Belomarich organized giving most of the quills that we got to the tribes that we were working with. Because again, they used to go out and get the quills by hand. And then nowadays, they have to mail order them. So I was like, we got a bunch of extra quills. You guys should have these.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And then that becomes a real problem if it actually gets in your body and you got to go in and get it out.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
So obtaining quills in modern times, a person that I talked to in Humble, who was like, I can't find porcupines on my normal route. She was like, you know, I just drive around and there were these roads where I would know at night I could go find a porcupine, see a porcupine, park the car, grab my, she used a towel rather than a blanket, you know, thwap the porcupine on the back, take the quills.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And then, you know, you got a renewable, sustainable source of quills. So yeah, towel versus blanket method. I don't know.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I think, you know, I think probably like when you get to the point where you've got full coverage on the body, I'm guessing that not all of the quills got pushed down and released and you are pulling some out, but I think it's probably a temporary and again, better than, you know, killing them and getting the quills that way. Yeah.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Uses like there's documentation of all kinds of things in the quill work for decoration is the, is the most,
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
beautiful i think and widespread and people dyed them like all kinds of incredible colors like european colonizers would write about like they're using colors that we can't access like yellows and purples and reds and blacks and just really incredible weaving of the quills together and into other materials like
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
deerskin and leather rawhide for decoration on all kinds of clothing and bags and stuff like that the bristles on the tail were used for hair combs and brushes and then there's a couple of papers that claimed that in sugar maple country people would modify the quills to tap the maple syrup
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
That they shoot their quills. That's number one. Yeah, so they don't shoot quills. Yeah, no porcupines shoot their quills. You have to be pretty aggressive to get quilled.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And then number two, I guess I would say, is the confusion over hedgehogs versus porcupines. Yeah, so hedgehogs are not even rodents, and so it totally evolved independently. And same physical structure, they're also keratinized, but yeah, totally different species.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, exactly. And then that creates this sort of chisel shape that they use to scrape bark off. And they're continually growing. And just on the incisors, right, the front of the big incisors in the front are, yeah, orange.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
There's no quills on them. They've got the fur, their bellies. So yeah.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
The worst part of the job, honestly, is I won't give you my bummer answer. The worst part of the job is like when an animal dies, that's absolutely like the few times I've thought about quitting and doing something else is like, you know, I mean, and not just with porcupines, but animals in general.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Like if you're in the field and something goes wrong and you know that you like contributed to their death, that's pretty much the worst feeling in the world. The practical answer is just the funding and trying to find ways to fund research that's in this gray area where it's hard to find the right funder who wants to pay for the stuff that you want to do and keep it going for a really long time.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I have so many. And on the teaching side, I get paid to learn and ask questions about stuff that I'm interested in and then share that information with other people. And that's awesome. And then being able to find money to pay early career scientists to go into the field and spend a summer out in the world studying animals that they're interested in is also incredible. Just knowing that
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I've had the opportunity to support like, you know, spending that much time with focused attention, like learning about some landscape is just an incredible thing that we've set up as a society to make happen.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
People text me all the, not all the time, but like, you know, I know a true friend when they're like, I saw a porcupine, here's a photo of it.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
My dog just got quilled. Here's a photo of that. Those brighten my day when that happens. The best part of studying porcupines in the wild, though, was, and it was a total surprise, the scale of the study area was pretty small. You could walk north-south probably three hours and maybe an hour east-west. From the minute that we got out there and started looking for porcupines
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
We just started naming things without even talking about it. It was just like, oh, there's this location that this thing happened. We're going to call it that. And there's this really popular willow stand that a bunch of different porcupines were going to call it this and started naming the porcupines.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
It just felt very instinctive, like something that humans have been doing for a million years, like walking around as a group and a team. Looking for animals and learning about the landscape that we're walking through was just really joyful.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And seeing that landscape through the porcupine's eyes and going to places that I would never go before and thinking about how they were using the landscape was just incredible.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
I don't think so. I think it's mostly the nose.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, and not smelling whatever they're smelling.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure. Thank you so much for your interest in porcupines.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, all of those. And it's really confusing. So there's two families, capital F, of porcupines. There's the Hystricidae, which are the African Eurasian porcupines, and there's like 11 species of those. And then totally separately is the family of North and South American porcupines, Eurythizontidae, where there's about 20 species of those.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Thanks, everyone, for your universal love of the best mammal on Earth.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And it's, man, I've been like looking the past week or two because I always tell people that those two families, the like African and Eurasian porcupines and the North and South Americans evolved separately and that they evolved quills independently from each other.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And like nobody seems to want to really go on record and say whether that's true or not or whether the like, you know, so they separated like 10 to 20 million years ago And I think we just don't really know whether that ancient rodent ancestor of the two groups had some form of quill and then they split and they continue to have quills or if they evolved independently.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
But yeah, so around the world, there's like 30 species of porcupines, but they're very different. The family of African and Eurasian porcupines are much bigger. They're ground dwelling. The quills are way longer. They're like a foot long. And I think they're more aggressive. Like a lot of the videos of porcupine attacking a leopard, those are generally African porcupines, Eurasian porcupines.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And then the North and South American porcupines are more arboreal. They spend a lot of time in trees, eating leaves, much shorter quills.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, that's possible. That definitely is possible, right? The defense stuff is much more important if you're on the ground and you're out digging around for roots and stuff. The other part of it is, at least for North American porcupines, they fall out of trees a lot. So they're not super coordinated and they'll quill themselves. And so the, yeah.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And so I think there's probably some benefit to having shorter quills in that case. Like it's sort of breaking a bunch off when you fall on the ground, like having shorter ones that are at least somewhat protected by the outer guard hairs is probably better. Yeah.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
It's sad. I mean, so there's this incredible book by Aldous Rose, U-L-D-I-S-R-O-Z-E, called The North American Porcupine. He's a professor in New York City, and he talks about he examined porcupine skeletons in museums, and he was saying a third of them have broken bones, which has got to be from falling out of trees.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
They're just not that good at balance.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
the best morsels are probably out at the end of the branches. And so I think they're probably taking some risks going out on some thin limbs that they probably shouldn't be.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
For the porcupine, they have this special mechanism where they're not just going to come out day to day. You actually have to push into the skin. So something pushes on the top of the quill, and then that releases the muscle that's holding it in, and then they come out. Oh. So it is sort of like waxing your mustache or legs or whatever.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
If you just pull the quill out, that would probably be super painful. But if they take their tail and like thwack a dog's face, that like engages this release mechanism that I think probably does not hurt.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah. So the practical answer is when I was applying for my first faculty job at Humboldt State, everybody's asking me like, what are you going to study when you get up here? And I'm giving all these like lame half-assed answers because I just don't ever want to think about research again.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And then finally, the final night, second night, we go out to dinner with like all the other faculty in the department and they ask again, like, what are you going to study if you get up here? It popped into my head. I had seen this talk a couple years ago by this guy, Rick Schweitzer, who does a lot of conservation work in the Sierras and had done his graduate work on porcupines in Nevada.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
He was saying, we don't see porcupines anymore. They're not where they used to be in the Sierras. I just blurted out, I don't know, maybe porcupines? That clicked. Everyone around the table was like, oh, that's such a great idea. Porcupines would be amazing. The students could go out. They can do these behavioral observations. It's such a cool species. And
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
All the tribes in the area, like the Hoopa and Yurok and the Karuk have all been asking, like, where are the porcupines? We used to have porcupines here and we can't find them anymore. So that was sort of, I don't know if it got me the job, but it was just sort of this like light bulb moment. And so, yeah, started research up there when I got the job.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah. I mean, yeah, they are. They're super cool. And they're sort of, They're kind of like, you know, we talk about like a comics comic or a writer's writer. Like, I think porcupines are kind of, I think, the species that a lot of ecologists really like, but they're sort of underappreciated and understudied. You know, everybody loves porcupines.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
They need to be able to smell really well. Some of the noses of porcupine accounts on social media, I think some of those are South American species where they have this big, bald nose that's sticking out. North American porcupines also have really big noses. but they're furred. But they just need to have a really good sense of smell. I mean, they're folivores. Most of what they eat is leaves.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And so they need to be able to smell where the good leaves are and where the other porcupines are. So yeah, highly evolved nose for scent.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
Yeah, the second one. So a lot of the research we were doing was like studying their ecology in this coastal dune forest in Northern California. And the best way to do that is to track them. So we would catch them, anesthetize them, and get a radio collar on them and just measure them for sex and reproductive status and weight and ectoparasites and stuff like that.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
And while they're sleeping, you get to look at them and feel their nose and see what the bottom of their feet look like and stuff like that.
Ologies with Alie Ward
Erethizonology (PORCUPINES) with Tim Bean
North American porcupines are like, it's really variable. It's interesting, like Northeastern, like New England porcupines, I think are a little bit smaller. Alaskan porcupines can get up to about 20 or 30 pounds.