Tracking Hedgehogs on their Nightly Commute
24 Feb 2015A doctoral candidate in Zurich has found a new way to use GPS trackers: track local hedgehogs and follow their nightly routes.
Sonja Braaker, who is a doctoral candidate at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, is at the head of a hedgehog study. Braaker wanted to learn more about hedgehogs, particularly how the nocturnal animals spend their time at night.
It wasn’t easy, but she was able to track a total of 40 hedgehogs, each with a GPS tracker that had very limited battery power.
For the study, she began searching outdoor areas of Zurich where she thought hedgehogs would roam. This included dozens of parks, lawns, streets, and gardens. When she saw one, she would have to move fast to pick up the animal.
Hedgehogs tend to freeze momentarily when someone sees them, so they would stop long enough for her to grab them. She cut a small portion of their spine by using scissors, which is a part of the animal that does not cause them pain. She then glued a GPS tracker to this area and set it free.
Since the particular GPS tracking device she used only lasted 8 hours before needing a new battery, she needed to follow the tracker to the animal before time ran out so she could put in new batteries. Braaker admitted that many nights she would be wandering the streets for hours tracking down a hedgehog.
There were others who claimed the hedgehogs in front of their property were their pets and they refused to let her track them. Others were concerned that she was a thief who was going to rob their houses, since she wasn’t too afraid to walk slowly and quietly around neighborhood streets.
In Zurich, they have what are known as habitat connectivity; these are corridors that let animals go from one habitat to another within the city. Braaker and her research team were interested to know exactly where the hedgehogs were going at night, and how they were getting there. By the end of the study, they successfully tracked 40 hedgehogs and saw the pathways they took and where they avoided.
Through her results, she found that hedgehogs tended to avoid soccer fields and highways, but would be glad to travel along city streets. They seemed to prefer walking across asphalt as opposed to gravel. She also now has a map of the pathways they would take most often through the city streets.
While hedgehogs are usually in rural and country environments, there are many of them now living in city streets just like Zurich. As Braaker pointed out with her study, they still have plenty of paths to take at night for food, shelter, and activity.
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