My feeling is that hedgehogs ‘communicate’ to some extent by scent. So that the hedgehogs smell the trail of other hedgehogs coming for food and so follow it to see why they went that way. In the same way, they are able to recognise each other, so that the males develop a sort of ‘pecking order’ because they can recognise the other male hogs. That is one of the reasons that I believe the excessive marking of hogs which sometimes happens can be detrimental to them, because it can mask their natural scent.
Females also seem to have some other females they will tolerate quite happily, and others that they will nudge, impatiently, out of the way – so that they also clearly recognise each other.
