Hi Hoglet
I think it is more likely that Jens is right and that someone has artificially marked the hoglets. Artificial marks would show up well on night cams, probably even more than natural marks. Some hogs do have some pale spines but not normally enough to make a heart shape. There are a few hedgehogs which visit here who have 2 or 3 pale spines together (seen through binoculars) and it’s possible it could be genetic, but not necessarily from the same litter – the ones here are not all the same age. It is, though, likely that many of the hogs visiting one particular place are related, in some way, to one another.
Whilst I don’t normally agree with artificially marking hedgehogs, there is, perhaps, more justification for marking late hoglets, to save them from having to be repeatedly caught and weighed if they are over the minimum survival weight of 450g. This could be considered to be in the interests of the individual hoglets. However, this only needs to be a tiny mark on a few individual spines with water based product.
