No, it wasn’t that one, although that is interesting too. The survey I was talking about was only from last year. I haven’t seen any results from it, but the best I can do at the moment is to give you the link to the request for people to help with it.
https://www.hedgehogstreet.org/calling-all-hedgehog-carers/
Glad to hear you keep the handling to a minimum, but it wouldn’t be surprising if the hogs developed unusual habits, being kept in, for them, abnormal circumstances. From your description, I’m not convinced by the self anointing theory, but then I didn’t see exactly what he was doing.
I recall Pat Morris concluded that even though there was a comparatively high mortality rate for rehabilitated hogs, it was still worth trying to help the underweight hoglets, etc., as otherwise, even the ones who did survive wouldn’t have. Since he wrote the book (originally 1983), hopefully, people have learned how to improve survival rates. I haven’t had many re-released here, but they all survived their first year, at least. But even amongst hogs who haven’t needed ‘recuing’ there can be a fairly high mortality rate, especially in youngsters and during hibernation. So it has got to be worthwhile trying to help them, if necessary, even if not all survive.
If you do try to read Pat Morris book, try to get hold of a 2014 edition, (or there may even be a more recent one). Even some of that is slightly outdated now. But, there is a lot of interesting information in it.
Not sure if I am right, but I am guessing Seb was originally from somewhere else? I have found, here, that the males, who have grown up in the wild, tend to mostly move on after a while (probably makes sense from the genetics point of view), although they do continue to make occasional visits, possibly just to get a free meal (!). They usually come back after hibernation, stay for a while, but then disappear some time afterwards. It would be interesting to know if a hog from elsewhere did the same, or whether because he was already in a ‘different’ place he would stay put.
