Makes me think of the terrapins that people used to have for pets until they realised they were too difficult to look after and released them into the wild – never good for the native wildlife.
I did mention re. the colouring, to Jens, when I saw the first film, but it wasn’t something he had noticed. I also said, at the time, ‘I was looking at a world distribution map of hedgehogs and it does look as if the ones in Sweden may be slightly isolated from those in the rest of Europe. Of course the ones here are isolated from those in mainland Europe as well.’ So it could be that they have evolved slightly differently, but I’m not sure why it would be advantageous to be paler – it would stand out more, even in daylight. I couldn’t find out if there were books or experts on hedgehogs in Sweden who might be able to throw some light on it.
It was just looking at the latest film that it really struck me how similar the colouring is to some pygmy hedgehog pictures I have seen, and the hog seemed quite small, although not easy to tell from video and that one could be a youngster. Probably another one of those things we may never know the answer to!
