{"id":152,"date":"2019-01-09T12:38:58","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T12:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hojnotes.com\/?p=152"},"modified":"2019-01-09T18:12:42","modified_gmt":"2019-01-09T18:12:42","slug":"hedgehogs-make-great-pets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/09\/hedgehogs-make-great-pets\/","title":{"rendered":"Cushioning Hedgehogs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday, I showed an image to my physics class of a hedgehog curled into a ball and the description:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The spines of a hedgehog obviously help protect it from predators. But they serve another function as well. If a hedgehog falls from a tree\u2014a not uncommon occurrence\u2014it simply rolls itself into a ball before it lands. Its thick spines then cushion the blow by increasing the time it takes for the animal to come to rest. Indeed, hedgehogs have been observed to fall out of trees on purpose to get to the ground!<\/em><\/p>Pearson Education 2019<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the physics unit on impulse and momentum change.\u00a0 Air bags, seat belts, and crumpling bumpers are more typical examples used to demonstrate the relationship between impact force and impact duration, the idea, increase the time duration of the collision to reduce the impact force (cushion the blow) while the moving body\u2019s momentum drops to zero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hannah appears interested, raises her hand, \u201cI have a hedgehog\nstory.  My cousin had one.  She named it Bruce Quillis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s my story.  It\u2019s not\nreally a story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClass, other hedgehog names?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cQuill Smith.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cQuill Ferrell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPrince Quilliam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seated next to Hannah, Stretcher says, \u201cI have a story.  My aunt once killed a hedgehog by drowning\nit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one sadistic aunt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, wrong idea.  She\ndrowned it in the bathtub.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd how does the bathtub make her less sadistic?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe was giving it a bath.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHedgehogs require grooming?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stretcher says, \u201cShe got distracted, left to do something\nelse.  Hedgehogs can\u2019t swim.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone else says, \u201cThey\u2019re soft if you pet them in the right\ndirection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I look at Blatt\u2019s tablet and see a paused Youtube video, titled \u2018Hedgehogs\nSwimming<\/em>\u2019.  Blatt turns his tablet to\nStretcher, \u201cHedgehogs can swim.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stretcher shrugs, \u201cBaby hedgehog. \nThey can\u2019t swim.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rayva says \u201cHedgehogs are illegal in Georgia.  I tried to get one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ask, \u201cBefore or after you discovered they were illegal?\u201d  Rayva is silent and drops her head, acting\nlike she\u2019s taking notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hedgehogs are much smaller than, and unrelated to, porcupines. Hedgehogs are not considered rodents, they’re insectivores.\u00a0 Hedgehog spines do not detach like a porcupine\u2019s quills.\u00a0 Porcupines that shoot their quills like projectiles are a myth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young hedgehogs may lose their spines in a process called\n\u2018quilling\u2019 but they\u2019re replaced as they age into adults.  Spines may be permanently lost due to disease\nor under stress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sally dug into her backpack and extracted a plastic bag containing her blood-stained wisdom teeth (permanently lost to the dentist just yesterday) and asked if anyone would like to see them.\u00a0 She said her blood was taken and centrifuged (referencing first semester\u2019s unit on centripetal forces) to separate the platelets, apparently used in her recovery treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Britain, wild hedgehogs are considered threatened by habitat\nloss and vehicular hedgicide.  In\nAmerica, it is illegal to keep a hedgehog as pet in California, Arizona,\nGeorgia, Hawaii, Maine, NYC, Pennysylvania, and Washington D.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hedgehogs are used as croquet balls by the Queen of Hearts in \u201cAlice\u2019s\nAdventures in Wonderland.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most common hedgehog pet species are hybrids of the white-bellied hedgehog and North African pygmy.\u00a0 Hedgehogs can be socialized by tender pet owners, taught to trust being handled by humans without curling into a prickly ball, but by nature, they\u2019re loners and only \u2018hook up\u2019 for mating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cross a hedgehog with a poodle to smooth their coat, what would you name it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPoodlehog.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHedgoodle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHedgie-poo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I showed an image to my physics class of a hedgehog curled into a ball and the description: The spines of a hedgehog obviously help protect it from predators. But they serve another function as well. If a hedgehog falls from a tree\u2014a not uncommon occurrence\u2014it simply rolls itself into a ball before it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}