The Madras hedgehog, found only in southern India, is considered a species of least concern on the IUCN Red List of threatened species. However, this elusive spiny species is poorly understood, and its population is largely unknown, reports Mongabay India’s Arathi Menon. India’s arid grasslands, scrublands and deserts are home to three species of hedgehogs. Two of them — the Indian hedgehog (Paraechinus micropus) and the Indian long-eared or collared hedgehog (Hemiechinus collaris) — occur in the country’s northwestern states, as well as in Pakistan. The bare-bellied hedgehog, also known as the Madras hedgehog or South Indian hedgehog (Paraechinus nudiventris), has only ever been reported in the five states of southern India. In a 2024 study, hedgehog researcher Brawin Kumar and his colleagues noted that the Madras hedgehog has been barely studied in the states of Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, preventing “a comprehensive population assessment of hedgehog species in these regions.” Most sightings of the species have come from the state of Tamil Nadu, including a recent study that reported individuals from three grasslands in the state where they’d previously not been seen. These three sites “are some of India’s southernmost grasslands and represent the final remnants of tropical grasslands across Asia,” the study notes. R. Sankaranarayanan, a researcher at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), who led the study, told Mongabay India that Madras hedgehogs “rely on open natural ecosystems that are rapidly being converted into agricultural lands, for agroforestry practices as well…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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