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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of Radio's HowStuffWorks. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles Doublecheck, Brian over there. And this is stuff you should know about Porcupine's, which this is a great idea. Chuck, good job. You know, the porcupine when you take away all those quills is just a cute little guinea pig. Basically a giant one.

Yeah, the cute big guinea pig. Speaking of cute porcupines, dude, do you remember Teddy Bear? The porcupine kind of went a little viral a few years ago. And now you have to watch Teddy Bear the porcupine specifically teddy teddy bear. The porcupine doesn't like to share on YouTube. It is this porcupine eating corn on the cob and making all these sounds like cousin it. And it is one of the cutest things I've ever seen in my entire life.

Yeah, we're going to shout out live science, Smithsonian Mental Floss, the San Diego Zoo and a couple of other websites that I cobbled together this wonderful bit on one of our wonderful animal friends in the world.

We'd love to do these shows.

It just made me think. Have you seen the Octopus documentary thing yet?

No, I haven't. I haven't been, like, kind of popping up in my in my periphery. I don't really know what it is.

Is it just about octopi?

Well, it's called my octopus teacher. I haven't seen it yet, but I just know that the deal is this guy kind of gets to know one octopus and. That's right. You know, a nice story ensues is all I know. That's neat. We'll have to watch that. Yeah, I can't I can't wait.

But and I mention that because, you know, we've long said that the octopus is our favorite animal. But I feel like almost every time we've done one on an animal, it's on something that we love. And boy, do I love the quill pig. I do, too.

Yeah. Apparently that's what the their Latin name means. Cuil pig.

I love that. That's great. That is fantastic. And it turns out, Chuck, that there are basically two groups that Porcupine's get lumped into. There's a bunch of different gene Jeani. Yeah, that's right. And species. But they're they basically fall under two categories. It's Old World, which is Europe, Africa, Asia and the New World, which is North, South and Central America. And if you saw a, you know, a porcupine in South America and you saw one in, you know, the Himalayas, you probably would be like, that's a porcupine.

That's porcupine, too. They're not radically different, like some old world and new world animals are.

Yeah, but something I saw that was interesting was that they evolved separately. I'm not one of those.

What is it called coevolution or whatever? No, I didn't see that. That's that is crazy.

I saw that and I only saw it in one place.

So I think that might have been a personal hypothesis of somebody who got the maybe website and saw it somewhere, though, and then that the two actually the old world, the new world, have less in common than they do individually with like some other rodents in their area. Yeah.

So I'm actually not surprised to hear that. But the one thing that they do have in common across the board is that they have quills and that they use their quills defensively. Now what their quills look like, how they use their quills, there's a lot of other distinctions and differences between Old World, the new world. But they all have quills. They're all porcupines. It seems to be the thing that that binds them. It's the tie that binds that family.

Yeah. And it's just it's easy to take the porcupine for granted, I think, and just say, yeah, that the little animal with all those quills. But when you take a step back and look at it and think about the evolution of the porcupine, that, like I said, it's sort of would be a very large sort of cute little fluffy guinea pig, but it probably got eaten a lot. And then, you know, they said nuts to this nature steps in like, all right, how about this?

What if we were just animal pincushions such that if he came anywhere near us, you would be stabbed repeatedly if you tried to eat us? Like it's one of the most amazing evolutionary adaptations I've ever seen.

Yeah. And I mean, they can really use those things, too. There's a long standing myth that they can shoot them, which is not true. But apparently even Aristotle fell for that one.

And I'm not a dummy, but they can use them in some pretty interesting ways. And you hit the nail on the head when you said, you know, step back. If you see a porcupine, that is good advice. You should probably step back because depending on the species or whether it's the old world or new world, those quills can mess you up pretty good.

Yeah, but also, you know, get nearby and take a look like they're not going to come after you.

That porcupine now is a very kind hearted animal. Yeah. And those are 100 percent for defense. A porcupine is never going to charge you and, you know, leap at your belly to to put quills all in your stomach. So take a little look, admire it for what it is. I think, you know, to talk about porcupines, a lot of this is talking about the old world versus the Rush version.

Yeah. So the the the big difference is that I saw and there's lots of differences between different species within each of these groups, but the old world versus New World have some big differences between them. And one of them is that Old World are typically terrestrial porcupines. They spend most of their lives on the ground. They live in burrows or caves or rock dens and new world porcupines. They live on the ground, too. They live in burrows. But there are also very capable of climbing trees.

And they'll they'll spend a significant amount of time and sometimes nest in trees. And there are some species that spend virtually their whole lives in trees, almost like sloths.

Yeah, Cuil wise the new world porcupines, quills are going to be shorter and smaller in general. I think they're about four to 10, four inches, 10 centimeters. The old world dudes and ladies, they can get very long.

They can have quills up to 20 inches long. They can be marked with black and white bands. And what they can do is these old world guys can puff them up so they stand up and are more intimidating. And look, also, I mean, it's weird because it's like multifocal like four or five different things they do. By doing this, they look larger. Right. So that's always something that vulnerable animals try to do in the wild. They look like a.

A little bit because of the black and white marking down their back, they actually have defensive must kind of like a skunk, which is not nearly as bad.

Yeah, so they try to imitate a skunk a little bit.

They look bigger, they they rattle, they can shake those things and rattle them, which is another great adaptation to say, like, get away from me and don't try and eat me.

And supposedly that works pretty well too.

Yeah, totally. And then if all else fails, they are starboy, they are starving.

So sometimes the old world ones will actually charge backwards toward a predator if they're feeling like they want to stand their ground. And that's usually when they're caught out in the open. If they have a place to hide, they'll stick their head in that place to hide and then puff out their quills and make themselves hard to get at. But if they're out in the open, they may decide that they're going to fight off this predator and they'll charge backward. And one other adaptation I saw, which I thought was was awesome, they'll have the Predator chase it and then they'll stop all of a sudden and the predator will run into them in their calls for real.

And then you hear the sound effect. Yeah, exactly.

And then it's too late. Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting because there's quills, even though they pull them out, they are pointy generally in the reverse direction. Right. Which you know, which is why they have to back up into something to to kill them or like you said, bury them.

Just throw on that that parking brake real quick and all of a sudden that Fox has got a face full of quill.

Right. So that old world contains a couple of species that are called crested porcupines. And they basically look like if the quills were like an umbrella, it opens at the back of their head. Yeah. And just kind of sticks out like that. And like you said, it makes them look a lot bigger. They're a lot more dangerous. The the big difference with quills between the old world and the new world, in addition to being shorter, is old-world.

Porcupines are covered in quills. That's all they have the like they have like I don't know if we said or not, but quills are just modified it hair. They're made of keratin. They're just like hair. They're just waste shabbier than hair that you and I have.

Well, it's like handmaids fingernails basically.

Yeah. That's a great way to put it. And Old World Porcupine's, that's all they have are Quill's newworld. Porcupine's have quills that are also mixed in with fur like an undercoat. Longer hairs and their quills kind of stand up and are used for defence. That's not just it's not all that they have. And the other thing about their quills is that they have little barbs and newworld. Porcupines barbs make the new world quills way more dangerous than overall quills.

Yeah, it's like a little fishhook, basically. And it'll instead of just poking right into you, it'll actually snag in your flesh and makes it, like you said, way, way tougher to get out a much harder time removing a new world quill than an old world quill. Right.

But those new world guys are because they're quills. Start further back. You get the feeling if you just I wouldn't recommend this, but if you just go very gently and just say, hey, little guy, and I'll do that, I just I just want to give you a scratch under the under the chin, and I think you might enjoy it. And I'm going to move very slowly.

Just don't turn around and you'll you'll have a really good time. I'd like to include a disclaimer here, so don't do it. You guys should not listen to Chuck right now. He's doling out some really terrible advice.

Yeah, it's just because there's QuickStart start further back. They got that cute little head and face and it just makes you want to give them a scratch.

Yeah, no, totally. Like, if you watch Teddy Teddy Bear videos, Teddy Bear the porcupine, you will want to go get one as a pet. There's another one I saw called Diva and she was a baby porcupine. She's adorable. Yeah, you totally want to do that. And I'm sure there are ways to handle them. But I also saw, you know, one of those you guys on a late night talk show and he had, I think, an African crested porcupine on his lap.

And that thing was not at all worried or scared or in any sort of defense mode.

And that dude was in pain, just letting this thing sit on his lap because I don't know, you said, you know, they look like guinea pigs. And I said overgrown guinea pigs. Some of these things can get really big. There's a cape porcupine. I think it's the biggest one. They get up to like 65 pounds, 65 pounds. It's like a large dog. Yeah.

And the quills, though, with the quills puffed up, you know, like they're 65 pounds year round. And then imagine a 65 pound dog with those quills. So that's dangerous.

Yeah. What I meant I know they don't actually weigh more when they puff up, but they they can when they put those quills out, they can look two to three times their size. So. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine that thing looks enormous and actually I don't do this much but I'm watching that, that thing eat that corn on the cob right now.

Isn't that adorable. Yeah. I have to have the sound down so I'm going to go back and watch it. You have to hear the sound like the sound does it, but even without the sound, he's just awfully cute, huh.

Yeah, it kind of they kind of look like beavers a little bit too. And they are related as fellow rodents here.

I think we should take a break. OK, I'm getting kind of worked up here and we'll come back and talk more about these cute little stubby suckers right after this.

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So when they shake, they if they have loose quills, they can fly off. But they're still not like shooting, like Aristotle said, like deadly needle darts.

No, but they can be problematic. Like these things can puncture the sidewalls of tires. I was reading the blog of some tire company K-Tel tires, I think, up in the Yukon. And they said that it's actually it can be a problem. Like if you run over one like on some roads. Yeah. That like if you're out in the middle of nowhere and you run over a Porcupine Quill, you're you're probably going to get a flat. That's how tough those things are.

Well, that's sad. What for your tire now for the for your afternoon.

Well, no, you're not running over. Are you still watching Teddybear videos? No. I thought you said if you run over a porcupine, it can Porcupine Quill. Oh, well. Being what is just a loose quill on the road. Yeah, exactly.

That's what I'm saying. Like just a loose quill laying on the road. If you run over, it goes in your side wall, you're probably going to get a flat tire. That's how tough those things are.

OK, I thought you meant if you actually run over a porcupine and you have like a bunch of quills, I would probably do it too, especially if the porcupine was in a defensive procedure.

But the porcupine doesn't have to die in this case for you to get a flat tire.

So regardless of that sadness, there is sadness in that despite this great adaptation and this great defense mechanism, they still can be hunted, lions can still hunt them human people. There's the bushmeat trade for the old world porcupines.

That is, you know, just, you know what that means. And they're you know, there are owls, Wolverine's pythons. There's something called a fisher that looks sort of like a weasel bear fox or something like that thing up.

Yeah, I think it's related to otters and weasels. OK, but it had a little sort of a bear face. It was interesting, but they apparently stink too. Well, they stink in more ways than one because they learn to flip these porcupines over where they have that soft belly meat, no quills as a way to attack them, which really makes me mad. Yeah, I don't I don't like fishes for that reason either. I'd never heard of them until recently until we started researching this and I had neither.

I don't like them. Nope.

I just don't like them. It's something else. Yeah. Leave the porcupine's alone because they're actually pretty nice. Yeah, and they don't eat, what do they eat, they vegetables and fruits and berries and nuts and tubers and roots. Yeah, so they they they eat all those things. They'll also eat crops, which is porcupines are considered a nuisance, especially if you're a farmer or even a gardener in the suburbs, because they will eat your vegetables, they will eat corn.

Um, love the corn apparently. But they'll also they have another thing too, where they need sodium in their diet. They need they need a pretty even ratio of one to one of potassium to sodium for their electrical conductivity in their body to work. But they don't get much sodium in their diet. Plants have lots of potassium, not much sodium. So they have to go find it elsewhere. And it turns out we humans have a lot of stuff that has sodium and apparently plywood glue contains a lot of sodium.

So they love eating wood structures. We build out of plywood. The salt that we put on the roads gets kicked up on the underside of our car. So you might find a porcupine chewing on the tires or the hoses or belts or wires under your car.

Yeah, well, that they would even because the human sweat so much salt when they're working, they'll go it like if you have some some wooden pruners in your shed, they'll go in there and they'll start eating the handle of your pruners because it just has a residual human salt left over on it. Right. He's just walk in.

You're like, are you nuts? What is wrong with you? You porcupine just set up a salt lake for those fellows?

Yeah, well, they'll find any where they can find a natural Salt Lake. They'll definitely eat that too. But yes, anything that has human sweat on even trace amounts of human sweat, they'll go bonkers. How they be yours, paddles, that kind of stuff. So but yes, typically they they eat leaves, stems, they eat shoots and leaves. They also, though and this is another reason why they're considered a nuisance. They eat the bark off of the tree.

So they're considered generalists. They'll eat just about any kind of vegetation. Yeah. Which is actually and they're also super adaptable, which is why you'll find porcupines almost anywhere there's vegetation. But they'll that's what they eat, you know, spring, summer, fall. And then in winter they don't hibernate, which actually makes them kind of unusual as well. But they they go from being generalists to what's known as facultative specialists, meaning their diet becomes very limited to just one or two types of trees and not just one or two types of trees.

During the winter, they may just feed on the inner bark of one tree. And that can be problematic because the inner bark is where nutrients and water moves from the roots to the rest of the tree. And if that porcupine eats all the way around it, what's called girdling a tree, it can kill or seriously damage that tree.

Yeah. So, I mean, if you have a problem, if you live in the woods and stuff and you see a tree, it could be a beaver. But either way you kind of handle it the same. You can rap like chicken wire around it, around the bottom or some sort of aluminum or something sheeting to keep the the beaver and or a porcupine from not on that thing. Yeah.

And I would guess you'd want to wear work gloves because the salt from the sweat in your hands is just going to attract them to that chicken wire.

Yeah, they eat, they're nocturnal. So they're mainly doing this stuff at night. They're patrolling around, they're defending their areas that they feed. I saw both.

I saw that they're territorial. I saw that they're also not territorial.

Yeah, it probably depends with, you know, so many different species because they will travel outside their home range if they want to get a mate or if they need that salt.

They're usually they're fairly so low flyers, although sometimes you'll see a couple of them. They may be mated, they may be siblings. I don't think we mentioned that the old world porcupines are actually really good swimmers.

Both of them are four, from what I understand. Oh, really? OK, yeah.

And New World will actually go swim out to gather aquatic plants. They swim more than the Old World does, but they just swim to collect plants and they bring it back to the shore to eat.

Yeah. And they're, they're living and they don't they'll sleep in trees. Sometimes the climbers will, but it seems like they make use of other animals dens when they're not around and they have left like they'll go to an aardvark den that has been abandoned or a hole and they will change it around, maybe knock down some walls, open up that floor plan.

So I island in the kitchen. Yeah, of course. Got have the big island. Sure.

And then, you know, they they'll just adapt. To their needs, because obviously they're a little puffier than the aardvark. Yeah, and in doing so, check a question like I kept running up against toes. What role did Porcupine's play in the ecosystem? Can they think that one of the big roles they play is by basically disturbing stuff? They disturb the soil when they're when they're digging and burrowing and everything. Oh, interesting. They they found that they the through that they propagate way more seeds then than would otherwise be propagated if they weren't around.

So forests are much more diverse with them in it than without them because of all of their scratching and moving and all of that stuff.

Yeah. And it seems like for rodents they live a long time. They can live in the wild. I mean, I sort of saw a wild range anywhere from I did to three to five years in the wild to like 10 years in the wild. I saw one that lived to be 18. I saw the record was twenty five, which I think was second only to a beaver. As far as the rodent record, I think there was a twenty eight year old beaver once I saw one in Brazil was two can live up to twenty seven years in captivity.

Oh wow. Yeah. So that's, I mean that's long lived but yeah I saw three to five years too. And I guess it just depends on the species you know.

Yeah. And the other thing about their feeding habits is they eat seasonally. Right. They're little hipster's, they eat seasonally and locally.

So depending on what's there, they will I think in the winter they'll eat more evergreen needles and the like, sort of the inner bark of the trees and stuff like that. Right. And then, you know, when those sweet berries come around or when that corn crop is coming in, just look out, then they turn back into generalists.

That's right.

So I feel like we cannot go any further. I can't dance around the fact that that Porcupine's copulate and when they do copulate, they produce offspring. And we should talk about that.

Yeah. Should we break or should we do this and then break? I feel like we're going to need to take a break after this. OK, so Porcupine's have stabbed Quill's, that's their point backwards.

That's right. And if you know how a rodent in a mammal like this would have sex, it is from something a male approaching the female from the rear. Yeah, right where those things are pointing. And so you think, how do they do this? What happens is the males are going to they're going to vie for the female. Like so many animals, they have these sort of noisy battles and they they whine and they stomp when they win and stomp their tail and try to impress the lady, put their quills out.

And if the lady says, all right, I think you might be a good match for me, what does he do?

He sprays urine all over her. That's right. And she goes. She goes, that was wonderful.

Let's go, big boy. Yeah. I'm going to put down I'm going to lay down my quills. Yeah. And move the tail to the side. It's business time, right? Yeah. Because the tail is barbed. I don't think we said that either. No, but I like all the quills are barbed, right? Well, no, I think the actual tail is barbed. Oh, good Lord as well. Which can help with the climbing and stuff.

Right.

So I think it would take being sprayed with urine to you would want to reach that level of commitment to make sure that you could trust that that barbed tail is going to be kept to the side like we really are we in. Right.

And then yes, that that definitely says, yes, you're in. You're in. Get it? Yep. I told you would need a break. Let's take one, shall we? All right.

And we'll talk to you about we'll talk about porky pets right after this.

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So, Chuck, the Porcupine's have capitulated, they were successful and the female has now gestated for two hundred and five to two hundred and seventeen days. And what did you say?

We're just born poor Kupets like cute kitty ass. Yeah.

Not pets isn't something you keep, but yeah, little porcupine's like like the 50s singing group girl version of the Porcupine's Randy Porcupine in the Borke fits.

Right. Exactly, yeah. And here's where it got a little confusing because that's all different stuff depending on where I looked. And again it may be according to Species' I saw that they rarely have more than one at a time. I also saw that sometimes they have up to four. But let's just say between one and four per litter and they stay with their their mommies for a little longer than than what I found it says and I think from the San Diego Zoo just a few months.

But I also saw anywhere from 12 to 24 months. And they at least need that mother's milk for like six months.

And I think it really depends on the species. Like I saw those the largest ones, the Cape Porcupine, they actually stay in family units of a mom and a dad and one to two kids.

Interesting to see dads usually out of there with a porcupine. Right. Right. So, yeah, especially with North American porcupines. I feel like a lot because we're in America. A lot of the info we got was for North American porcupine just called it Porcupine's, which required a lot more digging. But I feel like with North American porcupine, it's like, hey, good luck with the kids. And then the mom has the kid and it's like, hey, I'm weaning you.

Good luck with the rest of your life. And then they live this kind of solitary, happy existence, digging around and eating tree bark.

Yeah. And if you think the porcupine is is soft and cute, as you would imagine, you are correct. Yeah. Those needle like quills start to stiffen up very quickly, but it takes it kind of starts three or four days later and then I imagine takes a little while to reach for, you know, kind of hard Cuil version.

Yeah. And I saw it conflicting information too. I saw that they were born precocious, where they had a full set of teeth, their eyes were open, and then it just took a few hours for their quills to harden into like adult. Quilligan, there was even talk to Chuck. Yes, adult kollege, thank you for that. Yeah. Their eyes were closed for a long time.

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. It's possible. It's different species. It's also possible the San Diego Zoo just got a bunch of stuff wrong. Well, that's always possible.

Great zoo. I've been there. And then we did an episode on zoos and whether or not they were ethical. So you can go make up your own mind about that.

But and there were Jack Hanna hailed from was in the San Diego Zoo guy.

I feel like that's probably true. Well, let's just say it is.

I got something else on these quills. They have an but I thought we I thought we were done with quills, you said. No, never done with quills, OK. They have an antiseptic quality, apparently. Oh, wow. In case of selfs damage. That's awesome. I hadn't seen that actually. And I think we should say to just one more thing about Quills. I'm breaking my own rules here because they're like modified hair. They grow back when they're shed.

They are constantly shedding and growing quills. Yeah.

And like I said, you should not approach one in the wild, but they may carry rabies. But other than that, they don't really carry any other diseases which we need to worry them on.

Yeah, like if you wanted to love porcupines any more. There you go. Like you could snuggle one and you don't have to worry about any diseases.

Yes, but don't eat them like they do in some parts of the world. They are in pretty good shape, but they have been exterminated in certain parts of Africa because they do eat root crops. They are a nuisance pests. So they get rid of them. People can collect you like that. They can collect the quills for ornamentation. And I think there's a couple of them that are listed as vulnerable and very sadly, of course, because their habitat is being lost.

Yes, but globally, porcupines are under their considered of least concern. Yeah. Which itself is concerning because they're considered pests and a lot of places. So they're eradicated. The I think it was the Maryland DNR, the Do Not Resuscitate Agency, said that their site that porcupines used to be in the southeastern United States, but they were eradicated. I didn't know that and I've never heard that. And I couldn't find it anywhere else. But I don't know why the DNR would make that up.

I'm trying to think if I've ever seen one in the wild, I know they they do not live in the southeast, but the Maryland DNR is saying, like, I've traveled all over the world.

I'm not saying in my backyard.

Oh, I gotcha. Well, we were talking about the Southeast. You can imagine I fell for that one.

Now I'm just trying to think of if I've seen one like camping out west or anything. I don't I don't know if I'd ever seen one. I never have.

I would think you would definitely remember seeing a porcupine in real life.

Probably armadillos everywhere. Everywhere.

And, you know, they carry Hansen's disease. They don't get close to them. Porcupines don't carry any communicable diseases that humans are concerned about except rabies. Yeah, they can be rabid, but all mammals can be rabid, you know.

So should we talk about what happens? You know, if you just Google porcupine and dog, you're going to get a lot of very sad pictures. Yeah. Of curious dogs who stuck their snout where they shouldn't and our barbed all over the nose and snout. Not good, no. And there's a lot of things that you want to do and don't want to do if that happens to your dog, because it's actually really bad if that happens. So if your dog if you ever see a porcupine on a hike with your dog, get your dog away from that porcupine, not just for the porcupine sake, like of a porcupine goes into a defensive posture.

It's scared to death. Yeah, it's not. It might seem all tough and angry. It scared. That's why it's doing that. But also, it could really mess your dog up. So for at least your dog, say get your dog away from the porcupine. And if you failed to do that quickly enough and your dog does take some quills in its face and its neck, wherever those things can, because especially in the new world porcupine, that their quills have barbs, they can migrate further and further inward.

They're not going to work themselves out. They're going to actually work themselves in. So you want to take your dog to a vet like your dog gets killed, you get in the car, you go to the vet. That's the order of how everything happens. You don't stop and get a double cheeseburger you don't like. Go home and read the paper first. Like you go straight to the vet because your dog's going to need to go under general anesthesia to to have those things removed.

That's how bad of a jam it is.

Yeah, I'm actually going to amend that with your permission, because what the first thing you should do and hopefully you're with someone else if you've got it. Really it would be great if you have two people in on this one, one to drive and one to keep your dog for messing with their face. Yeah, that's a big one, because they're going to if there's quills poking in a dog's face, they're going to pull at it. They're going to try and rub their nose on the ground.

And that is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, because those quills are just going to go further and further in.

So you really, really need to do your best to hold on to your dog, hold their head up and keep their paws away from their face. And like you said, go straight to that vet because you don't try and remove them yourself. You're not you're only going to make it worse. And that's like guaranteed.

There's also supposedly a myth that if you clip the Porcupine Quill, it deflates it and makes it easier to to to to come out. They don't they're not inflated with air now. So clipping it's not going to deflate anything that air subtle.

Yeah. And it actually can make the quills shatter because imagine like like a really hard claw or something like that being clipped with some scissors. It's going to shatter some and enough of a piece shedders far enough down. It can reach the skin level and then if it works its way in, all of a sudden you just made it that much harder to get out because you just added a new barb, which is that shattered jagged edge that used to be intact before you cut it like a knucklehead.

Yeah, I mean, I could see the instinct if you don't know what's going on to be to clip them, because if they're really long and sticking out of their face, it looks terrible. Or to try and just yank them out. But do not. Yeah, don't do either one of those things. Another big reason why is the risk of infection is really, really big. I mean, they have multiple, multiple stab wounds essentially. And they like he said, the only solution is general anesthesia.

I mean, it's it's not surgery, but it's not not surgery.

No. And they you know, some of these may not ever be able to come out and your pets is going to have a lifetime of being monitored to make sure they don't migrate toward a joint or an organ or they're the back of their eye, who knows? Or depending on where they got stabbed with a quill. So I think it was the the ASPCA that said the best way to to to deal with this is to prevent it from ever happening.

Just don't let your dog anywhere near a porcupine. It's just not worth the risk. Yeah. You're going to scare the porcupine, too. Yeah.

And if you live in Porcupine Country, don't ever let your dog out of the house.

No, it's not. If I just keep it wrapped in bubble, wrap it all time. Toilet train them. Yeah, or just change the bubble wrap around the bubble wrap.

Yeah, just get tons and tons of bubble wrap and then don't throw it away, don't recycle it, put in a huge pile at the end of each season in your front yard and melt it with a blowtorch.

Yeah, that's great. Maybe mix it with acetone first. Yes. I've got two more porcupine facts, if you will. Indulge me.

Let's hear it. You got anything else? I got nothing else in the 70s.

The 70s in the UK was a swing in time for Porcupine's, apparently because there was a population of Himalayan porcupines crested, I believe, in South Devon in the wild, because they'd escaped from the zoo sometime in the 70s and lived on the lam for a decade. And the same thing happened in Staffordshire with a kind of crested porcupine where they had a wild population because they escaped from the zoo, too.

Is that near Stoke on Trent? You know, now we'll have to ask Tom.

All right. That's near Stoke on Trent. Are you got anything else again?

I got nothing else. OK, well, that's it for Porcupine's.

Everybody go watch Teddybear videos. You're going to love them. And since I said Teddybear, it's time for listener mail.

Man, I can't wait to turn up the volume on this here.

It's going to knock your socks right off. I do.

Teddy bears probably an Instagram, I would imagine, but I do love that groundhog on Instagram. Oh, I shrunk.

I think. I know. I think I know who you're talking about. You know, Chuck the Groundhog. It's good stuff.

Yeah. All right. So here we go. This is from oh, this is from Don, the black cowboy. Did you see this one? Oh, yeah. This is great. It's fantastic.

We did a short stuff on black cowboys in history and how they have long been overlooked. So for some weird reason, you don't listen to short stuffs. You should. Yeah, we never kind of promote that, but it's just like stuff you should know.

But it's shorter. Yeah. What's your problem? Listen, hey guys, my name is Don and I'm a 25 year old black cowboy from Texas. I, along with my brother, am also a second generation amateur farrier as well. My father taught us after learning the trade growing up on our family farm, then later going into horseshoeing as a side career. When I saw your episode about blacksmithing, I was eager to hear if you mentioned Ferrier's in it and thought I might finally write.

And then when you came out with a black cowboy episode, all of my friends share the episode with me. So I knew I had to write as a kid. Our family did trail rides, rodeos and horse races. Nearly every weekend since leaving my hometown for college and beyond, I've often been the first introduction to Black Cowboys farmers. For most people, there's a large community of black cowboys and farmers still surviving, regardless of the systemic issues we face whenever it's safe.

Again, I'd like to invite anyone hearing this out to our annual Trail Ride Easter weekend to get a chance to experience the lifestyle in that cool dude. I so want to do this. So he sent a flyer to and it looks super interesting. It does. It looks awesome. Yeah. So they hold it over Easter weekend. You just basically go live the cowboy life for a weekend. I love it.

And it's like ten bucks or something like that too. Yeah. It's not like some city slicker scam.

No, Don doesn't stick it to you Don. Don't give it to you straight. That's right. Buck straight shooter. He says love.

The podcast really helped keep me company these last few years in the Peace Corps. So Don is my new, most interesting man in the world. I think he is one of the more well rounded sufficient listeners we've heard from in a while.

Yeah. And he says, yes, I did ride my horse to school. That's amazing. Yeah.

Well, thanks a lot, Don. Hats off to you. Ten gallon hat even literally. Thank you for the invite. We may see one of these Easter weekends on your trail ride. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to the stuff podcast it. I heard radio dotcom.

Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart radio, because the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When Law and Order is the headline, what does it mean for us? Ameritech Williams, an attorney and former public defender and host of a brand new podcast. But we're going to cross-examine newsmaking cases and famous faces to understand the context. And I'm Dustin Ross. I'm a TV writer, a cultural observer, and I am thrilled to be cohosting holding court with MBK Williams.

This is not a podcast about the law. This is a show for the people to help us navigate a system. Teachable moments from the so called Law and Order headlines.

Listen to hold in court with Eboni K. Williams starting October 21st on the I Heart radio app on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast on this season of unobscured, we will go back to the streets of Victorian Whitechapel to follow the trail of Jack the Ripper will join the police in their attempts to solve a series of brazen and brutal murders as they try to make sense of the violence taking place right in their midst. And we'll explore the alleys, yards and homes where a series of monstrous murders became the most infamous true crime story of modern history.

Unobscured Season three premieres on Wednesday, October 7th. Subscribe today on Apple podcasts, I heart radio or wherever you listen to podcasts.