Ouch! This leopard didn’t know what it was taking on when it attacked a porcupine
Prickly quills might be one of the best defence mechanisms that animals have.
It takes a tough critter to prey on a porcupine.
A leopard at South Africa’s Kruger Park thought it was one – until it realised that hunting Africa’s biggest rodent was no walk in the park.
Twenty-eight-year-old Donovan Piketh and his friend were on a safari when he came across a leopard eyeing two African porcupines. After the first attempt failed, the ambitious cat pounced on the other one of the two already defensive, spiky porcupines.
Call it bad timing or bad luck, but the leopard was instantly at the receiving end of sharp quills that look as painful as metal spikes might be.
“The leopard needed to spend a good few minutes to get the quills out of him,” says Piketh. “Eventually, it gave up trying to get the last of the porcupine’s quills out and walked off into the bush.”
To catch a porcupine, an animal must claw its way beneath the sharp spines, or securing the prey’s head – skills that only the most experienced predators possess.
The video isn’t the first to show porcupines defending themselves from big cats. Below is the footage, filmed in December 2016, of two porcupines fleeing from a leopard by the side of the road in the same park, only to spin around and charge.
The quills serve as a powerful defence mechanism. The spine hair detaches itself deftly from the porcupine and the microscopic barbs penetrate the skin of the attacker easily. What’s more, they are extremely hard to get out.
In late 2014, wildlife guide Lucien Beaumont came across a porcupine defending itself from 13 lionesses and 4 lions in South Africa’s Londolozi Game Reserve. The rodent put up a fierce defence, as the video below shows.