"When a hedgehog encounters a new smell in the environment, it often reacts by licking or chewing on the source of the smell, frothing up a lather in the mouth, then making the most amazing contortions to spread the lather on the forequills, back, and so on. No one is completely sure why hedgehogs do this."I gave Spike a bit of cooked sweet potato as a treat the other day, and managed to take some pictures of him eating and self-anointing. It took me a while to figure out what he was doing, as this is the first time I've witnessed the behavior. Here he's contorting a bit to spread it on his side, having already managed to get sweet potato lather on the top of his head.
All done eating and self-anointing, he drank from the water bottle. For some reason he only spread it on his right side; perhaps he's more flexible that direction. :-) You can see some of the foamy mess on the side of his face as well.
He still has bits of sweet potato stuck to his quills now, almost a week later.
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