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How do porcupines mate?

Dorfl

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How do porcupines and other spiny animals manage to reproduce? Are they somehow immune to each others' spikes (appropriately placed armor, maybe?), or are they just amazingly acrobatic, or what?
 
Quick: how do porcupines mate? If you answer: "carefully," you’d only be half right - it’s also "bizarrely." Indeed, porcupines have a very bizarre mating habit:
First of all, female porcupines are interested in sex only about 8 to 12 hours in a year! Second, to court a female during the short mating season, a male porcupine stands up on his hind legs, waddles up to her, and then sprays her with a huge stream of urine from as far as 6 feet away, and drench his would-be paramour from head to foot!
If the female wasn’t impressed, she’ll scream and shake off the urine. But, if she is ready, then she’ll rear up to expose her quill-less underbelly and let the male mount her from the behind (that’s the only safe position for porcupines!). Once mating begins, the female is insatiable: she forces the male to mate many times until he is thoroughly exhausted. If he gets tired too quickly, she will leave him for another male!
Click to expand...
http://www.neatorama.com/2007/04/30/30-strangest-animal-mating-habits/

Porcupine sex is not the exercise in S&M you might imagine but it does have its kinky aspects. I quote from Roze: "Perhaps the strangest aspect of the interaction is male urine-hosing of the female. The male approaches on his hind legs and tail, grunting in a low tone. His penis springs erect. He then becomes a urine cannon, squirting high-pressure jets of urine at the female. Everything suggests the urine is fired by ejaculation, not released by normal bladder pressure.... In less than a minute, a female may be thoroughly wetted from nose to tail."
So much for foreplay. If the female decides now is the time, she hoists up her rump a bit and raises her tail, the underside of which is quill-less, and curves it up over her back, covering the quills thereon and exposing her genitalia. The male then approaches in a gingerly manner from the rear, walking on his hind legs and taking care to touch nothing with his forepaws but the safe part of the tail. The relevant apparatus having been lined up, docking occurs, followed by "violent orgasm" as the male unloads a year's worth of jism. The act lasts 2-5 minutes and may be repeated several times during the half-day window of opportunity.
Click to expand...
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/732/how-do-porcupines-mate
 
Used this in another thread but:

In the process of civilisation
From anthropoid ape down to man,
It is generally held that the Navy
Has buggered whatever it can.
But recent extensive researches,
By Darwin and Huxley and Ball,
Have conclusively shown that the hedgehog
Has hardly been buggered at all.

I therefore believe my conclusion
Is incontrovertibly shown:
That comparative safety on ship-board
Is enjoyed by the hedgehog alone.
Why haven't they done it at Spithead,
As they've done it at Harvard and Yale,
And also at Oxford and Cambridge,
By shaving the spines off its tail?
 
Dorfl said:
How do porcupines and other spiny animals manage to reproduce? Are they somehow immune to each others' spikes (appropriately placed armor, maybe?), or are they just amazingly acrobatic, or what?
Click to expand...
The females very carefully avoid small pricks.
 
The hedgehog's dilemma is based upon the apparent danger of a male hedgehog being injured from a spine while mating with a female hedgehog. However, this is not a problem for hedgehogs as the male's penis is very near the center of its abdomen (often mistaken for a belly button) and the female has the ability to curl her tail upward to the point that her vulva protrudes behind the rest of her body. As such, the male doesn't have to get completely on top of the female when mating.
Click to expand...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog#Reproduction_and_lifespan

And from David Attenborough:
http://www.babelgum.com/html/clip.php?clipId=3019259
 
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Professor Yaffle said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog#Reproduction_and_lifespan

And from David Attenborough:
http://www.babelgum.com/html/clip.php?clipId=3019259
Click to expand...

Thanks. Seems like carefulness on part of the males, and a very high degree of flexibility on parts of the females is the general explanation.

Hm, are there any more spiny mammals than Hedgehogs, Echidnas and Porcupines? Wiki has an article about Spiny Mice, but does not say anything about how they reproduce.
 
This pit bull took on a porcupine.... 1347 spines removed!
 

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I woulda quit after the first 200, unless I could see I making headway denuding the little thing. :)
Martens know how to flip the porky on its back and go in through the belly.
 
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