Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Hystricidae > Atherurus > Atherurus africanus

Atherurus africanus (Brush-tailed porcupine)

Wikipedia Abstract

The African brush-tailed porcupine (Atherurus africanus) is a species of rat-like Old World porcupine, indigenous to a broad belt of Africa ranging from Guinea on the west coast to Kenya on the east.
View Wikipedia Record: Atherurus africanus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
9
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
34
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 17.98
EDGE Score: 2.94
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  6.063 lbs (2.75 kg)
Birth Weight [1]  150 grams
Diet [2]  Frugivore, Herbivore
Diet - Fruit [2]  20 %
Diet - Plants [2]  80 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Gestation [1]  3 months 16 days
Litter Size [1]  2
Litters / Year [1]  3
Maximum Longevity [1]  23 years
Nocturnal [2]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [3]  20 inches (50 cm)

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Eastern Afromontane Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Zimbabwe No
Guinean Forests of West Africa Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Togo No

Prey / Diet

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Haemonchus contortus (red stomach worm)[5]
Paralibyostrongylus hebrenicutus <Unverified Name>[5]
Paralibyostrongylus vondwei <Unverified Name>[5]
Trichuris muris[5]
Wellcomia sauvisy <Unverified Name>[5]

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 4Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 5Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0