Baby Porcupine

The common porcupine is a herbivore. It eats leaves, twigs and green plants and in the winter it may eat bark. It often climbs trees to find food. It is mostly nocturnal, but will sometimes forage for food in the day. Porcupines have become a pest in Kenya and are eaten as a delicacy. The name porcupine comes from Middle French porc espin (spined pig). A regional American name for the animal is quill pig.
A porcupine is any of 27 species of rodent belonging to the families Erethizontidae or Hystricidae. Porcupines vary in size considerably: Rothschild's Porcupine of South America weighs less than a kilogram (2.2 lb (1.00 kg)); the African Porcupine can grow to well over 10 kg (22 lb). The two families of porcupines are quite different, and, although both belong to the Hystricognathi branch of the vast order Rodentia, they are not closely related. The eleven Old World porcupines are almost exclusively terrestrial, tend to be fairly large, and have quills that are grouped in clusters. They are believed to have separated from the other hystricognaths about 30 million years ago, much earlier than the New World porcupines.