"Little hog"

You know what? Basil's a lucky boy.

I don't just mean in that his injury could be a lot worse, and in us finding him on two separate occasions when he was in trouble.
















I mean in the trouser department.

Of course I've had the occasional look down there to check everything's okay, and I've noticed what I thought was the penis. Have a look at the picture - these are African Pygmy hedgehogs but they are pretty much the same as their European counterparts.

Last night when Basil was looking particularly ill and floppy I was shocked to see something huge and pink and cylindrical under his belly - my first throught was that it was a prolapsed intestine until I realised how stupid that thought was.

But it turned out that what you can see on the picture was not the actual penis - the 3-inch long, 1/2-inch wide pink object that I saw was the penis.

To give you an idea of scale, Basil's body nose-to-tail is probably 7 or 8 inches. And a quick google tells me that 10% of an adult male hedgehog's weight is in his penis. That's pretty impressive if you ask me.

I'll leave you with this picture, which I found amusing. As I'm obviously in a penis mood.