WASHINGTON — The quill-covered family at Smithsonian's National Zoo has grown by one! Prehensile-tailed porcu-parents Quillbur and Beatrix welcomed their second offspring earlier this month.
Born in a snowstorm, keepers at the National Zoo's small mammal house reported for duty on January 4 to discover Beatrix had given birth overnight! Now two weeks old, zoo staff say the prickly little one is doing well. The porcupette has bonded with its mom and is nursing well and gaining weight, keepers said.
"Our team is looking forward to learning if the newborn will take after Beatrix, who is relaxed and easy-going, or be more active and curious like Quillbur," the zoo said in a social media post Wednesday.
It's not clear yet whether the new bundle of spiny joy is a boy or a girl. Newborn porcupettes look anatomically similar until they are about 6 months old, staff said. Keepers sent quill samples to scientists at the Zoo’s Center for Conservation Genomics for DNA analysis. They should know the newborn's sex in a few weeks.
Quillbur and Beatrix gave birth to their first offspring back in 2019, soon after Quillbur came to the National Zoo. After a naming contest that year, the son was named Quilliam. Quilliam and this newborn porcupine are the fourth generation of this family to live in the small mammal house
Native to South America, prehensile-tailed porcupines are one of about 18 species of New World porcupines, the zoo says. They have short, rigid quills interspersed with soft hairs. At birth, porcupette quills are soft, but they harden within minutes. An arboreal species, prehensile-tailed porcupines are adept at climbing and spend their time in tree canopies eating leaves, flowers, shoots and other vegetation. The name prehensile means “capable of grasping”; the underside of its tail lacks quills, allowing the porcupine to grip branches with this appendage and navigate the forest canopy with ease.
Sign up for the Get Up DC newsletter: Your forecast. Your commute. Your news.
Sign up for the Capitol Breach email newsletter, delivering the latest breaking news and a roundup of the investigation into the Capitol Riots on January 6, 2021.