IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 17: Passage 1

For centuries the hedgehog has been one of the best-loved wild animals in Europe, and it has lived alongside people for so long that it has entered folk tales and even the language itself. In medieval English the animal was often called an 'urchin', and when naturalists later needed a name for the spiny creatures found on the sea bed, they borrowed it, which is why we still speak of sea urchins. Over the past few decades, however, people who once found hedgehogs in their gardens every summer have noticed that they are seeing them less and less often, and scientific surveys suggest that they are right.

The hedgehog's most famous feature is its coat of between five and seven thousand spines, each a stiff, largely hollow hair made of keratin, the same protein that forms human fingernails. When it senses danger, a hedgehog does not usually run away. Instead, it rolls itself into a tight ball, using a band of muscle around its body to draw the spiny skin over its head and legs. Hedgehogs are active mainly at night, when they search hedgerows and lawns for beetles, earthworms and other invertebrates, and an adult may cover between one and two kilometres in a single night.

As autumn approaches, hedgehogs eat as much as they can to build up reserves of fat, and from around November until March or April they hibernate in nests of dry leaves, often beneath a hedge or a pile of logs. During hibernation the body temperature falls from around 35°C to only a few degrees above that of the surroundings, and the heartbeat slows dramatically. Young hedgehogs born late in the summer face a particular difficulty: if they have not grown heavy enough by the time the cold weather arrives, they are unlikely to survive until spring.

Hedgehogs are secretive and nocturnal, so counting them is difficult. The picture that emerges in Britain, where the most detailed information has been collected, is worrying. Reports published by two wildlife charities suggest that in the countryside numbers may have fallen by between 30 and 75 per cent since 2000. In towns and cities, by contrast, the decline appears to have been much less severe, and in some urban areas numbers may even be recovering. Falling numbers have also been reported in several other European countries, and in 2024 the species was moved from 'Least Concern' to 'Near Threatened' on the global Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Most scientists believe that the main causes of the decline lie in changes to the countryside. In the decades after the Second World War, many farmers removed hedgerows in order to create larger fields suited to modern machinery, and with them went many of the places where hedgehogs fed, nested and hibernated. At the same time, the growing use of pesticides reduced the numbers of beetles, caterpillars and other small creatures on which the animals depend. A field ploughed right up to its edges, with no strip of rough grass, offers a hedgehog neither food nor shelter.

A more controversial factor is the badger. Badgers compete with hedgehogs for earthworms, and they also eat them, being one of the few predators strong enough to open a rolled-up hedgehog. Badger numbers in Britain have increased since the animal was given legal protection, and hedgehogs tend to avoid areas where badgers are common; when badgers were removed from certain areas during a study of a cattle disease, hedgehog numbers there rose. Nevertheless, most ecologists point out that the two species have lived side by side for thousands of years, and argue that the real problem is not the badger itself but the loss of the hedges and rough ground in which hedgehogs could once find refuge.

Roads are another serious danger. Many hedgehogs are killed by traffic every year, and busy roads also divide the landscape into isolated fragments, separating small populations from one another. Gardens can provide excellent habitat, but they have their own hazards. Hedgehogs may become tangled in sports nets, drown in steep-sided ponds or be badly injured by strimmers when long grass is being cut. Perhaps the greatest problem, however, is the solid fence. Because a hedgehog needs to visit a large number of gardens each night to find enough food, a garden enclosed by walls or close-board fencing is of little use to it.

Fortunately, the hedgehog's popularity makes it easy to involve the public in its protection. A British campaign called Hedgehog Street, launched in 2011, has persuaded many thousands of householders to cut a hole about 13 centimetres square at the bottom of their garden fences, creating 'hedgehog highways' between neighbouring gardens. People are also encouraged to leave out water and meat-based pet food rather than bread and milk, which can make hedgehogs ill. In the countryside, some farmers are now paid to plant new hedges and leave wide grassy margins around their fields. Whether such measures will be enough remains to be seen, but they show that the future of this small animal depends largely on human choices.