While populations are currently stable across much of its range, it is declining severely in Great Britain[2] where it is now Red Listed,[4] meaning that it is considered to be at risk of local extinction.

[8] Males tend to be slightly larger than females, but sex differences in body weight are overshadowed by enormous seasonal variation.

Where it co-exists with the northern white-breasted hedgehog (Erinaceus roumanicus), the two species are difficult to distinguish in the field, the latter having a white spot on its chest.

Such specimens are believed to have a pair of rare recessive genes, giving rise to their black eyes and creamy-coloured spines; however, they are not strictly speaking albino.

They are extremely rare, except on North Ronaldsay and the Channel Island of Alderney where around 25% of the population is thought to be blonde.

Its diet consists largely of earthworms, as well as snails and slugs, beetles, ants, bees and wasps, earwigs, cockroaches, crickets and grasshoppers, butterflies and moths, and caterpillars and other insect larvae.

[22] The European hedgehog is native to Europe (including European Russia), with a global distribution extending from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula eastwards through much of western to central Europe, and from southern Fennoscandia and the northern Baltic to north-west Russia.

[24] Colonists took hedgehogs from England and Scotland to New Zealand on sailing ships from the 1860s to the 1890s mainly as a biological control against agricultural pests or as a pet.

Animals found their first homes in the South Island, where their spread was helped by guards dropping them off at country railway stations.

Hedgehogs were declared noxious animals and a bounty of one shilling a snout paid by regional authorities for several years.

By the 1950s, hedgehogs could be found over the whole country with the exception of the coldest wettest corner of the South Island and alpine areas of permanent snow.

With its milder winters, New Zealand hedgehogs hibernate for only three months of the year so do not need to put on so much weight in autumn as their ancestors.

The range includes woodland, grasslands such as meadows and pasture, arable land, orchards and vineyards as well as within the matrix of habitat types found in human settlements.

[28] They are generally scarce in areas of coniferous woodland, marshes and moorland, probably because of a lack of suitable sites and materials for the construction of winter nests (or hibernacula), which have specific requirements.

[6] Generally, the hedgehog is widely distributed and can be found in good numbers where people are tolerant of their residence in gardens.

[2] On 28 August 2007, the new Biodiversity Action Plan included the European hedgehog on the list of species and habitats in Britain that need conservation and greater protection.

[3] Given this figure, and more firmly established rates of decline,[36] it is now thought likely that there are fewer than a million hedgehogs in Great Britain.

In 2007 the hedgehog was classified a Biodiversity Action Plan "priority" species in Britain, largely in response to negative trends identified in national surveys such as Mammals on Roads survey,[40] run by People's Trust for Endangered Species (PTES), that found an annual decline in counts of road casualties of around 7% from 2001 to 2004.

[43] Evidence from a questionnaire in 2005 and 2006 also supported an ongoing decline, with almost half of ~20,000 participants in PTES' Hogwatch survey[44] reporting the impression that there were fewer hedgehogs than there were five years earlier.

[46] The report also highlighted the importance of long-term monitoring to provide datasets with sufficient power to allow the changes to the population to be identified.

Attempts to eliminate hedgehogs from bird colonies on the Scottish islands of North Uist and Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides were met with international outrage.