A video of a battle between a leopard and a porcupine has surfaced on social media. The 58-second clip has been shared by Parveen Kaswan of the Indian Forest Service.
The video shows the leopard and porcupine engaged in a deadly battle on the highway amid the grasslands.
As the leopard attempted to scratch the porcupine it moved ahead and so did the big cat. The leopard, enraged, bit the porcupine.
The leopard hurt its mouth with the sharp spines of the porcupine, also known as quills, and struggled in pain. It then walked past the porcupine into the grasslands and did not even dare to look at it again.
Continuing with #leopard vs #porcupine. This one old video of another encounter between them. Here leopard got a good lesson from porcupine With their sharp quills. pic.twitter.com/5jbqITpeka
— Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) November 20, 2019
Porcupines are large, slow-moving rodents with sharp quills on their backs. Some quills can get up to a foot (30 centimeters) long. They use quills as a defense. They make shake them, which makes them rattle, as a warning to potential predators.
Once a quill is lost, it isn’t lost forever. They grow back over time. A North American porcupine can have 30,000 or more quills.