One night while trying to sleep on our floating houseboat in the remote Peruvian Amazon, we were surprised to hear a noise. When we got up to investigate, we discovered a porcupine was visiting us. I’m not sure if he swam to our houseboat or if the local kids were playing a prank, but it was an interesting experience.
As it was pitch dark, we needed our flashlights just to see him and a camera flash to take photos. Poor little guy seemed scared and was all bristled up so as to intimidate us to leave him alone, which we did. In the morning he was gone.
This was a bicolored-spined porcupine, a species native to northwestern South America (Peru, Columbia, Bolivia, Ecuador). The body is thickly covered with spines, pale yellow at the base but with black tips (the yellow color is highlighted by the flash and the darkness around it). Their body is about a half meter long and their prehensile tail is almost another half meter in length.
Porcupines are rodents and are mostly nocturnal. They eat leaves, bark and fruit.
