Description

African porcupine skull, real bone.  This is a beautiful skull, great color, great teeth, wonderful nasal cavity with turbinates.

The Cape porcupine (Hystrix africaeaustralis) or South African porcupine, is a species of Old Word Old World porcupine native to central and southern Africa, and is one of the world’s largest porcupine species. From the head to the base of the tail, porcupines measure between 63 and 81cm (25 and 32in) long, and their tail increases this length by 11-20cm (4.3-7.9in).  This large size makes the Cape porcupines the largest rodents in Africa and also the world's largest porcupines.

Porcupines sometimes gnaw on bones because they need the minerals the bones can provide, and it helps to sharpen their incisors so they can feed on bark, which sometimes results in what is known as "girdling".  Girdling, also called ring-barking is the complete removal of a strip of bark from around the entire circumference of either a branch or trunk of a woody plant. Both herbivores and birds can effectively girdle trees in the process of normal feeding.

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