The porcupine is a prickly mammal belonging to the rodent family. It eats leaves, herbs, twigs and green plants and in the winter, the North American variety will eat bark.
The porcupine doesn’t ‘throw’ its quills like once thought but they tend to brush off. Anyone who owns a dog that’s had an encounter with a porcupine knows that the quills are difficult to remove and depending on how deeply they’ve been embedded into your pet, veterinary intervention maybe required to remove them.