Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Chubby Israeli Hedgehogs Get Slim-Down Plan At Zoo

RAMAT GAN, Israel, (Reuters) – Ten overweight hedgehogs have had to go on strict diets and exercise regimes after they ate so much on the streets of Israel they struggled to curl up into a ball to fend off predators.

Animal lovers found them waddling around and brought them into the hospital Ramat Gan zoo.

Staff there said the hedgehogs had probably been snacking on food left out for pets.

“A lot of people put cat food on the streets for the stray cats, which is very nice but … the problem is that there’s other wildlife that eats it,” zookeeper Becka Rifkin told Reuters.

One adult male named Sherman was 1.6 kg (3.5 lb) when he arrived at the facility two months ago, almost double the average weight for a hedgehog his age.

He has since lost 120 grams after staff monitored his diet and left him to run around an enclosure. They hope they will be able to release him by the summer.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.