A Mutation of Sorts - Hedgehog Survival

"Mutation - it is the key to evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single-cell organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, normally taking thousands and thousands of years... But every few hundred millenia, evolution leaps forward... ... And while our bodies may be gone, our lessons are eternal."

- Charles Xavier, from the novelization of X-Men III: The Last Stand

Mutation actually means an unexpected, and often extreme, changes in the genes of living beings that produced one or many individuals with different characteristics compared to the "normal" majority of the species. However, should the said change affects the majority of the population, it will take less than a couple of generations for the mutation to remain the norm. (Eg. teens using short forms when chatting online now starts to affect even formal writing)

Yet, this is not the kind of mutation I'm talking about, to explain it fully, let me start with some stuff about hedehogs. Well protected even under normal circumstances by spines on their backs, hedgehogs fully utilised their defence mechanism when threatened by curling up into a ball. This proves to be nearly flawless, as only the most cunning and patient predators can outwait and outsmart the spiny balls.

Nowadays, though, as urbanization begins to invade the woodlands that made up hedgehog habitats, particularly in UK, hedgehogs' best defense strategy had proved fatal to them.

Try to imagine this scenario: a hedgehog crossing a road was noticed by a passing car, but not in time to slow down or swerve out of the way before the hedgehog gets ran over. The driver still floors the brakes, while honking loudly. The animal senses the danger, naturally, and reacts as it would to a predator - curling up. Needless to say, the outcome was not pretty.

Now, though, animal lovers may rejoice. reports from a certain HogWatch shows that hedgehogs now develop a kind of "mutation" in the development of their defense stratagems, after centuries without tampering with. When hedgehogs felt threatened on hard tar roads, they no longer curl up. Instead, they run, even though they are not built to mive quickly. Only when their feet encounter soft earth do they resume curling up. Some still don't make it to the other side, but it's a start that they are adapting to survive.

This, is their "mutation" - not in a genetic way, but a fast adaptation nevertheless for the survival of their species, and one that will surely become more and more common, as human population take over increasingly more habitats of these animals.