The lesser hedgehog tenrec is a small mammal of dry areas in southern Madagascar. Its black-and-white spines stand out, and it searches for small animals at night.
It has black-and-white spines on its back and fine hair on its feet and belly.
The lesser hedgehog tenrec can lower its body temperature during rest. In a study of captive animals, tenrecs used short daily torpor in summer, while all 27 Echinops telfairi in the winter sample hibernated for several months. Many spent most of winter in nest boxes and ate little.
When temperatures fluctuated across the day, the animals used daytime warmth to rewarm passively, and the energy cost of rewarming was about half that under constant moderate temperatures. This shows why a constant laboratory setting can miss an important part of the cycle. The work studied captive physiology, however, not wild survival, habitat change or population trend.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
In captive tenrecs, torpor and hibernation varied with temperature conditions, and daily fluctuations enabled passive rewarming. This suggests that field studies could measure temperatures and daily ranges inside natural resting sites. The experiment does not measure wild survival, reproduction or responses to climate change, and it cannot establish a population trend or formal conservation category.