"African Crested Porcupines" - which species are they?

Chlidonias said:
There was also a post on Zoochat long ago, which I cannot find right now, which (from memory) said that a study had shown that most or many of the supposed North African Porcupines in European zoos are actually South African (which I suppose would also imply there were lots of hybrids if so many are misidentified to species).
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It was this post from 2008 by @tetrapod - https://www.zoochat.com/community/threads/indian-crested-porcupines.13096/#post-48755
tetrapod said:
I know of (but don't have any details) a study made of captive crested porcupines in Europe to determine correct species, which found that while many zoos claimed to have cristata the vast majority actually had africaeaustralis. Apparently the two are very difficult to tell apart, mostly skull measurements. And this in spite of the thriving population of cristata in southern Europe. As a result I believe the UK emphasis was moved to the southern species.
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Someone may know more about it.
 
I found a photo in the galleries showing clearly the rump of a South African Porcupine (by vogelcommando), to illustrate the strip of short white spines. The white stripe can be fairly readily seen even on resting porcupines in real life (although not so often in photos because as a static image the animal needs to be positioned at the right angle to the camera for it to be visible). There are quite a few photos of resting porcupines showing the stripe visibly though, including in photos labeled as being H. cristata.

full

https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/african-crested-porcupine-backside.233305/


For comparison, a photo of a North African Porcupine (by devilfish at Alexandria Zoo in Egypt) where the black rump is very apparent (basically the only photo in the galleries which shows this effectively).

full

https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/crested-porcupine-october-2015.308619/
 
I know this specifically isn't is the purpose of this thread, but is there a simillar thing for Indian-Cresteds?
 
WalkingAgnatha said:
I know this specifically isn't is the purpose of this thread, but is there a simillar thing for Indian-Cresteds?
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I've tried looking into that and not got very far. The two African species have comparative descriptions because they overlap in distribution in East Africa, but the Indian Porcupine doesn't naturally overlap with either and hence there is little need for any works to explain visual differences. I did come across an old descriptive paper covering the three species but I can't find the full paper to see what it actually says (https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1965.tb05179.x).

Looking only at photos of wild animals, the most striking thing is that in Indian Porcupines the quills seem to consistently have very long white tips compared to the short white tips in the two African species, so the overall effect is that there is a very wide white fringe behind the animal but only a short white fringe behind in the African ones. They also seem to only have brown crests (or sometimes mottled, but never white as far as I have seen). These could of course be individual characteristics rather than decisive. There are photos of captive porcupines labelled as being African which have very long white quills, but then that brings me back around to how correctly are captive Hystrix being identified.
 
Chlidonias said:
I've tried looking into that and not got very far. The two African species have comparative descriptions because they overlap in distribution in East Africa, but the Indian Porcupine doesn't naturally overlap with either and hence there is little need for any works to explain visual differences. I did come across an old descriptive paper covering the three species but I can't find the full paper to see what it actually says (https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1965.tb05179.x).

Looking only at photos of wild animals, the most striking thing is that in Indian Porcupines the quills seem to consistently have very long white tips compared to the short white tips in the two African species, so the overall effect is that there is a very wide white fringe behind the animal but only a short white fringe behind in the African ones. They also seem to only have brown crests (or sometimes mottled, but never white as far as I have seen). These could of course be individual characteristics rather than decisive. There are photos of captive porcupines labelled as being African which have very long white quills, but then that brings me back around to how correctly are captive Hystrix being identified.
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Here's the paper.

The physical diagnostic features of Hystrix indica are given as "hairs of crest entirely or predominantly brown; rattle-quills short and wide; tail entirely white below; mid-line of rump white." (Emphasis not mine).
 

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Mo Hassan said:
Here's the paper.

The physical diagnostic features of Hystrix indica are given as "hairs of crest entirely or predominantly brown; rattle-quills short and wide; tail entirely white below; mid-line of rump white." (Emphasis not mine).
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Thanks for that. It's basically what I had thought.

H. africaeaustralis - white rump stripe, white crest, longer rattle quills.
H. cristata - no rump stripe, white crest, shorter rattle quills.
H. indica - white rump stripe, brown crest, shorter rattle quills.

There's a side-by-side comparison of the rattle quills for cristata and africaeaustralis in Kingdon's Mammals of Africa which makes it look easy to tell them apart, but I can't in photos. (Basically, they are longer in africaeaustralis, and shorter in the other two species).

I think the amount of white in the crest is pretty variable (some wild photos of cristata just have white tips rather than a full white crest), but it does make me wonder whether a bunch of "cristata" in zoos are actually indica though, given how many of them have fully brown crests. And that also makes me wonder how much unwitting hybridisation there has been...
 
Very interesting discussion here - thanks @Chlidonias for figuring out the identifying factors. It seems the animal I photographed that was signed as indica is indeed that species based on the criteria; I'll have to look at the various 'African Cresteds' photos I have and see if there's enough ID points to give some indication.
 
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