Happy World Porcupine Day!

Happy World Porcupine Day! July 2nd is a day to appreciate and celebrate our quill-covered friends! International Days explains that there is great diversity among the roughly two dozen species of porcupines that are scattered all around the world — some spend most of their time in trees munching on bark and stems, while others are primarily ground-dwellers, living in deserts, grasslands, and forests and chowing down on fruit, leaves, and springtime buds.

While we definitely celebrate porcupines year-round here at Boing Boing, I wanted to make a special post for World Porcupine Day because, honestly, porcupine content is some of the best content, and I'll use any excuse to share more.

One special porcupine we can't get enough of around here is Rico, who lives at Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. Rico is a Brazilian porcupine who loves to climb trees and is quite an expert at it, too, since he has large curved claws, bare soles on his feet, and a prehensile tail — all of which are perfectly adapted to help him grip branches. Rico recently celebrated his ninth birthday with a special cake made up of some of his favorite foods: lettuce leaves, almonds, popcorn, and peanut butter. Look how the polite fellow gently picks up the popcorn and places it into his mouth! You can also see him sign contentedly, which is just about the pinnacle of cuteness.

We've shared videos in the past of Rico eating, and, because he's top level adorable when he crunches his food, I'm going to share some more. Here he is eating banana chips; a Thanksgiving feast of corn, squash, apples, beets, and popcorn; corn on the cob (one of his favorites snacks!); a bucket of popcorn; raw sweet potato (check out the close-up view of his teeth!); peanut butter (look how he hold his own spoon!); and celery with peanut butter.

As cute as he is eating food, today I want to draw your attention to another first-rate aspect of Rico—his gorgeous snout! I had no idea a porcupine's nose was so gloriously plump and malleable! In this video, you can see him using his wonderful snoot to get some excellent sniffs of his surroundings. And in this next video you can see his snout up close as he's getting delicious scratches from a kind human. They even gently massage his nose, and you can see how utterly soft and squishy it is! Rico seems to thoroughly enjoy his back and face massage, as he looks so relaxed and happy — I hope you enjoy the video as much as Rico seems to be enjoying his massage!

See more of Rico and all of the other adorable animals that live at Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden on their YouTube channel.