Husin Sudin A

1 Introduction Old World porcupines (Family: Hystricidae) are ubiquitous rodents within diverse habitats across Africa and Eurasia (Wilson et al. 2016). Porcupines are among the ‘megafauna’ of the rodent community, with some species weighing nearly 30 kg (Wilson et al. 2016).

1 INTRODUCTION What we know about the ecology of extant megafauna comes largely from observations made in seasonal parts of Africa and India, where elephants and other large mammals still persist (Owen-Smith, 1988; Sukumar, 2003). We know relatively little about the roles played by megafaunal herbivores in closed-canopy evergreen forests (Hyvarinen et al., 2021). Large body mass allows giant herbivores to consume low-quality forage, giving them access to a wide range of plant species.