How does the porcupine get its food?
Porcupines eat green plants like alfafa, clover and other green leafy plants when they can. The porcupine is a wanderer and will eat what is handy where he is. But since they usually live in a forest or in the edge of such, they will eat all kinds of small plants such like small woody plants such as the new growth on the tip of willow limbs. If they cannot find small plants during the winter when the snow is deep, they will eat the bark on young trees, including pine trees, or the tender bark on the main trunk located high in an older pine tree. The bark in the lower half of the tree is much thicker and harder to eat so they climb up to where the bark is thinner and easier to eat. They normally do not eat any living creature but if there is a worm in the plant they are eating they will not refuse it.
Porcupines eat seeds, fruit, leaves, grasses, dandelions, twigs and aquatic plants in the summer. A porcupine can climb trees that are 60 to 70 feet high to reach the young leaves. During the winter they eat twigs, leaves, bark, and pine needles. Porcupines like maple, birch, beech, oak, cherry, willow, pine and fir. They crave salt and will eat the handles of tools that has been seasoned with human sweat.
