This story is part of The Better India’s new wildlife series, Species in Focus: 52 species. 52 stories. 52 reasons to protect India’s wildlife. One species at a time, the series explores India’s rare, endangered and lesser-known wildlife, their habitats, behaviour, ecological roles and conservation status.

In a Tamil comic, the hero is a small, spiny mammal that most people would struggle to identify.

Mullikkaattu Ithigaasam — ‘Legend of the Scrub Forest’ — was created to introduce children to the Madras hedgehog, or Mulleli, and the scrubland it calls home.

Ecologist Brawin Kumar worked with artist Venkatesh Babu on the Tamil-language comic. Through the story, they introduce children to the animal, explain its place in the ecosystem, and address some of the beliefs surrounding its spines and medicinal use.

It is an unusual conservation tool for an unusual animal.

The Madras hedgehog (Paraechinus nudiventris) is endemic to peninsular India, yet remains one of the country’s least-studied mammals.

There are no reliable estimates of how many survive today.

While the comic is helping children discover an animal they may never have seen, documents and scientific studies reviewed by The Better India show why this little-known mammal is now attracting attention.

A hedgehog of the scrub

The Madras hedgehog is not the Indian hedgehog found across parts of northwestern India.

Its historical range extends across peninsular India, with records from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

A 2024 study by Brawin Kumar and William T Bean, published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa, examined past and present records of the species. It found that its current climatic niche is concentrated in lower-elevation, semi-arid parts of southern and central Tamil Nadu.

The researchers described the species as occurring in isolated patches and highlighted habitat loss and direct killing as threats.

The first clues came from roads

Some of the clearest evidence of road mortality does not come from a recent accident database.

In a 2018 paper published in Mammalia, Brawin Kumar,........

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