The Gaoligong forest hedgehog (''Mesechinus wangi'') or Wang's forest hedgehog is a species of

hedgehog A hedgehog is a spiny mammal of the subfamily Erinaceinae, in the eulipotyphlan family Erinaceidae. There are seventeen species of hedgehog in five genera found throughout parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in New Zealand by introducti ...

in the family

Erinaceidae Erinaceidae is a family in the order Eulipotyphla, consisting of the hedgehogs and moonrats. Until recently, it was assigned to the order Erinaceomorpha, which has been subsumed with the paraphyletic Soricomorpha into Eulipotyphla. Eulipotyphla ...

found only in China. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to the slopes of Mt. Gaoligong in the

Yunnan Province Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the C ...

, where it lives in subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest at elevations between 2200 m and 2680 m. This distribution is disjunct from that of the other species in this genus. ''M. wang'' can be distinguished from other species in the genus by its spine color patterns, the broad nasal region, and the presence of M₄ teeth. It hibernates between mid-October and early April. While the population size has not yet been quantified, it is likely very small as the species has only been found in the

Gaoligongshan National Nature Reserve The Gaoligongshan National Nature Reserve (GNNR) is a protected area comprising the Gaoligong Mountains and the nearby Nu Jiang Reserve in the western Yunnan Province of China, near the international border with Burma. It covers a vast stretch of ...

References

Hedgehogs Endemic fauna of Yunnan Mammals of China Mammals described in 2018 {{erinaceidae-stub