When I first saw the National Geographic photo of a porcupine standing up, quills fully flexed, in front of a lion, I thought that the porcupine had successfully fought off the lion.  I was sad later to find out that was not the case and the porcupine was dinner.

Then I came across this story recently of a porcupine being yet another meal for a python.  They try to state that the porcupine was not the cause of the python’s demise, but later in the story, they say that the python tried to regurgitate and the quills caused its demise.

They said that porcupines are on the menu of pythons so it could not have been the cause.

Hmmm…

Porcupine does not go down without a fight…so it shoots quills into the python.

Python realizes it tangled with the wrrrroooonnng porcupine and tries to regurgitate the little fighter.

Big Mistake. You lose.

I just admire the porcupine so much.  They are a small, gentle creature, but man, they don’t back down.  They fight to the end.

With that said, I found this while looking for the lion photo (hat tip to Huffington Post):

Badass.