Your votes have been counted and verified, and we can now reveal that the winner of our poll to choose a national species for Britain is… the hedgehog.
The prickly insectivore with a prodigious appetite for caterpillars, beetles, slugs and snails (not to mention noisy sex) was a firm favourite. Pipping the badger into second place, with the oak tree third, it picked up 42 per cent of the 9,108 votes cast.
Ann Widdecombe, one of the species’ highest-profile champions and patron of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, says: "I’m over the moon that the hedgehog came top in the BBC Wildlife poll. It is a quintessentially British creature."
But she adds: "We all need to rally to help the species, which is declining at an alarming rate."
More: Britain's national species revealed - Discover Wildlife
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