Things I Learned: Hedgehogs, Erinaceiane

I just published a NLJ article in which I made a reference to the murderous camera in Sonic Adventure for Sega Dreamcast. I described the camera as homicidal in my draft. But that did not seem right. While Sonic Adventure features Dr. Robotnik as a villan and human beings in its peculiar overworld, the camera issues are most jarring in levels featuring Sonic. Sonic is a hedgehog. In order to ensure that my article about Google’s Project Genie was as focused and on-point as possible, I engaged in brief hedgehog research for a passage about a video game that first came to the United States in September 1999. I learned that hedgehogs, along with gymnures, are a subfamily of erinacinae. Thus, I came up with erinacide.