A man in New Zealand has been charged with the unlikely crime of using a hedgehog as a weapon.

The spiny creature was allegedly launched at a 15-year-old boy by William Singalargh, 27, inflicting several puncture wounds and a large gash to his leg. It is not known whether the hedgehog was alive when it was thrown.

But this prickly attack isn’t the first time an animal has been used as a weapon of human war, as this gallery of creature combatants shows...