European badger

Name and taxonomy

Carl Linnaeus described the badger in 1758 and called it Ursus meles, a bear. Today it sits in the genus Meles, within the family Mustelidae and the order Carnivora. The word badger probably comes from "badge", after the white mark on the forehead. An older English name, brock, comes from a Celtic word for grey. Other regional names were pate, grey and bawson, which means striped with white. A male is a boar, a female a sow and a young badger a cub.

Zoologists once split the Eurasian badgers into as many as 24 subspecies. Since 2005 the badgers of the Caucasus and the Middle East have been treated as a separate species, Meles canescens. The Asian badger, Meles leucurus, takes over east of the Volga River. A skull study in 2009 left the European badger with three subspecies, one of them limited to south-west Norway.

Evolution and relatives

The species probably descends from Meles thorali, a badger of the early Pleistocene in China. Fossils show the modern form in Europe from the early Middle Pleistocene. One review puts the first appearance of Meles meles at about 1.5 million years ago. Over that time the molars grew broader, which suits a diet of worms, fruit and grain. Badger bones sometimes turn up in older rock layers, because the animals dig down into them.

The badger's closest relatives are the Asian and Caucasian badgers, which were once counted as the same species. The Japanese badger is probably another close cousin. The honey badger and the American badger belong to the same family but to different branches. By average weight the European badger is the second largest land mustelid, behind only the wolverine.

Appearance

The badger has a wedge-shaped body, a small head, a thick neck and a short tail. The legs are short and massive, and each foot has five toes with long, blunt claws for digging. The back is grizzled silver-grey, with each hair pale at the root and dark at the tip. The throat, chest, belly and legs are black. Two black bands run from the muzzle up through the eyes to the ears, and a white band lies between them. The ears are short and tipped with white.

Head and body measure 60 to 90 centimetres, with a tail of 12 to 24 cm. An adult stands only 25 to 30 cm at the shoulder. Weight swings with the season, from 7 to 13 kilograms in spring to 15 to 17 kg in autumn. The heaviest verified badger weighed 27.2 kg. Boars have broader heads and thicker necks than sows, and they weigh more, but the sexes match in length. The skull is heavy, with a tall crest along the top that anchors the jaw muscles. Those jaws can crush most bones. Albino, red and pale yellow badgers turn up now and then.

Habitat and range

The badger lives in almost every country of Europe, from Ireland and Spain to Finland and European Russia. Its range stops at the Volga, where the Asian badger begins. It also lives in the Caucasus and parts of West and Central Asia, where it meets the Caucasian badger. GBIF holds records from 59 countries, with the most from Switzerland, France and Great Britain.

The best habitat is deciduous or mixed woodland next to open fields. Badgers also use hedgerows, scrub, pasture, farmland, steppe and even semi-desert. They dig setts in dry, well-drained soil under trees, bushes or rocks. Moist grassland with plenty of earthworms is a strong draw. In mountains they climb to about 2,000 metres.

Badgers have moved into suburbs and city parks, though less fully than the red fox. A clan territory can be as small as 30 hectares in rich country and as large as 150 hectares in poor country. Latrines and worn paths mark the edges of a territory.

Diet and feeding

The badger is one of the least meat-eating members of the order Carnivora. Earthworms come first, and much of its behaviour is built around finding them. On a damp night a badger can fill up on worms within about one hectare. It grips a worm with its front teeth, and if the worm snaps it hunts down the pieces. Large insects come next: chafers, dung beetles, ground beetles, caterpillars and leatherjackets. Badgers dig out wasp and bumblebee nests and eat the grubs, combs and adults, because their thick skin shrugs off stings.

Small mammals on the menu include rabbits, voles, mice, moles, shrews and hedgehogs. A badger sniffs out a nest of young rabbits and digs straight down to it. It eats a rabbit or a hedgehog by turning the animal inside out and leaving the skin. Where badgers are common, hedgehogs are scarce. Carrion, cereals such as wheat, oats and maize, and more than 30 kinds of fruit fill out the diet. In winter or drought a badger will eat clover, grass, tubers and fungi.

A badger rarely eats more than 0.5 kilograms of food a day. It eats where it finds the food and seldom carries anything back to the sett. Lamb and poultry killing is very rare, and the fox that shares a sett is usually the real culprit.

Behaviour and social life

The European badger is the most social of all the badgers. A clan averages about six adults, and groups of up to 23 have been counted. Clans form because young badgers stay at home rather than leave. Where food is thin, badgers live alone and the clan system fades. Group members groom each other, share latrines and sleep together, yet each one forages alone. Beyond the dominant boar and sow there is little rank, and members of different clans usually tolerate one another.

The sett is the centre of clan life. A large sett can have fifty entrances, and its tunnels can run for 35 to 81 metres. The sleeping chamber lies 5 to 10 metres from an entrance and more than a metre underground. Badgers drag in grass, bracken, leaves and moss for bedding, up to 30 bundles in a night. They throw old bedding out, air it in the sun and clean the sett before cubs are born. If a badger dies underground, the others seal the chamber or carry the body out and bury it.

Badgers are active from dusk through the night. In late summer they lay down fat, and in Russia and Scandinavia they sleep from November to March. In milder England they stay active or sleep only in cold spells. Fights break out in the spring mating season, when boars bite one another about the neck and the rump. A badger will share its sett with rabbits, foxes and raccoon dogs, and it may protect the rabbits from other predators.

Communication and senses

Scent binds the clan together. A gland under the tail produces a musky cream, and the anal glands a stronger yellow-brown fluid. Badgers mark latrines, paths and each other with these secretions. Marking a clan-mate probably gives the whole group one shared smell. Boars mark more than sows, most of all in early spring.

Badgers have a wide range of calls. They growl when threatened, kecker when they fight, bark when surprised and scream when frightened. Cubs whicker while they play. No alarm call that warns the rest of the clan has been recorded. The nose is acute, but the eyes see no colour and notice only movement. Hearing is about as good as a person's.

Reproduction and life cycle

Badgers can mate in any month, but most matings fall between February and May. A boar usually keeps one mate for life, while a sow may mate with more than one boar. Up to 54 percent of cubs in a clan can be fathered by boars from other clans. After fertilisation the embryos wait for two to nine months before they implant, usually in December. True gestation then lasts about seven weeks. A sow can even conceive again while she carries a delayed litter, so one litter may have two fathers.

Cubs are born between mid-January and mid-March in a bedded chamber underground. A litter holds one to five cubs, and each weighs 75 to 132 grams at birth. The eyes open after four to five weeks, and the cubs first come above ground at eight weeks. Weaning starts at twelve weeks, though some cubs suckle until four or five months. Usually only the dominant sow breeds, and she may kill the cubs of other sows. Other females help guard and groom her cubs.

Half or more of the cubs die in their first year. Both sexes can breed at about one year, though boars often wait until 12 to 15 months. Few wild badgers live past six years, and the oldest known wild badger reached 14. In captivity one lived to 19.

Predators and threats

An adult badger has few enemies. Wolves, lynx and brown bears can kill one, but they rarely bother, because a cornered badger fights hard. Large dogs sometimes kill badgers, and badgers sometimes maim the dogs. Golden eagles snatch cubs, even from beneath their mother, and may attack a thin adult in spring. Eagle owls and red foxes also take cubs.

People kill far more badgers than any predator. Roads take a heavy toll, and setts are dug out by baiters who set dogs on the animals. Bovine tuberculosis kills badgers and moves between badgers and cattle. In England the government has culled badgers to protect cattle since 2013. Intensive farming removes the hedges and rough grass that badgers need. Warmer springs may wake badgers early, before there is enough food.

Population and conservation

The IUCN lists the European badger as Least Concern. It is common and widespread, and its numbers are stable or rising. Great Britain held about 300,000 badgers in 2012, after a rise of 77 percent through the 1980s and 1990s. European Russia recorded 30,000 in 1990. In central Europe numbers grew once rabies was brought under control.

Britain protects the badger and its sett under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. Baiting has been illegal there since 1835. The English cull began in 2013, and about 5,000 badgers died in its first six weeks. A study of the cull from 2013 to 2017 found that cattle TB fell by 36 to 55 percent in culled areas. Opponents argue for vaccination instead, and the cull remains a public quarrel. In parts of Europe with intensive agriculture the badger has declined, and in some it is hunted as a pest.

Relationship with humans

People have hunted, baited, eaten and admired the badger for centuries. Badger-baiting, in which dogs were set on a boxed badger, was a popular blood sport until Britain banned it. Hunters used terriers and dachshunds to dig badgers out of their setts. Smoked badger ham was once prized in England, Wales and Ireland, and badger meat is still eaten in parts of the former Soviet Union. Badger hair goes into shaving brushes, and the pelt into the Scottish sporran.

Farmers dislike badgers for digging up crops, undermining fences and spreading bovine TB to cattle. Gardeners in Britain find their lawns torn up for worms and grubs. Tame badgers can be affectionate and learn their names, but they chase cats and dogs. Badger watching at a known sett is probably the most common way people meet the animal in Britain. An old medical book of 1810 sold badger grease and blood as cures for coughs and sprains.

In culture and myth

In Irish mythology badgers were shape-shifters and the kin of Tadg, the king of Tara. Tadg scolded his foster son Cormac mac Airt for killing and cooking badgers, because they were relatives. In British folk rhymes from the early 1800s, a badger's call followed by an owl's hoot foretold a death. The same rhymes said a badger that crossed the path behind you brought luck. German fable gives the badger the name Grimbart and makes him the cautious, home-loving cousin of Reynard the fox. In Highland Scotland badger teeth became buttons, and a badger's penis bone made a fertility charm.

Mr Badger in The Wind in the Willows is a gruff hermit who dislikes company yet leads the fight for Toad Hall. In T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Merlin turns the young Arthur into a badger to learn about home. Beatrix Potter's Tommy Brock is a villain who kidnaps rabbit children. The badger is the emblem of Hufflepuff house in the Harry Potter books. Petar Kocic's 1904 play Badger before the Court puts a badger on trial for eating crops, as a satire on Austro-Hungarian rule. Japan has the mujina, a badger that changes shape, which a legal text of the 8th century treats as a demon.