European badger

• 1. Introduction

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  The European badger has a jaw strong enough to amputate a human hand. That documented fact, buried in the scientific literature, hints at something most people miss about this creature: it is far more than the gentle, bumbling animal of storybooks. Meles meles is a powerfully built omnivore that has carved out territory across most of Europe and parts of Asia, from the British Isles to the Volga River, from sea level to mountain altitudes of 2000 m. It has survived the Roman Empire, the medieval blood sport of badger-baiting, twentieth-century gassing campaigns, and the ongoing controversy over bovine tuberculosis culls in Britain. What makes it so durable? What does it actually eat, and how does it organize its underground world? And why does an animal rated least concern by the IUCN still sit at the center of one of the most heated wildlife debates in Europe?

• 2. Built for the Underground

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  A badger's body is essentially a digging machine wrapped in thick skin. Adults measure 60-90 cm in body length, with non-retractable claws elongated to an obtuse point and limbs that are short and massive. Their snouts are muscular and flexible, used for probing soil as much as for smelling. The small intestine averages 5.36 m in length, reflecting a gut built for processing a varied diet rather than raw meat. Their skulls are notably heavy, with sagittal crests that can reach 15 mm in older males. Those crests do double duty: they anchor powerful jaw muscles and shield the skull from physical impact. It takes considerable force to harm a badger through blunt trauma, a fact that made the species particularly prized in blood sports. The animal's monochromatic vision is almost an afterthought compared to its acute sense of smell. Only moving objects catch the attention of its small, dark eyes, and its hearing is no better than a human's. Underground, those limitations don't matter.

  The setts these animals excavate are generational structures, passed from one badger family to the next for decades. Passage systems run 35-81 m in total length, with nesting chambers located 5-10 m from the entrance and more than a metre below ground, in some cases as deep as 2.3 m. A single sett may have anywhere from a few exits to fifty. The nesting chamber averages 74 x 76 cm and stands 38 cm high. Badgers line these chambers with grass, bracken, straw, leaves and moss, and carry up to 30 bundles of fresh bedding to the sett in a single night. If a badger dies inside, its companions seal off that chamber and excavate a new one. Some individuals drag their dead out and bury them outside. It is, by any measure, a remarkably organized domestic life.

• 3. A Name Older Than English

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  The word "badger" likely derives from "badge" with the suffix -ard, a reference to the white mark on the animal's forehead that resembles a badge. That etymology may date back to the early 16th century, though the Oxford English Dictionary describes it as probable rather than certain. A rival theory traces it to the French becheur, meaning digger. The far older name, brock, is a Celtic loanword related to the Gaelic broc and Welsh broch, both from Proto-Celtic brokko, meaning grey. The Proto-Germanic term, thahsu-, is thought to derive from a root meaning to construct, suggesting early Germanic speakers named the animal after its building of tunnels. That root eventually produced the Latin taxus, which in turn gave rise to the Italian tasso, the Spanish tejon and the Portuguese texugo. Carl Linnaeus chose meles as the genus name in 1758 when he formally described the animal in Systema Naturae, using Ursus meles as the full scientific designation.

  In English, the animal went by several names until the mid-18th century: brock, pate, grey and bawson. Bawson derived from bawsened, meaning striped with white. Pate was once popular in northern England. Badget was used only in Norfolk. Earth dog appeared in southern Ireland. In Welsh the animal is still called mochyn daear, which means earth pig. The variety of names reflects not just regional dialect but how closely different communities observed the same animal and reached independent conclusions about its most defining quality.

• 4. What the Badger Actually Eats

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  Earthworms are the foundation of the European badger's diet, and the animal is among the least carnivorous members of the order Carnivora despite its taxonomic classification. After earthworms come large insects: chafers, dung beetles, ground beetles, caterpillars and the nests of wasps and bumblebees, including the species Vespula rufa. Badgers can breach a wasp nest and consume the occupants, combs and envelope because their thick skin and dense pelt protect them from stings. Cereal crops eaten include wheat, oats and maize. Windfall fruit rounds out the plant portion of their diet: apples, pears, plums, blackberries, bilberries, raspberries, cherries, strawberries, acorns and wild arum corms, among others. An adult weighing 15 kg typically consumes food equal to about 3.4% of its body weight, and they generally do not eat more than 0.5 kg per day.

  Rabbits represent a key animal prey item year-round, especially when young rabbits are available. Badgers locate rabbit kits by smell and dig straight down to reach them. They eat both rabbits and hedgehogs by turning the carcass inside out and consuming the meat, leaving the inverted skin uneaten. In areas where badgers are common, hedgehog populations are noticeably scarce. Surplus killing has been observed in chicken coops, and some badgers have been known to breach beehives. Occasionally the species takes amphibians, fish, small reptiles including tortoises and lizards, snails, slugs and fungi. The breadth of this diet is one reason the animal has proved so adaptable across such a wide geographic range.

• 5. Social Life Below Ground

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  European badgers are the most sociable of all badger species. Groups average six adults, though groups of up to 23 individuals have been recorded. Territories under optimal conditions can be as small as 30 ha but expand to 150 ha in marginal habitat. Communal latrines and well-worn paths mark territorial boundaries. Males bear most of the burden of territorial defence, with boar activity peaking during the main mating season in early spring. Large, dominant boars sometimes push into neighbouring territories at that time, and the fights that result can cause fatal injuries; combatants bite each other on the neck and rump while running and chasing.

  Reproduction involves an unusual delay: fertilized eggs do not implant in the uterine wall until December, regardless of when mating occurred, with gestation then lasting seven weeks. Cubs are born mid-January to mid-March, pink and with fused eyelids, averaging 12 cm in body length and weighing 75-132 g. Their eyes open at four to five weeks, and they emerge from the sett at eight weeks. Weaning begins at twelve weeks, though some cubs continue to suckle until four to five months of age. Up to 54% of cubs in a group may be fathered by males from outside the resident colony. Dominant sows suppress reproduction in subordinate females and may kill subordinate cubs. Badgers can live for up to about fifteen years in the wild.

• 6. Bovine Tuberculosis and the Cull Debate

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  Bovine tuberculosis caused by Mycobacterium bovis was first observed in badgers in Switzerland in 1951, where the animals were believed to have contracted it from chamois or roe deer. It appeared in the United Kingdom in 1971, linked to an outbreak in cattle. Evidence since then has identified badgers as the primary reservoir of infection for cattle in the southwest of England, Wales and Ireland. The disease was first controlled in Britain by gassing badger populations, a practice used through the 1960s and 1970s across Europe to address both rabies and bovine TB. Culling in Britain resumed in 1998 as part of a randomized trial considered by John Krebs and others to show that culling was ineffective at controlling the disease. The debate continued into subsequent decades. In August 2013, a full culling programme began in West Somerset and Gloucestershire, during which around 5,000 badgers were killed over six weeks using high-velocity rifles and a combination of controlled and free shooting. Protests followed, with critics citing scientific, economic and ethical objections. A scientific study covering 2013 to 2017 found a reduction of 36-55% in bovine tuberculosis incidence in cattle in the culled areas. Lord Krebs, who had led the original randomized trial, stated at the time that the two pilot zones would not yield useful information. The debate over what the numbers actually mean continues.

• 7. Blood Sport and Legal Protection

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  Badger-baiting exploited the animal's ferocity directly. Badgers were captured alive, placed in boxes, and attacked with dogs in organized contests. In the United Kingdom, the Cruelty to Animals Act 1835 outlawed the practice, followed by the Protection of Animals Act 1911. The Protection of Badgers Act 1992 made the cruelty and killing of badgers criminal offences, with convictions carrying a prison sentence of up to six months and a fine of up to 5,000 pounds. Further offences under the same act cover interfering with a sett or taking a badger for any purpose other than nursing an injured animal. The species was hunted historically using jaw traps, guns placed near setts, smoke, and specially bred dogs including Fox Terriers and Dachshunds. Badgers' thick, loose skin and heavily ossified skulls made them notoriously difficult to kill, which only prolonged their suffering in baiting contests. Their population in Great Britain was estimated at 300,000 in 2012, having increased by 77% during the 1980s and 1990s, partly as a result of a reduction in rabies across Central Europe.

• 8. The Badger in Culture and Heraldry

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  In Irish mythology, badgers appear as shape-shifters and kinsmen to Tadg, king of Tara and foster father of Cormac mac Airt. German folklore casts the badger as a cautious, peace-loving homebody who loves his family and comfort above all, though he turns aggressive when surprised. He is described as a cousin of Reynard the Fox, whom he attempts, without success, to steer back toward virtue. Kenneth Grahame's Mr. Badger in The Wind in the Willows is gruff and solitary, someone who "simply hates society", yet he is a loyal friend to Mole and Ratty and a firm, patient presence in Toad's life. Beatrix Potter gave the world a villainous badger named Tommy Brock in her 1912 book The Tale of Mr. Tod, who kidnaps the children of Benjamin Bunny and hides them in an oven. T. H. White's Arthurian series The Once and Future King turns the young King Arthur into a badger by Merlin's magic, where an elderly badger offers him this lesson: "I can only teach you two things -- to dig, and love your home."

  The satirical theatre in Zagreb, founded in 1964 by Fadil Hadzic, was named Jazavac after the badger's reputation for cunning and after Petar Kocic's 1904 play of the same name, in which an unnamed badger is sued by a farmer for eating his crops. The play is a sharp political critique of Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A second theatre, in Banja Luka, was founded in 2006 in honour of Kocic and his badger. In heraldry, the European badger appears on the coat of arms of the municipality of Luhanka in Central Finland, marking the historical importance of the local fur trade. The badger's hair has been used for centuries to make sporrans worn as part of Scottish highland dress, and for shaving brushes, while the pelt was formerly used for pistol furniture.