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Badger

Type: mammal
Diet: carnivore
The average lifespan in the wild: 4 to 5 years
Size: 750mm in length (from head to tail), with a 150mm tail, once fully grown. A badger can have a height of up to about 300mm high at the shoulder.
Weight: average weight of 8 to 9 kg.
Did you know? Badgers can run or gallop at up to 25–30 kilometres per hour (16–19 mph) for short periods of time.

The European Badger (Meles meles), or Eurasian badger, is a mammal indigenous to most of Europe (excluding northern Scandinavia, Iceland, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Cyprus) and to many parts of Asia. Badgers belong to one of the largest carnivore families. It is a member of the Mustelidae family, and so is related to the stoats, otters, weasels, minks and other badgers.

Badger video.

How do badgers live?
The behavior of badgers differs by family, but all shelter underground, living in burrows called setts which may be very extensive. Some are solitary, moving from home to home, while others are known to form clans. Clan size is variable from 2 to 15. Badgers can be fierce animals and will protect themselves and their young at all costs. Badgers are capable of fighting off much larger animals such as wolves, coyotes and bears.

How does a badger find food?
Smell is the most important sense to the badger. It can smell 700-800 times more than humans can. When feeding the badger keeps its nose close to the ground so that it can smell its food. The badgers sight and hearing is not particularly good so it has to rely on its smell.

What do badgers eat?
Badgers need about 200 worms to see them through the days sleep. It is very hard to creep up on worms, as they usually anchor themselves in their in their tunnels, and quickly retreat by contracting their muscles at the slightest vibration or sound. Badgers, therefore, walk across grass with their highly sensitive noses and mouths a centimetre or two above the ground. Because worms bodies are segmented into separate sections, with each section mostly made up of water, a badger can get all of their moisture without having to drink at all. An acre of good pasture can support over 100,000 worms and they may live for up to a decade, taking two years for them to mature. Providing conditions are right, a badger can eat 20,000 worms in a year.
Even when earthworms are available, badgers will take many other foods. Among others; bank and field voles, mice, rats, moles, shrews, hedgehogs, beetles, wasp grubs, (Small) Birds, bird's Eggs, fruits, fungi.

What do badgers look like?
The colour of the badger’s coat is quite consistent; usually the well known white and black. There are a few colours such as ginger brown and ginger red. If there is a patch of discolouration in the coat this may be because of scars from fighting where the coat has grown back slightly darker or lighter. The hairs on the badger’s coat have been used over the centuries to make shaving brushes because they have the perfect amount of spring and strength. Fortunately, this brushes are now mostly made from synthetic hairs, but a few expensive brushes are still imported, largely from China.