Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Unlike European badgers, which often live as an extended family in a warren of burrows called a
sett,
American badgers are solitary creatures except for a brief period of mating. In keeping with their
hermitic nature, badgers are extremely displeased by any invasion of their rather outsized personal
space, which they will defend aggressively.
If a human, a would-be predator, or even another badger approaches too closely, the response is usu-
ally a series of ferocious growls and hisses, backed up by an impressive show of teeth—and by all ac-
counts, the sound levels produced by a badger angry at being caged are truly fearsome!
This display is no mere bluff. Badgers are noted for their courage, ferocity, and exceptional strength,
as many larger creatures have learned to their sorrow. Badgers regularly whip dogs several times their
size and not infrequently kill them.
Complicating matters for anything that attacks a badger is its thick, tough, exceptionally loose hide.
If, for instance, a predator seizes a badger by the neck, the loose hide permits the badger to turn and sav-
age its tormentor. As a result, adult badgers have almost no serious natural enemies, although wolves
and cougars probably preyed on them at one time. Nowadays, automobiles represent the worst threat to
badgers, which seem to be no more afraid of them than of other enemies.
Badgers, on the other hand, prey widely on many species. Besides a variety of rodents—a staple of
their diet—badgers happily consume raccoons, armadillos, larvae of bees and wasps, snakes, lizards,
birds' eggs and young birds, frogs, crayfish, and sometimes carrion. In addition, they will dig out the
dens of foxes and coyotes and devour their pups. Thus does the image of the sedate, kindly badger
break down!
Except for a mother with young, badgers seldom spend two days in a row in the same den. Instead,
these mostly nocturnal mammals simply dig a new burrow wherever they find themselves at dawn. Al-
though badgers are generally active throughout the winter, they have no qualms about fashioning a cozy
burrow and staying there for several days to wait out a spell of especially bitter weather.
Badgers breed in late summer; as in most mustelids, implantation is delayed for several months, and
the young aren't born until the following spring. The cubs, usually two or three per litter, are born blind
and with very little fur.
By late spring, after being weaned and then introduced to meat brought by their mother, the cubs
travel with her for several weeks, learning to forage. By summer, however, they either leave their moth-
er voluntarily or are driven off to lead the mostly solitary lives that seem well suited to these markedly
short-tempered animals.
THE BLACK-FOOTED FERRET
