Patagonia 150 plus

Wildlife

Badger

Size: 70 cm - 100 cm long
Weight: Approximately 7 kg in summer and approximately 14 kg in winter
Colour: Two black stripes on its white head; body: a mixture of black and silver or grey
Food: Worms mainly, but it also eats berries, nuts, roots, beetles, eggs, small mammals, amphibians and birds.
Lives: In tunnels underground, usually in a forest. A family of badgers can live in a network of tunnels approximately 100 m long that may have approximately 40 exits.

The badger is a very shy creature that spends more than half its life underground. It comes out when it gets dark and hunts for food at night. In the autumn, it eats large amounts of food in order to put on weight in preparation for the winter. It will then use up its body fat during the winter months when less food is available.

It is difficult to tell the difference between the male and female. The male’s head is usually broader and the male is larger than the female. Badgers have short legs but very strong paws so that they can dig underground.

The badger is a very clean animal. It changes its bed, made of dry grass and leaves, regularly because of the insects in the tunnels and when it comes out at night it scratches and cleans itself. It digs a shallow hole in the ground to make a toilet for itself. It always does this on the boundaries of its own territory – never in another part of the forest. This keeps the area nice and clean but it also shows other badgers where the family’s boundaries are.

Between 2 and 6 cubs are usually born in February, but approximately half of these will die within a year. Thousands of badgers are killed on the roads each year.

Did you know…?

People in Scotland used to use badgers’ teeth to make buttons.

People used their fur to make paint brushes.

People in Britain ate badgers during the Second World War because food was scarce.

People used to believe that putting the fur of a badger in a bag made of cat skin and hanging it around your neck would keep you safe from witches.

Patagonia 150 plus

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