QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: Badgers
Content Updated:
10th February 2010
QUESTIONS:
Why do badgers have striped faces?
Do foxes and badgers bury their dead?
 Q: Why do badgers have striped faces?
A: “In a nutshell, a badger’s markings warn other
carnivores (historically mainly wolves) that, unlike other medium-sized,
fluffy animals living at the woodland edge, this one bites back” wrote
Oxford University’s Chris Newman in the January 2005 issue of BBC
Wildlife Magazine. This situation, where possession of a conspicuous
pattern (contrasting, highly coloured or both) serves to ward off
potential predators is referred to as aposematism. Consequently, if one
considers the mask of Meles meles to act in deterring predators from
trying their luck, then it can be called an aposematic character.
With regard to colouration of mammals in general, Gloger’s Rule --
named after the German zoologist and ornithologist Constantin Gloger who
proposed it in 1833 -- states that darker pigmentation should be found
at the equator (where it’s warmer and/or more humid), getting
progressively lighter as you move either north or south (where it’s
cooler and/or drier). Additionally, Gloger’s Rule says that animals
living in riparian (river) habitats possess darker pigmentation than
those living in more open environments, which display lighter colours to
provide camouflage and aid thermoregulation. Although most mammals seem
to follow this rule, the presence of aposematic markings seems to rather
fly-in-the-face of Gloger’s check-list – the patterns don’t appear to
show any relation to distance from the equator, nor do they seem to
change according to habitat type. The idea that the black-and-white
patterning of some mammals may act as a warning sign was first proposed
by Bristol-born zoologist Reginal Pocock in a paper to the Annals and
Magazine of Natural History in 1911. In his article, Pocock suggests
that animals possessing these characteristics typically also have strong
bites or some sprayable chemical defence.
In a recent paper to the journal Oikos, Dr Newman, Christina
Buesching (also from Oxford University) and Jerry Wolff (University of
Memphis) discuss the function of facial masks in the “midguild”
carnivores (i.e. those in the 10 to 20kg / 22 to 44lbs range). Newman
and his colleagues looked at a number of possible hypotheses for the
possession of facial markings (masks), including whether they are a cue
to elicit grooming, directional cues to orient bites away from sensitive
areas, or attractants to the opposite sex. The zoologists conclude that
the most probable explanation for masks was aposematism, suggesting
that:
“…in some species, the aggressive counter defence of midguild
carnivores is sufficient in itself to select for aposematic colored face
masks as warning coloration”
So, because badgers don’t spray noisome substances at -- or have
alternative methods of escaping from -- anything trying to snack on
them, the striking mask pattern serves to warn a potential predator that
they won’t go down without a fight! The presence of the mask in newborn
cubs -- which have more predators (especially foxes) than adults -- adds
further weight to this theory. Moreover, badgers typically feed on
subterranean prey (i.e. earthworms over the vast majority of their
range), which implies that there is little (if any) danger of their mask
making them more noticeable to their quarry. To this effect, Newman
and his colleagues argue that facial masks do not compromise the
animals’ camouflage once the face is turned away; the mask can,
therefore, be revealed as necessary. Indeed, the late, great badger guru
Ernest Neal once described how a sow flattened herself to the ground by
the entrance of her sett and partly covered her face with her fore paws
upon hearing a dog barking nearby; Dr. Neal wrote that: “The camouflage was
perfect”.
 Another hypothesis suggests that badgers might be able to use the
mask pattern to tell each other apart; this is the 'Recognition
Hypothesis'. In his book, Badgers, former Mammal Society president
the late Michael Clark described how he was able to identify eight adults (5 sows, 3 boars)
from his local sett in Hertfordshire (UK) based on facial differences;
at least four (2 boars, 2 sows) were readily identifiable on the basis
of their mask. Considering that badgers apparently have rather poor
eyesight -- based largely on observations of badgers in the field -- the
monochromatic mask pattern is probably very conspicuous (even under
conditions of low light) and it seems reasonable that if a badger
watcher is capable of using the mask to identify individuals, so are
other badgers. Indeed, in their book -- also entitled Badgers -- Central
Science Laboratory biologist Chris Cheeseman and Ernest Neal described
how experiments with mirrors and stuffed badgers have shown that other
badgers recognise the mask pattern at once. Similarly, Neal and
Cheeseman reported the results of an experiment by David Humphries, from
which he discovered that when he “held a badger’s mask in front of his
face, the badgers appeared to accept him as one of them as he crawled
about on the ground nearby, but down wind.”
Not everyone agrees with the recognition hypothesis, however, at
least not as a ‘driver’ for mask evolution (and aposematism in general),
which -- according to Newman and his co-workers -- is a polyphyletic
characteristic; they report that it has evolved independently in four
Carnivore families and several times within each family. In their paper,
they argue that the majority of masked midguild carnivores are asocial
(i.e. solitary) and communicate primarily with scent – indeed, badgers
are typically solitary (except where resources permit social cohesion)
and their reliance on scent to mark their territory and conspecifics is
well documented. Additionally, a study on badgers in Plymouth’s Radford
Woods Oil Fuel Depot by marine biologist David Dixon, found that only
one member of the clan could be readily identifiable by facial
characteristics (at least using CCTV footage) and this was a missing
ear, rather than a specific mask pattern. Instead, Dr. Dixon found that
he could positively identify 95% of the badgers on the basis of their
tail morphology, which remained largely unchanged during his two-year
study.
Ultimately, I think it reasonable that the
striking mask sported by Meles meles is, in the first instance,
aposemetic: it lets predators know that this fantastic fur-ball is not
to be messed with. It is not, however, unreasonable to consider that
masks also have an intraspecific recognition function that works --
presumably in conjunction -- with olfactory cues (i.e. badgers recognise
each other by face mask as well as by smell). Indeed, it should be
remembered that badgers are almost certainly not visually motivated
animals, instead it is scent that plays the pivotal role in helping them
identify other badgers and the world in which they live. (Back to
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 Q: Do Foxes and Badgers Bury their Dead?
Short Answer: Foxes are known to fight with each
other and, in some cases the result can be fatal; there are also reports
of foxes feeding on the dead bodies of other foxes. If we consider that
these animals are also well known to cache surplus food, the most likely
explanation for fox burials would seem to be the caching of a potential
food resource for later consumption. Badgers, by contrast are not known
to cache food, although they will also occasionally feed on
carrion. There are a handful of reports from the literature telling of badgers
dragging the carcasses of other badgers around, but these are rare and
may reflect badgers moving the carcass to a more secluded spot in order
to feed on it. Rarer still are accounts documenting multiple badgers
co-operating in the burial of a conspecific (member of the same species)
– so-called badger ‘funerals’. In most cases, it seems that badgers show
little interest in conspecific carcasses and seem disinclined to bury
dead clan members (even cubs). Reports of badger funerals include
aberrant and agitated behaviour and, given the number of badgers
watchers throughout Europe that have never documented such behaviour, it
seems such behaviour is extremely rare.
The Details: The tendency to bury one’s dead is
often invoked as a uniquely human trait; one of those features that
separate us from other animals. The idea that animals may bury their
dead, however, is not a recent one – Pliny considered that ants were the
only animals, other than humans, that buried their dead with funeral
rites. Indeed, we now know that some ant species will bury any dead ants
they come across, whether they’re from their own colony or not, and that
worker ants appear genetically programmed to remove dead and diseased
animals from the nest. More recently, evidence has emerged that
chimpanzees care for sick and dying troop members and, in the wild, have
been observed to cover the bodies of dead troop members with leaves and
branches. Similarly, in 2004, an elephant in Kenya was observed to cover
the body of a mother and child it trampled to death with leaves before
leaving the scene. Elephants are known to bury their dead, and remain
with the bodies for some time afterwards, exhibiting behaviour very much
akin to the human mourning.
The fox and the corpse
 Foxes are often known for digging up corpses,
be they of family pets buried in the back garden or, very occasionally,
the bodies of humans (especially children) buried in paupers’ graves. There
are, however, some interesting reports of foxes apparently
dragging or burying the carcasses other foxes, and this has raised the
question of whether they bury dead family members. Unfortunately, this
is not a question that we can yet answer. All we do know is that foxes
will kill and eat other foxes, especially when conditions are harsh, and
one study of fox corpses by Bristol University found that some 5% had
died as a result of combat with other foxes (the number being highest
during winter, the breeding season). That said, fights to the death are
rarely seen and in the few reports I have come across, the carcass was
either left where it fell or its fate was unknown. In some cases, they
are presumably dragged away.
I have received a report of a fox dragging the lifeless body of a
conspecific across a field in the middle of the afternoon;
unfortunately, the fate of this carcasses is unknown. One fox dragging
another may not always be as macabre as it may first appear and in a
1980 paper about the impact of social factors on the reproduction of
foxes, Oxford University biologist David Macdonald described an instance
of apparent play, in which one fox proceeded to drag the body of another
(live) individual along the ground, as if to make it stand up.
I have come across some examples of foxes burying the bodies of cubs
or moving bodies of dead foxes; one in particular appeared in the
January 2006 issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine. A reader wrote in to
describe how they were watching fox cubs playing in their garden when
the vixen appeared carrying a dead cub in her mouth; the vixen put the
cub down, dug a hole and buried it. Unfortunately, we don’t know the
relationship of the cub to the vixen, but infanticide is relatively well
known in foxes and it may not have been one of her own cubs. In an
account e-mailed to me by a reader, a dead fox that they buried in their
garden was subsequently dug up and removed (the reader suspects by a
fox).
Owing to the rarity of observations of foxes killing, especially
burying, each other it is difficult to provide an explanation. Foxes
are, however, well known to cache surplus food and, given their habit of
feeding on carrion (including other foxes), it seems probable that the
reports of fox burials probably represent the animal caching a potential
food source. Foxes will also often retrieve and re-locate caches, which
may explain the second reader’s account. As the cubs grow and are
weaned, adults will start burying food around the earth for the cubs to
retrieve, this could conceivably include the dead body of a cub from a
neighbouring group.
 A badger’s funeral
In 1994, University of Sussex biologist Tim Roper
published a short paper in the Journal of Zoology in which he provided details of a request
for information he made to the Mammal Society. Prof. Roper received four
accounts of badgers moving badger carcasses around: one involved a
badger seen dragging a recently killed conspecific away from the edge of
a road; the second described a sow taking the body of one of her cubs
(recently killed by a dog) into the sett; the third told of a badger
dragging the body of another across a field; and the fourth described
how the observer found the body of a dead badger jammed in the entrance
of an active sett. There are also some anecdotal reports from the
literature that tell of skeletons having been found in walled up
chambers of a sett, implying that if a badger dies underground, it may
be moved to a disused part of the sett and ‘entombed’. Unfortunately,
Roper didn’t receive any reports of badgers actually burying
conspecifics. There are, however, reports in the literature of unusual behaviour of badgers in the presence of conspecific carcasses.
There are two accounts of note, although I have only been able to
obtain a copy of one. This particularly interesting and detailed account
was given by countryman Brian Vezey-Fitzgerald in his 1942 book, A
Country Chronicle. Mr Vezey-Fitzgerald described events one June evening
at his local badger sett, where a sow emerged just before 11pm and did
something that I have never seen documented anywhere else:
“…suddenly, she raised her head to the heavens and uttered a cry –
the first real sound I have ever heard from a badger. It was a weird
cry, half whimper, half howl, shrill for so square a beast…”
The author described how, in the still of the night, the call was so
eerie that the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. The sow moved
rapidly to a nearby disused rabbit warren, where she proceeded to dig
for just over an hour before she returned to the sett. The sow
reappeared shortly afterwards, sniffing the air and moving in an
agitated manner to the warren where she resumed digging – she made
frequent trips back to the sett, every ten-or-so minutes. Mr Vezey-Fitzgerald
then described how at “2.5” (I’m unsure whether this is 02:30, or
whether a digit was omitted) an unknown male badger appeared at the sett
and approached the female – what happened next was fascinating:
“First the female, with a jerky, upward toss of the head and a swift
downward movement until the nose touched the ground, uttered a thin,
musical, whistling sound, rather as though the wind had been sharply
expelled through the nostrils. The sound lasted – perhaps it was more of
a squeak than a sound – just as long as it took the head to complete the
motion described…”
Mr Vezey-Fitzgerald continued:
“At the same time she moved forward with two tiny jerky steps, the
hairs of her back ruffling very quickly. The moment she stopped and was
standing still with nose almost touching the ground, the male, stationed
exactly opposite her, went through the same performance. I was unable to
distinguish any difference between the sounds emitted by male and
female, while the movements performed were exactly the same in both
cases. As each animal came to the end of the act the other commenced
afresh, until, finally, their noses appeared to be touching.”
 The badgers then retreated to the sett, with the sow leading the boar
nose-to-tail and after some time (it was apparently 03:15 at this point)
the two emerged, the boar dragging (assisted by the sow) the body of a
larger, old badger – the badgers were apparently so engrossed at this
point that two loud sneezes from the author failed to elicit any
response. The boar and sow dragged the corpse to the rabbit warren where
they proceeded to bury the body. With the burial complete there was no
further performance and the male vanished in the direction from which he
had arrived. Mr Vezey-Fitzgerald examined the warren and noted that
earth had been shovelled into the entrance and packed down by the bodies
pressed against it; a day-or-so later, he dug out the earth and found
the body of an old, white-muzzled, boar cramped awkwardly in the hole.
The events that Vezey-Fitzgerald meticulously documented raise
more questions than they answer -- such as how the young boar had been
summoned to help? Whether he was alerted by the sow’s cry? How the
female knew to expect him? -- but I am inclined to agree with him that
he was one of the privileged few to have watched a badger’s funeral. The
second paper, by E. Hampton, is very difficult to track down (it appears
to have been published in the Field Sports journal during 1947, although
there is some confusion about this), but according to the summary Ernest
Neal and Chris Cheeseman provide in their 1996 book Badgers, Hampton witnessed a similar event to that Vezey-Fitzgerald wrote of:
“The common factors in both these accounts [Vezey-Fitzgerald and
Hampton] were that a hole was dug, the body was dragged into it by more
than one badger and earth was heaped on top.”
More recently, a website reader from North Wiltshire contacted me to
describe how, in 2007, his granddaughter found a dead badger cub (photo
above) laid carefully on a bed of dried grass in a hollow tree stump
about 30m (100ft) from the very secluded sett she had been watching. The
following day the body had gone, so it could not be studied, but the
girl's initial thoughts had been that the cub had been laid to rest in
the tree stump. The circumstances surrounding this (a very young cub on
dry bedding) might suggest that the cub was born in the tree stump,
where it subsequently died, rather than having been moved there. It is,
however, impossible to say for certain.
 To bury or not to bury…
Why might animals opt to bury their dead? In
humans, burial has deep psychological and, in those who are religious,
spiritual implications. Some psychologists maintain that the removal of
a body from sight aids the emotional healing process. Perhaps the most
obvious reason for burial is to remove a body that would otherwise
decompose on the ground, releasing unpleasant smells in the process. Indeed, Vezey-Fitzgerald described the old boar’s carcass, which
after less than 48 hours underground was crawling with ants, as having
an unpleasant smell. Two substances in particular, cadaverine and
putrescine, are produced by microbes as an animal body decays and
account for much of the odour. There are occasionally public health
concerns raised over the decomposition of bodies but, unless the corpse
has a transmissible disease, serious threat to public health is unlikely
because the microorganiams involved in the putrefaction process aren’t
pathogenic.
Foxes, in terms of their living arrangements at least, are seldom
considered ‘clean’ animals and there are often scats and food remains at
the earth. Caching, however, is a method of ensure not only that the
food decays more slowly, but also that it is out of sight of potential
competitors. Leaving carcasses lying around makes it more likely that
they will attract other predators/competitors, so it is safer to bury
them for subsequent retrieval. Foxes are also known to retrieve and
re-bury caches periodically, which may account for instances where
people have buried dead foxes in their garden only to have them dug up
and removed the following night.
Badgers, will also eat carrion (including the meat of conspecifics),
although they are not known to cache food. They do regularly perform
sett maintenance, involving extending tunnels as well as replacing old,
or airing existing, bedding. As with foxes, the odour of a decomposing
clan member may draw in other predators, or attract biting insects that
may cause them additional problems, which might inspire removal. That
said, badgers often show no interest in removing the carcasses of
conspecifics (even cubs) from the periphery of the sett and, despite the
many hundreds of badger watchers around the country logging many
thousands of hours at their local setts, descriptions of badger funerals
are still exceptionally rare. Consequently, the behaviour described by
Mr Vezey-Fitzgerald would appear aberrant, occurring only in exceptional
circumstances. Neal and Cheeseman sum the situation up well in their
book:
“All that can be said at present about badger
funerals is that if they do occur, they are very rare events. But
badgers are remarkable creatures and it is well to keep an open mind
about the possibility.” (Back to Menu)
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