Badgers the least carnivorous of the mustelids

 

A quick note on Badgers, this trail camera footage I feel shows perfectly how badgers are adapted to hunting. Badgers belong to a family Mustelidae, characterised by a widely diverse group of meso-predators. Typical members of this family are elongate and well adapted to taking large prey items for their size, badgers however differ significantly from most of their relatives in that they are built for digging and foraging as oppose to active hunting. Badgers are capable or catching and killing large prey like rabbits, but usually this involves digging out rabbit kits and the odd adult addled by myxomatosis. They will also regularly kill and eat hedgehogs (a subject for another post). As an opportunist larger birds may also be eaten and even the occasionally a leveret or rarely even a fox cub. Badger morphology tells you all you need to know about how they hunt. 

The head of a badger contains small ears set well back, the species has limited vocalisations and does not necessarily rely on hearing for hunting or detecting predators they are small much like those of bears. The eyes likewise are small and of little use in a largely subterranean world, as a species which does not rely heavily on sight for hunting these are also small, although fairly well adapted for night vision. Other than the stripes the most prominent part of a badgers face is its combatively large nose. The scent of a badger is excellent, combined with its powerful large claws it has the perfect combination for digging worms and similar soil dwelling invertebrates, tubers, wasps nests, small mammals and fallen fruit.

Badgers in Britain are more or less our largest terrestrial predator with some overlap from otters, but in the past in in other parts of Europe they themselves may be prayed upon by larger predatory species like Wolves and Eurasian Lynx. As a relatively slow and docile animal Badgers have had to adapt a defence, which is their immensely powerful jaws, advertised by the bold stripy warning colours on the face.