Badger Facts

1. The badger digs faster than any other animal in the world. They can also dig through many tough materials. One badger was observed digging through asphalt in a parking lot and it burrowed underground within 2 minutes!

2. There are 8 species of the badger, including the American badger, the Honey badger, the Eurasian badger and several others.

3. Male badgers are called boars. Female badgers are sows and baby badgers are called cubs.

4. Badgers dig a complex system of burrows in which they live. These burrow systems are called “setts.” Many of them have been around for hundreds of years.

5. Badgers will not excrete waste in their living area. They have special communal areas where they will urinate and defecate. These communal “toilets” are usually on the boundaries of their territory far away from their living area.

6. The badger is one of the few animals that can prey on a hedgehog. This is because they have thick skin and long claws, both of which are useful and necessary when killing a hedgehog.

7. Despite their smaller size, badgers do not typically back down from any fight. They will attempt to fight off other animals that are threatening them, including bears and wolves.

8. The claws on a badger are non-retractable.

9. The name for a group of badgers is a clan.

10. The places where badgers are most commonly found include North America, Great Britain, Ireland, China, Indonesia, Japan, and Scandinavia.

11. Some badgers choose to live with other badgers. A clan consists of between 2 and 15 badgers. However, some badgers prefer to live solitary lives by themselves.

12. Fully grown male badgers can weigh as much as 30 pounds more than their female counterparts.

13. Badgers are omnivorous creatures. Their diet consists mainly of earthworms, reptiles, insects, birds, mice, fruits, honey and snakes. In some cases, they will even up hundreds of earthworms in a single night.

14. A badger can run up to speeds of 20 miles per hour.

15. Although they do not hibernate like other animals do, badgers can stay underground in their burrows for up to 70 days at a time.

16. The badger’s sense of smell is 800 times better than a human’s.

17. As long as there is plenty of food around, badgers will stay within a 1 or 2 mile radius of their home for their entire lives.

18. Badgers can mate throughout the year. However, the female badger is able to delay implantation, which means that they can choose when their body wants the new baby to begin developing.

19. Since worms are mostly made of water, badgers can get all the water they need in their diet just from the worms they eat.

20. Two species of badger – the Palawan Stink badger and the Indonesian badger – emit a horrible smelling liquid from their anus to drive away potential attackers.

21. An adult badger can measure as much as 36 inches long and weight as much as 27 pounds. 22. Female badgers are sexually mature by the time they are 12 to 15 months old. Male badgers do not reach sexual maturity until they are about 2 years old.

23. Badgers have been observed getting intoxicated in the wild after they eat pieces of rotting fruit.

24. The Honey badger got its name because of its love for honey. In addition to honey, they even enjoy eating bee larvae.

25. A Honey badger’s main line of attack on large predators or prey is to castrate them. Then they wait for its adversary to get very weak or die.