Mounted European badger from the United Kingdom. Whanganui Regional Museum collection ref: 1896.7
Mounted European badger from the United Kingdom. Whanganui Regional Museum collection ref: 1896.7
The Whanganui Regional Museum’s hugely successful exhibition Teeth, Talons & Taxidermy (TTT) has finished.
Planned as a year-long show, it was extended twice due to popular demand and ran for two and a half years.
A variety of fascinating animals were found in TTT, but one, in particular, piqued my interest.
It’s a European badger, Meles meles, “meles” being the Latin word for badger.
Badgers are short-legged omnivores in the weasel family Mustelidae. There are 11 species of badger. A male badger is called a boar and the female is called a sow. Young badgers are cubs. Badgers have short strong limbs, with powerful digging claws.
The European badger is one of the largest badgers and has a distinctive black and white-striped face, grey fur and a short furry tail. They are omnivores, which means they eat a wide range of food.
Earthworms form a major part of their diet as do slugs and other invertebrates, plus fruits such as apples, plums and elderberries. They will also eat small mammals like voles and rabbits and are a major predator of hedgehogs in the UK. European badgers dig enormous tunnel complexes with multiple entrances, called setts, and venture out at night to forage.
They are social animals and live in extended families.
The American badger is usually smaller and lighter, with a brown, black and white coat. They eat a wide range of livestock such as mice, squirrels, groundhogs, birds, lizards, frogs, insects and plants like corn, peas, mushrooms and seeds. They sleep in other animals’ burrows, often enlarging them for their own use.
Badgers have been used and abused through human history.
A particularly nasty blood sport called badger baiting, where packs of dogs were set upon badgers, usually resulted in dead badgers and badly injured dogs.
Their hair has also been used for brushes - paint, make-up, hair and shaving. While baiting is now outlawed, badgers still face threats to their safety with the erosion or development of their habitats and, thus, reduced space and food supplies.
The badger on display in TTT is a fully mounted specimen. It was donated to the museum in 1896 by Thomas Thatcher, the grandfather of Margaret Thatcher’s husband Denis, while visiting the UK.
Thatcher St in Castlecliff is named after this donor.
The writer's copy of Bill Badger's Finest Hour by BB, 1961. Photo / Whanganui Regional Museum
I was a child of the 1960s and was brought up on badgers in books. I read about Tommy Brock in Beatrice Potter’s The Tale of Mr Tod; Mr Badger in The Wind in the Willows; Trufflehunter from CS Lewis’ Prince Caspian; Bill Badger in the Rupert Bear annuals which were given to me and my siblings every Christmas; and the Bill Badger series.
I came almost face to face with badgers when I was living in Reigate in England in 1992-93.
Behind my house was a small woods with a large sett.
On cold frosty evenings, I’d pull on layers of clothes and walk quietly up the hill to a hummock near the sett, sit and wait, and let my night vision develop.
Half-grown cubs would dash around, playing and mock fighting and mother badgers would waddle off to search for food. But most exciting was the old brock, the male boss of the sett, who would trample about, snuffling in the leaves before trundling off to forage, passing quite close to me.
I’ve always remembered how happy, and how cold, I was up there, watching these wonderful creatures and appreciating the chance to see them, not just read about fictional badger characters.
* Libby Sharpe is senior curator at the Whanganui Regional Museum.
