I found myself mesmerized by the long, stout claws, nearly as long as the front feet themselves. These are the badger s livelihood and legend, for badgers are digging machines. So fast can they dig that Charles Long, in the classic The Badgers of the World , considered their digging to be a form of locomotion. Loosely speaking, all carnivorous diggers have been called badgers, but the world s six genera of true badgers also possess anal scent glands and a unique cusp on one molar tooth. In most cases, these scent glands are a pale imitation of those found in skunks, but the honey badger of Africa and southern Asia may use its potent spray to anesthetize bees before it raids their nests.
Few prey can escape a badger once it moves into a neighborhood and sets to work.
It soon depletes the local population of ground squirrels and gophers by hunting them in their burrows. Unless an area is especially rich with food, a badger stays on the move, traveling up to five to eight miles a night and leaving behind a trail of freshly dug holes wherever it goes. When it s ready to sleep, the badger simply digs a burrow and curls up, and then moves on again the next night. This pattern changes only when the female digs a deeper den than usual one morning, and pauses for four to eight weeks to give birth. The generally solitary badgers mate in late summer, though the female delays implantation of her eggs until late winter and has her young sometime in March.