American Badger

About the American badger

The American badger is a North American member of the weasel family, Mustelidae, similar in appearance to the European badger but not closely related to it. It belongs to its own subfamily, Taxidiinae, distinct from the European badger's group, the ferret-badgers, and the honey badger, and its closest relative is the extinct Chamitataxus. Among living mustelids, the American badger's lineage is thought to be the earliest to split off from the rest of the family, roughly 18 million years ago. It ranges across the western, central, and northeastern United States, into northern Mexico, and north through south-central Canada to parts of southwestern British Columbia; in Mexico it is sometimes called tlalcoyote.

Physically, the American badger has the stocky, low-slung body typical of badgers, carried on short, powerful legs, with huge foreclaws up to 5 cm long built for digging and a distinctive black-and-white head pattern. It measures 60 to 75 cm (23.5 to 29.5 in) long, with males somewhat larger than females; typical weights run 6.3 to 7.2 kg (14 to 16 lb) for females and up to 8.6 kg (19 lb) for males, though well-fed males can reach 11.5 to 15 kg (25 to 33 lb) in fall. Except on the head, the coat is a grizzled mix of brown, black, and white that reads as an overall brown-tan camouflage against grassland. The triangular face carries brown or blackish "badges" on the cheeks and a white stripe running from the nose toward the back of the head; in one subspecies, T. t. berlandieri, that stripe extends the full length of the body to the base of the tail.

The species is built for digging. Its skeleton includes a strong humerus, large muscle-attachment processes, and a specialized elbow structure that gives its forelimbs unusual mechanical leverage, alongside other fossorial adaptations such as a conical head, ear bristles, and nictitating membranes that protect the eyes while burrowing.

Behavior and diet

American badgers are fossorial carnivores that hunt mainly by digging, preying on pocket gophers, ground squirrels, moles, marmots, prairie dogs, pikas, woodrats, kangaroo rats, deer mice, and voles, often pursuing prey directly into their burrows and sometimes plugging tunnel entrances behind them. They are also a significant predator of snakes, including rattlesnakes, and are considered the most important predator of snakes in South Dakota. Beyond mammals and reptiles, badgers take ground-nesting birds such as the burrowing owl and bank swallow, along with lizards, amphibians, carrion, fish, skunks, insects, and some plant foods like corn, peas, green beans, mushrooms, and sunflower seeds.

Generally nocturnal, badgers will forage by day in areas without much human activity, and a badger seen in daylight during spring is often a female spending nights with her young. They do not hibernate but become less active in winter, cycling through bouts of torpor lasting around 29 hours and emerging when temperatures rise above freezing. One of the species' more notable behaviors is hunting cooperatively with coyotes, almost always paired one-to-one, which raises a coyote's catch rate by roughly a third; the arrangement works because a ground squirrel that flees underground from a coyote is easy prey for a badger, while one that bolts aboveground from a badger can be run down by the faster coyote.

Mating happens in late summer and early fall, though implantation is delayed until December or as late as February. Young are born blind, furred, and helpless from late March to early April, in litters of one to five averaging about three; their eyes open at four to six weeks, and they first leave the den alone around five to six weeks old before dispersing from their mother between late May and August. Most females become pregnant for the first time after age one, while males typically don't breed until their second year.

Range and habitat

The American badger favors open grasslands, prairies, and other treeless terrain, particularly areas with sandy loam soil that is easy to dig and supports plenty of burrowing prey. Its range covers the western, central, and northeastern United States, northern Mexico, and south-central Canada into parts of southwestern British Columbia, with populations documented in habitats from Arizona desert scrub and semi-arid grassland to Kansas tallgrass prairie, Montana fescue grassland, and Manitoba's aspen parklands, where badger numbers track the abundance of ground squirrels.

Beyond open grassland, badgers turn up in forest glades and meadows, marshes, brushy areas, hot deserts, and mountain meadows, occasionally at elevations up to 12,000 feet (3,700 m). Home range size varies with season and sex, generally larger for males, and one long-term study found an average annual home range of about 2,100 acres (850 hectares), with a single female's range shrinking from 1,790 acres (720 hectares) in summer to just 5 acres (2.0 hectares) in winter. Badgers dig dens 4 to 10 feet deep and 4 to 6 feet wide, often enlarging another animal's burrow, and a female may keep 2 to 4 connected burrows for concealment and safety while raising young. As of 2014, overdevelopment had already reduced available habitat and pushed badgers into more frequent contact with people while foraging between fragmented areas.

Conservation status

The American badger overall is not considered threatened, but some regional populations are. In Canada, the subspecies T. t. jacksoni and T. t. jeffersonii were both listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act in May 2000, and the nominate subspecies was additionally designated of "Special Concern" in 2012. T. t. jeffersonii, found in British Columbia, was later split into two separately endangered populations, one in the Okanagan Valley-Cariboo region and one in East Kootenay. The Canadian population of T. t. jacksoni survives in a small, isolated area of southwestern Ontario near the U.S. border. In the United States, the California Department of Fish and Game lists the American badger as a species of special concern in that state. The species also faces ongoing pressure from human trapping for its pelt, which is used for shaving and painting brushes, and from natural predators including cougars, which a 2019 study identified as the main predator of adult badgers.