European badgers are not your typical mustelids. Most members of this family of carnivorous mammals, which also includes weasels, stoats, otters, pine martens and the wolverine, are solitary, pugnacious animals that come together only to mate and dispute territorial borders. Badgers do have a bit of a grumpy side, but no one could accuse them of being unsociable.
These thick-set, stripy-faced, snuffling beasts live communally, sharing a network of subterranean tunnels and chambers - called a sett - with members of their extended family.
Most clans comprise six to eight adults plus their dependent cubs, although one sett in the grounds of Woodchester Mansion in the Cotswolds of southwest England (where badgers have been studied since the 1970s) was found to accommodate at least 30. Sleeping quarters are furnished with grass, bracken and moss that is changed regularly.
- It spans 6000 km of the coasts of Portugal, Spain, France and Italy – the animal that builds cities
- It stretches 106 square metres and spans two countries – and it's home to over one hundred thousand scuttling residents
Setts can be occupied for decades or even centuries and expanded gradually by successive generations. The older the sett, the bigger it’s likely to be, especially if it has been dug into stable soils that are resistant to collapse.
So how big do they get? Rather few setts have been studied in detail, but the biggest on record was unearthed in the rolling chalk hills of the South Downs on the south coast of England. In the early 1990s, biologists from the University of Sussex took the chance to excavate it before it was bulldozed to make way for a new road.
They found 50 chambers linked by 879m of tunnels, which could be accessed via 178 entrances. The sett occupied an area of 1744m², roughly equal to six and a half tennis courts or one and a half Olympic swimming pools.
- It can be seen from space, is the equivalent to 8 football fields and could be 45 years old - but we have no idea how many families call it home...
- It was home to 400 million chattering residents and almost the size of Ireland – and was deep underground
Sett building may be one driving force behind the badger’s untypical sociability. As denizens of chilly, northern latitudes, badgers need shelter from the elements, and all that digging requires a group effort. Another might be their unusual diet.
Unlike the majority of mustelids, which are active predators of other vertebrates, badgers go-to prey is earthworms. These are an abundant, ubiquitous and renewable resource that cannot be easily monopolised by individuals. In other words, there’s plenty of food to go round, so there is little to be gained from behaving aggressively towards neighbours.
