Badger Footprints

If you are going to follow the trail of the badger, you will need to know what the badger's footprints look like. Luckily, badger tracks are quite easy to identify.

The pictures above show a badger footprint on the left, and a dog footprint on the right. You can see that there are quite a few differences between them.

First, the badger print has a large, wide pad, while the dog print has a smaller pad with three lobes (almost like three toe marks stuck together).

Second, the badger print has five toes, while dog print has only four. The badger's fifth toe does not always show up very clearly - you can just make it out to the right of the four main toes. Even if you can only see only four of the badger's five toes, you can still tell them apart from the dog's . . .

The third difference is that the badger's four main toes are lined up in a row in front of the pad, all pointing forwards. The dog's toes are different, with two at the front, and the other two set further back, one on each side. Can you also see how the two toes that are set further back, also point outwards?

The footprints above are both quite clear, and it is easy to tell them apart. Footprints do not always show up so clearly however. It all depends on how soft the ground is where the animal has trodden. Also, badgers have a way of walking which means that they often leave footprints that look very odd indeed - just look at the picture on the left!

What happens is this: as the badger walks, it often puts its back foot down in almost exacly the same place as its front foot. The print left by the back foot covers up the pad of the front foot, but not the toes. So the print that's left has the pad and toes of the back foot, with the toes and claw marks of the front foot just in front. That's what you can see in the picture here. At the bottom, the pad of the back foot doesn't show up very well as the ground is a little harder there. Just above that are the four main toes of the back foot, all in a neat row. Just above them are the toes of the front foot. Three of them show up quite clearly. The fourth, just to the right of the three clear ones, is not very clear. And above the toes are the small marks made by the end of the long claws that badgers have on their front feet.

The marks of the badger's long front claws show up much better in the photograph at the top of this page. And as we travel a little further along the trail of the badger, we will find more signs left by those long claws . . .