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Find out about the colouration, weights and measurements of the world's badgers.
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General appearance | Measurements | Colouration | Senses | Scent glands | Related Badger Pages
The badgers mostly have rather stocky bodies, supported by short but strong legs. The forelegs are particularly well developed in most of the badger species, and the fore paws of all the species are equipped with long, strong claws; these are their adaptations for digging. The heads are rather wedge-shaped with relatively long, pointed muzzles; the eyes and the ears are small. The tails are variable in length; they are very short in the case of the stink badgers, while the tails of the ferret badgers are relatively long (around half the length of the body) and bushy. In their general appearance the ferret badgers are in fact the least badger-like members of the sub-family. With their rather more elongated bodies and tails they look to have more in common with other, more distantly related members of the Mustelidae than with the other badgers.
At around 90 cm (35 ins) in length (including a tail of around 15 cm), and weighing in at around 9 - 11 kg on average (up to 20 kg in parts of Russia!), the European badger is one of the largest of the mustelids. The American badger, the hog badger and the honey badger are similar in size and weight, though generally a little smaller and lighter. The stink badgers are smaller still, and the ferret badgers are the smallest of all.
Boldly patterned black and white faces are a characteristic shared by several of the badger species. The black and white striped face of the European badger is well known, and the American badger and the hog badger also have variations on this theme. The ferret badgers do not have stripes, but they do have striking combinations of black with white or yellow patches on their heads. All of these badgers have greyish or brownish body fur, some have a narrow, lighter coloured stripe running from the head to the shoulders or even right down the back, and the legs and underparts are usually darker or black in colour. The stink badgers are rather different in that they do not have any facial patterns; they are mostly dark brown or black in colour. The honey badger is different again; its upperparts, from the forehead to the base of the tail, are a pale whitish grey in colour, while the the rest of the head and body is black.
In general, the badgers have poor eyesight, good hearing, and an exceptionally well developed sense of smell.
So just why do some of the badgers have rather unflattering names like "ferret" badgers and "stink" badgers? Well, most of them do have the capacity to produce very unpleasant smells! In common with the other members of the weasel family, all of the badgers have anal glands which are used to produce strong-smelling secretions. All of the badgers emit these secretions when alarmed or threatened, and the stink badgers can actually squirt the fluids at their attackers. The potency of the secretions varies, being particularly vile in the case of the Indonesian stink badger and the honey badger. The secretions from the anal glands are also used for communication; badgers mark pathways and other landmarks in their ranges so that they can find their way around by smell, and those that defend territories may mark their boundaries as a warning to potential intruders. The European badger has, in addition to its anal glands, a particularly large musk gland beneath the root of its tail. This produces a musk which is not unpleasant, and is used by the badgers for scent-marking each other and their surroundings.
Find out about the appearance and general characteristics of:
The photo of the badger footprint used at the head of this Article is © Steve Jackson. Credits for the photos used in the right-hand margin of this page for site navigation can be found on the Credits page.
Go to the Eurasian badger home page.
Go to the hog badger home page.
Go to the American badger home page.
Go to the ferret badgers home page.
Go to the honey badger home page.
Go to the stink badgers home page.
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Text and images copyright © Steve Jackson except where otherwise stated.