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Image: Eurasian badger (Meles meles).
Home » Eurasian badger (Meles meles) » Articles :
From birth to death - breeding, birth, cub development, and longevity.
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Breeding - from mating to cub birth | Development - from cub to adult | Longevity - how long badgers live | Related Badger Pages
February is the peak month of the badger's main mating season, but badgers may in fact mate at almost any time of the year. Badger cubs however are nearly always born in or around February. This is made possible by an unusual feature of the badger's reproductive system called delayed implantation. Once the badger's eggs are fertilized they develop into tiny balls of cells called a blastocysts. These remain suspended in the womb or uterus until something causes them to implant onto the wall of the uterus, when they continue their development normally. No matter when the eggs were fertilized, implantation nearly always occurs in late December or early January. After a further 6 - 7 weeks of 'normal' gestation, most births then occur from late January to early March, with the majority in the first half of February.
[Image]
A young badger cub.
Badger litter sizes range from 1 to 5, with litters of 2 or 3 being most frequent. The system of delayed implantation maximises the badger's chances of being successfully mated, and ensures that the cubs are born at the best time of year: after being suckled below ground for eight weeks, they start emerging from the sett in April or early May, which gives them all of spring, summer and autumn to feed, grow, and put on sufficient fat reserves to see them through their first winter. The picture here shows a cub aged around 12 weeks old. Badger cubs are extremely playful, and can be seen chasing and play-fighting with each other and with adults.
Males and females generally become sexually mature during their second year of life, although females may mature earlier, mating before the end of their first year, in areas where food supplies are good.
Picture © Steve Jackson. See the Photo File .
[Image]
Primrose, an adult female badger.
Although badger cubs are born at a time of year which maximises their chances of survival, on average only one out of every three cubs survives to be one year old. Many die while still very young. About a third of all adult badgers also die each year, and the average lifespan is just 3 years. Those that survive beyond this age typically live for up to 5 to 8 years, and a small number live even longer, occasionally for as long as 15 years. The oldest European badger on record was one held in captivity, this lived to be 19 years and 6 months old. The photo shows "Primrose", a badger known to myself who was at least 8 years old when she died.
There are many reasons why a badger's life may be cut short. Adults as well as cubs can suffer in prolonged dry periods, dying from dehydration or starvation. Disease can also affect some animals. As well as natural mortality factors, badgers also have to contend with the influence of humans. In Britain, many are killed by road traffic, and the building of new roads, housing developments, quarries etc, can also lead to badger deaths, through the destruction of their setts and feeding grounds. In addition, there are some people, or sub-humans as I prefer to call them, who deliberately persecute badgers, or engage in cruel and indiscriminate "pest" control activities which cause the death of badgers and other animals. Badgers are also hunted in most of the other countries in which they occur.
Picture © Steve Jackson. See the Photo File .
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