European Badger

&nbsp The European Badger (Meles meles) is found in many places throughout Europe

Distribution
Badgers are found throughout Britain and Europe.

Description
With a black-and-white striped head, small, white tipped ears and strong forepaws with long claws, this animal is easy to identify. It usually emerges from it's burrow (sett) after dusk.

The Male has a 30in. head and a 6in tail and the female is smaller.

Paw Prints
Badger prints are fairly easy to recognise, resembling bear prints. They have five toes on each foot with long claws easily visible as Badgers tread heavily. The inner toes is faint though, and often not visible. Badgers usually tread with the fornt part of their paw so the print measures 5cm long and 4cm wide. If the entire foot is their it will bring the length to 7cm.

The hind print often shows the whole foot the length around 3.5cm and the length to the back end of the central pad is a total of 4.5cm and to the heel: 6.5cm.

Trails
Badgers walk most of the time and you'll often see that the Badger has placed it's hind paw in the fore paws' print.

The stride length is 50cm and when Badgers are covering larger distances they will trot.

They also gallop and occasionally jump.