Silver badger
| Silver badger | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
.jpg)
Silver badger ( Taxidea taxus ) |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the subfamily | ||||||||||||
| Taxidiinae | ||||||||||||
| Pocock , 1920 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Taxidea | ||||||||||||
| Waterhouse , 1839 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the species | ||||||||||||
| Taxidea taxus | ||||||||||||
| ( Schreber , 1777) |
The silver badger ( Taxidea taxus ) is a species of predator from the marten family (Mustelidae). He lives in North America , where he is simply referred to as "the badger" ( badger ). According to new findings, however, it is not too closely related to the old-world badgers (Melinae).
features
The rather long fur on the back and sides is gray in color, sometimes with a reddish tinge, the underside is lighter, usually yellow-gray. The legs are darker, mostly dark brown or black. It is characterized by a white stripe that extends backwards from the nose. While in animals in northern regions it ends at the height of the shoulders, in southern regions it extends to the rear of the trunk. The face is patterned in black and white, the chin and throat are also white. The muzzle is pointed, the ears are rounded and sit well down on the head.
The build of the silver badger gives a flattened, but still stocky impression. The front paws have long, conspicuously curved claws, the tail is short and bushy. These animals reach a head body length of 42 to 72 centimeters, the tail becomes 10 to 16 centimeters long and their weight varies between 4 and 12 kilograms.
distribution and habitat
Silver badgers are native to North America, their range mainly includes the Great Plains region in the central part of the continent. It extends from northern Alberta across large parts of the western and central United States to central Mexico . Their habitat are open, dry areas such as prairies and grasslands, sometimes also pastures.
However, silver badgers are not limited to temperate or warm regions. In the last glacial period they also occurred in eastern Alaska when this area was occupied by cold dry tundra or mammoth steppes . As steppe inhabitants, they could not reach Asia over the land bridge that existed at the time because of the higher humidity of Beringia .
Way of life
The flat body and the curved claws of the front paws show that silver badgers are fast and powerful graves that can tear up hard soil in a very short time. The burial activity is mainly for the purpose of hunting prey; however, the badgers also sleep in the dug tunnels or modify the burrows of other animals. In contrast to the European badger , they do not live in their burrows for life, but for a month at most; they usually have several burrows in their territory. The burrows of the silver badgers can be 10 meters long and extend 3 meters deep into the ground, at the end there is a round bedroom lined with leaves.
They are usually active all year round, but in extremely harsh winters they stay in their burrow for several days or even weeks and hibernate .
The silver badgers also differ from the European badger in their social behavior. They are completely unsociable loners. They can go foraging at any time of the day, but they are mostly nocturnal. As a rule, they are true to their location and often stay in the same area. The territories of males are 2.4 square kilometers larger than those of the females with 1.6 square kilometers. These animals do not show any pronounced territorial behavior, although the territories can overlap, the animals still avoid each other.
food
Unlike the European badger , the silver badger hardly eats vegetable food. Above all, rodents living underground , but also ground-breeding birds and their eggs, reptiles (including rattlesnakes ) and insects are among its prey. Unlike many other predators, they do not hunt their food primarily, but dig for it.
In January 2016, researchers at the University of Utah found out by laying bait in the form of cow carcasses that the silver badger also plays a role in carcass utilization.
It is widely believed that silver badgers and coyotes form “hunting communities”. In truth, coyotes are only waiting for the rodents to be scared off by digging silver badgers in order to be able to catch them more easily, so the badgers have no advantage.
Reproduction
Mating occurs in summer and early autumn, but due to the delayed implantation , the actual gestation period does not begin until between December and February. In March or April, the female gives birth to one to five young animals after an actual gestation period of around six weeks. The newborns are initially blind and helpless and spend their first weeks of life in a building upholstered with grass or leaves. After four weeks their eyes open, after six weeks they are weaned. Females often become sexually mature at four months, while males do not reproduce until they are two years old.
The average life expectancy in the wild is four to five years, the maximum age is 14 years. In human care they can get significantly older, the oldest known specimen was 26 years old.
Silver badgers and humans
With the exception of humans, adult silver badgers hardly have any natural predators. Sometimes they are persecuted because their burrows run just below the surface of the earth and grazing animals can break bones if they break in. Road traffic and poisoned bait, which was actually designed for coyotes, represent further dangers.
The silver badger skin is processed into furs. Shaving brushes were also made from her hair in earlier times ; today, hair from badgers from China is mostly used for this.
Nevertheless, silver badgers were able to expand their range in the 19th and 20th centuries, they are now also common in Ontario and Ohio , among others, and there have also been isolated sightings from New England . Silver badgers are not an endangered species.
Systematics
Silver badgers were formerly badgers attributed (Melinae), an otherwise only in Eurasien spread Marder group . However, the similarities with these should only be based on convergence . More recent studies place them in their own subfamily (Taxidiinae).
literature
- Ronald M. Nowak: Walker's Mammals of the World . 6th edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999, ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 (English).
Web links
- Taxidea taxus in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2008. Posted by: F. Reid, K. slipway, 2008. Accessed January 6 of 2009.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mikhail S. Blinnikov, Benjamin Gaglioti, Donald A. Walker, Matthew J. Wooller, Grant D. Zazula: Pleistocene graminoid-dominated ecosystems in the Arctic. In: Quaternary Science Reviews , Volume 30, October 2011, pp. 2906-2929, doi : 10.1016 / j.quascirev.2011.07.002 .
- ^ R. Dale Guthrie: Origin and causes of the mammoth steppe: a story of cloud cover, woolly mammal tooth pits, buckles, and inside-out Beringia. In: Quaternary Science Reviews , Vol. 20, No. 1, 2001, pp. 549-574.
- ↑ SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg Germany: Unusual video: Badger buries cow - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Science. Retrieved April 1, 2017 .