The badger may seem small, but it is capable of burying an entire cow carcass all by itself, as evidenced by the first-ever video caught of such an unusual behavior.
Badgers Can Bury Animals Bigger Than Them
Researchers from the University of Utah said that they were studying scavengers in the Great Basin Desert when they happened to film a badger digging a deep hole to bury a large cow carcass.
The burial, which took place in January 2016, took the badger five days, but researchers were able to capture it and posted a time-lapse video on YouTube. Another badger was also observed burying a cow, but the carcass was only partially buried.
Why Badgers Cache Their Food
Although badgers have long been known to cache their food stores, biologists have observed badgers caching small mammals such as rabbits and rodents but not animals that are larger than themselves. The instance captured on camera is the first known case wherein a badger was caught burying an animal that is bigger than itself.
Researchers explained that badgers cache food to keep these away from other scavengers and to place it in an environment where this can last longer.
The incident, which was described in Western North American Naturalist, offers evidence suggesting that the size of animals do not matter when badgers cache, and this ability could play a part in sequestering large carcasses that can benefit cattle ranchers.
"Watching badgers undertake this massive excavation around and underneath is impressive," said Ethan Frehner, author of the paper that documented the badger behavior. "It's a lot of excavation engineering they put into accomplishing this."
Accidental Discovery
In January 2016, the researchers set out seven carcasses in Utah's Grassy Mountains, with each of these carcasses staked down and equipped with camera trap to capture the scavengers that visit.
The researchers who primarily study vultures and other scavengers did not initially have intention to study badgers. The study was intended to learn more about the ecology of the scavengers that thrive in the Great Basin during the winter.
After a week, though, the researchers went out to check the carcasses but discovered that one was missing.
Researcher Evan Buechley thought that a coyote or a mountain lion could be the culprit responsible for dragging the carcass away. When he returned to the site where the carcass was, though, he found that the ground was disturbed.
When Buechley looked at the camera trap images, he discovered a badger digging around and beneath the carcass that disappeared into the massive cavity that the small badger excavated.
Camera records revealed that the badger buried all the 50-pound cow's carcass over just a span of five days.
"Both badgers constructed dens alongside their cache, where they slept, fed, and spent up to 11 days continuously underground. They abandoned the sites 41 and 52 days after initial discovery," researchers wrote in their study. "This is the first evidence of an American badger caching an animal carcass larger than itself."
