Mammals · plate 20 of 60
Badger
Meles meles
Lives in a house older than yours. Cleans it.
Only 2.1% of people are Badgers. (estimated)
If you're a Badger
You are solid, home-loving, and not to be pushed. Badgers live in setts dug by generations before them, keep them tidy, and defend them with a determination out of proportion to their size; you are much the same about your home, your routine and your people. You are sociable in the evening, in a group you've known forever, and otherwise busy.
A European badger sett can stay in continuous use for over a century, extended by generation after generation, with tunnels running for hundreds of meters.
The Badger as a spirit animal
You are loyal, steady, and domestically fierce. You know your ground and you keep it well, and you have no interest in anyone else's. The flaw is a stubbornness that goes past principle into furniture; once dug in, you do not come out, and people have learned not to try. You are not antisocial. The clan is welcome. The clan knows the rules.
Grounded in how the species actually lives; nothing borrowed from anyone's tradition. Why we put it that way.
How to get along with a Badger
Do
- Respect the home; a badger's sett is the center of its life and it will not relocate.
- Come at dusk; badgers emerge in the evening and are at their most sociable then.
- Keep things tidy; a badger notices and quietly approves.
Don't
- Don't try to move them; generations of badgers have already declined.
- Don't corner one; a badger's jaw joint is built so it cannot easily be dislocated, and the bite shows it.
When it goes wrong: A cornered badger stands its ground and bites rather than flees; back away and leave it the path to the sett.
The Badger in a relationship
You love within the clan and for the long term. Badgers live in family groups that share a sett for generations, and cubs stay with their mothers through their first year. You are not demonstrative, but you are reliably there, in the same place, every evening. Your partner always knows where home is.
Field notes
Every animal is placed on six personality traits derived from how the species lives. Your answers are placed on the same six, and the closest animal wins. How the scoring works
- Sociability
- 5
- Boldness
- 8
- Energy
- 5
- Curiosity
- 4
- Devotion
- 6
- Roaming
- 1
- Badgers change their bedding, dragging old grass and bracken out to air before hauling fresh material in backward.
- The European badger is the largest land predator in Britain, and most of what it eats is earthworms, hundreds in a good night.
- Badgers live in clans that share a sett but mostly forage alone, and they use latrine pits at the territory edge as a kind of fence.
Badgers in literature
- Badger — The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (1908)
- Tommy Brock — The Tale of Mr. Tod, Beatrix Potter (1912)
- Digger the Badger — The Burgess Animal Book for Children, Thornton W. Burgess (1920)
Characters from public-domain works. Company, not a verdict.
Closest personalities
The animals whose profiles sit nearest to the Badger's. If you got Badger, one of these was probably your runner-up.
Other mammals
WolfRed FoxBrown BearPolar BearLionTigerLeopardCheetahElephantGiraffeHippopotamusGorillaOrangutanSlothKoalaKangarooPlatypusOtterBeaverRaccoonHedgehogBatCamelDolphinSperm Whale
Among the 60
Mammalia: Their Various Orders and Habits, Louis Figuier (1870). Public domain, viacommons.wikimedia.org.All credits
