In many respects, this post follows the previous contemplation on the importance of solitary foraging in the formation and regulation of badger social groups (and territories) – Regarding European badger social organization (the importance of solitary foraging).
However, I wished to add a few other aspects that might explain how badgers perceive their own lifestyle (what is important to them) and why badgers have evolved group living in places where resource abundance might affect their preferred lifestyle and its consequential cognitive/sensory qualities.
Badgers are a highly curious species which does not seem to enjoy developing a vast array of foraging techniques while, at the same time, utilizing a vast array of food resources and demonstrating regional as well as seasonal flexibility in their diet.
Badgers mostly apply scent to find appropriate food resources which, if possible, they simply pick off the ground.
If completely necessary, they can also dig (e.g., digging out some types of worms, larvae, pignuts as well as digging up rabbit burrows).
Rarely, they probably engage in short chases (e.g., chasing beetles and perhaps some small mammals although they would prefer to dig their young out of the burrows/dens).
It appears that badgers have evolved their few foraging strategies that they then try out on a variety of food/prey resources.
It reminds me of a folk tale that my greatgrandmother used to tell me.
In the story, there were three brothers – two of them older and ‘smarter’ and one of them younger and naive (the silly brother).
These brothers are to set out to seek their fortune in the wide world and they are each allowed to take with themselves one household object.
Honestly, I have forgotten what the elder brothers brought along but those were probably some items that we would deem of greater value (maybe a knife or a cooking pot, or money).
The younger brother, meanwhile, takes a simple wooden peg, but during his journeys, he used that peg very creatively to help other people in the most different circumstances.
Among others, the younger brother provides his assistance to a king whose carriage is broken and the carriage can be fixed by using the wooden peg to keep the wheel rolling.
The younger brother also prevents disastrous spillages and performs other peg-based miracles.
Eventually, the younger brother is proven the worthiest of them all and it is because he used this one peg to resolve a multitude of calamities.
Similarly, badgers seem to have chosen their ‘peg’ (which is, essentially, an excellent sense of smell and some very localized agility that does not involve much coursing and chasing) and they then apply the peg to resolve a vast array of foraging ‘problems’.
I do not believe it is a ‘lazy strategy’ (i.e., that the badgers have been too indolent to bother evolving other methods).
Together with the fact that badgers enjoy solitary foraging in these patches which they do not readily share with other badgers (unless resources are very homogeneous and abundant such as peanuts in feeding stations), it seems to me that badgers invest themselves in some other cognitive and sensory processes that engage them greatly and which they value so highly that they would stick to a relatively constrictive order and discipline (tradition, routine, repetition) in order to be able to focus on these experiences and data processing that we have not yet defined but that are important to badgers.
I believe that badgers might be the true gourmets of the animal kingdom and that instead of having evolved skills and foraging behaviour which demands for investment in physical locomotion and sundry decisions over how to act at any given time when faced with any given resource, badgers prefer to keep these variables fixed so that they could indulge in a true contact with their food.
This is, of course, very difficult to prove but my assumption is that species have to keep their mind active and unless they maintain constant engagement with some intrinsic or extrinsic processes, they experience ‘boredom’ which is also a threat to their survival because intellectual, sensory and psychological ‘boredom’ can lead to loss of current skills and traits as well as to inability to react flexibly to some changes that are outside of the badger’s scope to prevent (e.g., social, environmental changes).
Therefore, I do not think that badgers stick to a simplistic foraging strategy in order to make it as easy on themselves as possible because there is such a thing as ‘too easy’.
I believe that badgers enjoy focusing on their food instead of focusing on themselves.
More specifically, I believe that badgers do not want to detach themselves from the experience of smelling the food out, of tasting it and so on which can happen if the badger has to focus on other traits in their food/prey which involve estimates on how to acquire it more efficiently and where to acquire it.
It could be compared to how we perceive our own ‘foraging experience’ when we, for example, grab something to munch it down while we are on our way, while we are doing some household chore or while we are watching a TV show vs. when we sit down and fully focus on the meal.
Food enjoyment can have different levels and we might prefer some over others.
For example, if we value the taste or visual representation of the food, we will try to organize our meals in a different way than we would if we value the social experience of the meal (eating in company and recognizing the food through sharing it and through talking about it rather than through ‘consuming it directly’).
However, I do not think that badgers merely want to enjoy the taste of the food (which they also do but that might not be their main focus).
There can be important reasons why badgers choose to zoom in on the sensory experience of their food/prey vs. evaluating its other qualities that are related to how the food is to be obtained.
Our health, reproduction and other fitness variables depend on the food that we eat.
If we are in touch with what nutrients our food provides, how it can damage us or heal us, how it can get us through the hardships of winter or spring etc., we can ensure our survival and success.
For example, European badgers are very cleanly and they also successfully live in groups sometimes reaching very high densities in the setts but not being subject to enormous pathogen/parasite loads.
While we know European badgers as carriers of scary diseases (e.g., bovine tuberculosis), personally, it seems to me that, for a species which shares setts with other individuals and which shares latrines with other group individuals and also with neighbours, badgers are subject to surprisingly few serious threats to their health (and bTB is largely also the result of our agricultural schemes where it can be debated whether badgers infect cattle or whether our systems of keeping cattle in high densities infect badgers instead through creating conditions where pathogens can thrive and then spill over into wildlife populations).
This ability to lead a ‘healthy social life’ (in the literal sense of the word ‘healthy’) might be the result of badger ability to select food that benefits their fitness, prevents disease or fights it.
(It would be curious to study whether tuberculosis-infected badgers change their foraging strategies because if they do, this might point at some cure that badgers have found but that is not yet fully efficient at preventing/mitigating/eradicating infection.)
Similarly, badgers are excellent at utilizing seasonally available resources and at adapting to local resource availability.
Such skills might be the result of thorough investigation of what works and what does not work through sniffing these items out.
Badgers are also the only or one of the few (I am not certain) Mustelids that undergo winter torpor which is possible due to their ability (not observed in other/most Mustelids) to accumulate fat reserves.
Badger morphology is not that dissimilar from other Mustelids but they have managed to evolve the ability to fatten up and to sleep through these harsh months while other Mustelids have a very hard time maintaining energy balance due to their elongated body and poor thermal insulation.
Perhaps this ability is also dependent on badgers’ superior foraging choices that allowed them to begin to surpass the basic metabolic necessities and to start growing fat during autumn.
Additionally, badgers are encountered a rather diverse climatic, altitudinal and environmental gradient.
In each of these sites badgers have to adapt to what the locality offers.
It is possible that badgers have not merely learned to sniff out their favourite resources or at least palatable/non-harmful resources.
It is possible that their intimate connection with the properties of smell and flavour, and perhaps even the sound of the food has allowed the badgers to anticipate the nutritional suitability and quality of foods that they have not previously consumed as a species.
Thus, they would forego the initial ‘try and succeed or fail’ process of local adaptations where it would take longer periods of time to assess whether certain local food items (in their relative proportions during specific seasons when nutrient concentrations and badger metabolic needs vary) are beneficial to sustain the individuals and populations throughout lifetimes.
For example, where earthworms are not available or are not abundant, badgers would sometimes focus on an alternative ‘top food category’ (e.g., larvae in Ireland or fruit in the Mediterranean region).
This food category appears to substitute earthworms and perhaps it is selected for above other food items because it is the most nutritionally valid for the badgers.
Badgers might be able to detect their best staple food even in places where this staple food is not earthworms (the fundamental resource for the species that the species probably can recognize instinctively for its high quality and digestive merit).
Thus, badgers would not merely resort to consuming the ‘lesser foods’ in equal proportions but they would still be able to judge which of the local foods is superior and should form the annual basis of their diet supplemented with the seasonal ‘snacks’ and ‘side-dishes’.
On the other hand, this ability to analyze their food might lead to unexpected outcomes.
For example, in the book by Hans Kruuk, ‘The Social Badger: Ecology and Behaviour of a Group-living Carnivore’ (1989), it was stated that where earthworms were decreasing in abundance (study areas in Scotland), badgers did not appear to wholly substitute earthworms for other abundant but less optimal foraging resources, e.g., barley.
Barley consumption, indeed, increased but not to the extent that badgers could compensate for the loss of former earthworm abundance.
Indeed, badgers seemed to settle on ‘famish regime’ rather than overconsume the less preferred barley.
This could be the result of the badgers’ superior ability to assess the quality of their food.
Badgers might be aware that it makes little sense to ‘stuff themselves’ because it will not deliver the nutritional profile that they are seeking and their bodies should rather adapt to the reality instead of playing pretense that food is not scarce.
Just like in humans, there might be certain dangers associated with increasing suboptimal food proportion in one’s diet without truly accounting for the loss of important nutrients suffered through reduction of amount/concentrations of the optimal food in the diet.
I find it easy to imagine that badgers, just like gourmets, might also find it abhorrent to forage on food extensively if this food does not satisfy their senses.
Interestingly, I also believe that badgers might have begun social life not merely due to food abundance in some regions but also because of two additional considerations.
Firstly, I have argued (in other posts) that interaction with food can sometimes also be considered social interaction (not from the perspective of affiliation and cooperation but from the perspective of cognitive effort).
In order for the interaction to be social (based on understanding of the communication partner and responding or provoking response), foragers or predators would need to focus on qualities in their food/prey that are related to habitat choice, defense, accessibility, connections with the forager’s own skills, traits, behavioural responses etc.
If badgers attempt to obtain all of their food through relatively monotonous foraging strategies and the food experience is mainly based on consumptive (sensory, enjoyable) attributes rather than interaction, it is possible that badgers are not meeting some social needs that can be met even in solitary species which chase, stalk, observe their prey to evaluate its status, to predict its course of action, to fit one’s own best capabilities into this assessment.
Thus, badgers might begin to feel lonely, in some respects, or they might become subject to a degree of detachment from the surrounding world which can be dangerous because it might reduce the badgers’ ability to interact with competitors, predators etc.
Still, in many regions badgers also have to interact with the aforementioned predators, competitors and they might need to cover greater distances experiencing a variety of habitat conditions.
Perhaps large groups and extremely large groups have been evolved, specifically, in Great Britain because earthworms constitute the bulk of prey there and because earthworms are available quite close to setts (also, there are not many species that would take on a badger somewhat reducing the need to adapt to predation, competition).
Also, if earthworms are extremely abundant, badgers would select them predominantly but the foraging experience, while highly optimal from the nutritional point of view, might, at last, become boring because all earthworms probably taste and smell rather the same regardless of their source location and, moreover, if they are obtained on more or less the same pasture, they would not differ much in their nutrient profile, scent and palate.
As badgers are likely unwilling to give up this luxury resource in order to meet the needs of variety (that lead to cognitive sharpness, flexibility etc.), badgers might find themselves more open for different type of experiences that would satisfy their curiosity, sense of adventure and exploration as well as the requirement that is probably felt by any species to keep evolving.
In order to keep themselves ‘entertained’, badgers might have to choose between varying their diet, varying their foraging habits, varying their use of habitat or varying other aspects of their lifestyle.
It would seem that badgers have chosen to vary their social behaviour and to explore new avenues in this context which is clearly separated from the foraging context.
It is understandable because if I have been correct in my predictions, giving up the perfected communion with the food might lead to health issues and poorer fitness.
Meanwhile, adding some new social skills to the range of one’s life experiences has not harmed anybody.
Thus, badgers have developed a strange life where they keep to what they know ‘at work’ and attest to a more chaotic and not very purposefully directed conduct ‘at home’.
References
Kruuk, H. The Social Badger: Ecology and Behaviour of a Group-living Carnivore (Meles Meles), Oxford University Press, 1989, ISBN 0198587031, 9780198587033
Notes by Ieva 