Badger Cranium

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This specimen is the cranium of the European badger Meles meles. Badgers belong to the family Mustelidae, alongside weasels, ferrets, stoats, otters and others. Evolutionarily speaking mustelids arose just after the Eocene–Oligocene transition (~33.9–27.8 million years ago), and are one of the oldest groups within Carnivora. Badgers have a generalist diet, typically eating worms, large insects, cereals, carrion and small mammals. Badgers are also known to eat wasp nests, including the comb and envelope; their thick skin and fur protecting them from most stings. According to an 1898 monograph on badgers (Pease, A. E.), in times of food scarcity they will hunt baby rabbits and will, “take a rabbit out of a trap, turn it inside out, and eat all the meat, leaving the skin behind, turned neatly with the fur inside”. This model was created by Lee Manders, using Agisoft Metashape.