What protection class is the dog badger, and can the meat of this omnivorous animal be eaten?
The dog badger (Asian badger) is an animal of the family Mustelidae and the genus Meles. Among mustelids, the dog badger is relatively large in size, plump and strong, with a short, thick neck, short and sturdy limbs, and a short tail. Its back is a mix of brown and white or creamy yellow, and the inner sides of its limbs are dark brown or light brown.
The dog badger has a habit of hibernation and lives in burrows it digs. The burrow tunnels range from several meters to more than ten meters in length, with branch tunnels running in all directions. The winter burrow is complex; it is a den lived in for many years, formed by renovation and digging each year. It has 2-3 entrances and exits, and inside there are a main tunnel, side tunnels and blind ends. The walls of the main tunnel are smooth and neat, with no debris or feces, and at the end a nest is built with dry grass, twigs and leaves. In spring and autumn, it builds temporary burrows on earth mounds and in thickets near farmland. It rests in the burrow by day and comes out at night to seek food. This type of burrow is short and straight, with rough tunnel walls, a small nest and a thin grass lining, and only one exit. The nest is about 3-5m from the burrow entrance and 40-60cm in diameter. In a burrow inhabited by a dog badger, the entrance is smooth, the soil is loose, and footprints remain on it; the loose soil extends as far as about 20m, and on both sides at the far end of the loose soil there are oval-shaped dung pits.
The dog badger has a fierce temperament, but it does not take the initiative to attack livestock or people. When closely pressed by a person or a hunting dog, it often makes a short “bu, bu” sound, and at the same time it can raise the front half of its body to fight back with its sharp claws and canine teeth.
The dog badger is omnivorous, feeding on plant roots, stems and fruits, as well as frogs, earthworms, small fish, sand lizards, insects (larvae and pupae) and small mammals. In grassland areas it likes to eat the food left by wolves, and during the sowing and ripening periods of crops it harms newly sown seeds and soon-to-ripen corn, peanuts, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, melons and so on.
The dog badger is especially clever and extremely good at digging burrows. Sometimes it digs many holes in riverbanks, endangering the safety of the embankment. So what protection class is the dog badger? Can its meat be eaten? According to relevant information, dog badger meat is sold in some places, so its meat can be eaten. However, the dog badger is a national second-class protected animal, so in areas where dog badgers cause serious harm, only intervention and prevention-control measures can be taken to control its population size.
Mr. Li Shiping of the College of Bioscience and Biotechnology at Yangzhou University is no stranger to the dog badgers on the west embankment of the Jiangdu Canal. “This animal is too cunning,” Li Shiping said. The skill the dog badger is best at is digging burrows. If you try to catch it by blocking one entrance, the dog badger may well have already escaped from another entrance.
Li Shiping said that even if all the entrances are blocked, the dog badger may still dig a new exit and run away in an extremely short time, because it digs too fast.
“There is no very good way to deal with it; it is too intelligent, even smarter than a weasel,” Li Shiping said. The dog badger is an omnivorous animal, feeding on rodents, birds, snakes, frogs, fish, shrimp, earthworms and plant fruits (such as wheat, peanuts, corn and so on). Because farmland soil is loose, has a stable food source and is relatively secluded, the dog badger often chooses to dig its “bedroom” underground in farmland.
Regarding the dog badger, throughout the interview Li Shiping kept using “especially clever” to describe it. Its burrow is like a tunnel, very complex, and can even be waterproof and smoke-proof. Generally speaking, a dog badger burrow has multiple entrances and exits, and they are never the same, which is also the reason the dog badger is hard to catch.