Sunday 27 March 2011

Sussex big cats prey on badgers,more evidence...

Ok,so it,s scant evidence at best and only a skull of a youngish badger however it was found at a time earlier this month of intense big cat activity in West Sussex in an area where last year 2 fox carcases were found attributed as being big cat kills .There is ample evidence on bigcatdetective.blogspot.com and elsewhere on the net that big cats habitually take foxes but none of badgers falling prey to these apex predators,badgers are not preyed on by anything else,they amble along with impunity falling victim only to traffic and yet this skull was found miles away from the nearest road.My trail cameras have been set up on big cat spotting tasks and wildlife survey dutys alike but all in areas where big cats have been known to be active and all have produced remarkably few badger pictures given that this stripy faced mustelid is very widespread and numerous .At this time of year the big cats are targeting almost exclusively rabbits as the deer are very much harder to catch than they were in deep winter but rabbit numbers are not yet thronged by the multitudes of youngsters yet.They will however also take foxes and a young badger shoudn,t be too much of a task for them but i had always thought that badgers were not taken by big cats because of the lack of evidence found.It,s very rare to find any parts of a badger like a skull,they were observed by a 1950,s naturalist(the name escapes me) dragging a old dead boar badger out of a sett and burying the corpse in a nearby rabbit bury.In fact,after a lifetime of being in the country accompanied by my morbid facination of skulls and attached bones,this is probably only the second badger skull i,ve ever found.What is needed next is a badger carcase bearing all the hallmarks of being a big cat kill as this is the conclusive proof as it has been with deer and foxes.(related article bigcatsinsussex.blogspot.com dated 13.2.11).........

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