What Do Badgers Eat? Earthworms, Fruit and More

Earthworms: the badger’s main food

For the European badger (Meles meles), the common earthworm is the most important food in most of its range. On mild, damp nights, large earthworms come up to the surface of grass fields, pastures, golf courses and lawns to feed and mate. Badgers walk slowly across the grass, nose down, and slurp the worms up one after another.

When conditions are right, a single badger can eat hundreds of worms in one night. Studies in Britain have found that earthworms can make up well over half of what badgers eat in some areas and seasons. This is why badgers are so common in places with mild, wet weather and short-grazed pasture, and why dry summers and hard frosts, when worms stay deep in the soil, can be hard times for them.

Other foods badgers eat

Badgers are opportunists. When worms are scarce, they turn to whatever is plentiful.

Badgers are well protected against stings by their thick skin and coarse fur. They dig out wasp and bumblebee nests to eat the grubs, often destroying the whole nest. They also dig young rabbits out of their nesting burrows, using their sharp sense of smell to find them.

An adult badger usually eats no more than about 0.5 kg (1.1 lb) of food a night. Young badgers in their first year eat proportionally more, because they are still growing.

How badgers eat through the year

A badger’s menu changes with the seasons.

• Spring: earthworms on wet nights, insect larvae, young rabbits, bulbs and roots.
• Summer: beetles, wasp and bee nests, cereals ripening in fields; dry spells can make food hard to find, and many cubs die in drought years.
• Autumn: fruit, nuts and maize, plus plenty of worms after rain. This is the main fattening season, when badgers can gain several kilograms ahead of winter.
• Winter: worms on mild nights, plus roots, bulbs and carrion; in cold spells badgers stay underground and live on their fat.

How badgers find their food

Badgers have poor eyesight but an exceptional sense of smell. They forage alone, even though they live in groups, following regular paths from the sett to good feeding areas. Using their strong front claws and muscular snout, they dig small cone-shaped “snuffle holes” in grass to reach grubs and worms, and they can tear open rotten logs, roots and wasp nests.

Most foraging happens between dusk and dawn. Badgers often concentrate on one plentiful food at a time, such as worms on a damp field or blackberries along a hedge, rather than mixing many foods in one night. They usually eat on the spot and rarely carry food back to the sett.

Do badgers eat hedgehogs?

Yes, badgers do eat hedgehogs. A badger’s long claws and strength allow it to unroll a curled-up hedgehog, which very few other European predators can manage. Hedgehogs avoid places where badgers are active, and studies have found fewer hedgehogs in areas with high badger numbers. Even so, scientists see roads, fewer hedgerows and loss of insect-rich habitat as the main causes of hedgehog declines. Learn more about the prickly victim in our European hedgehog profile.

Do badgers kill lambs or chickens?

Very rarely. Badgers sometimes raid poorly protected poultry, especially in late winter when natural food is short, and there are a few records of badgers killing lambs. Most badgers never do either. Because foxes often live alongside badgers, remains found near a sett are frequently the work of foxes rather than badgers.

What do honey badgers and American badgers eat?

Other animals called badgers have very different diets, because they live in different habitats and are not all close relatives.

• Honey badger (Mellivora capensis), Africa and southern Asia: a bold hunter of rodents, snakes (including venomous species), lizards, scorpions, insects, birds and eggs, plus bee larvae and honey from wild hives. See what do honey badgers eat? and the honey badger profile.
• American badger (Taxidea taxus), North America: a powerful digger that specializes in burrowing mammals such as ground squirrels, prairie dogs and pocket gophers, which it digs out of their tunnels. It also eats birds, eggs, reptiles and insects.
• Asian badgers (Meles leucurus and relatives): similar omnivores to the European badger, eating worms, insects, small animals and plants.

Of all the badgers, the European badger is the most dependent on earthworms and plant food, and the least of a hunter.