There are two badger setts in the park, hidden away in its quiet places; here are some interesting badger facts.
- Badgers are members of the mustelid family, which includes, otters, weasels and stoats, polecats and ferrets.
- The badger’s scientific name is Meles meles, derived from the Latin for badger, but its common name comes from the French word bêcheur, which means digger, and the traditional name of brock just means grey in Old English.
- Like bears, the males are called boars, the females sows and the young are called cubs.
- The largest sett ever recorded spread over an estimated area of 2,000m² and accommodated 35 badgers.
- A social group of badgers living together in the same sett is known as a clan.
- Badgers are usually monogamous.
- Badgers defecate in specially dug pits, known as latrines, on the boundaries of their territory.
- In a single night, an adult badger may eat well over two hundred worms.
- The earliest traces of badgers in Britain are almost a million years old, which means they once co-existed with the wolves and brown bears that lived here then.
- In the UK badgers and their setts are protected under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992.
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 