Tomb With A View

Grave-Digging Badgers Explain The Mystery Of The Disappearing Cows.

- Doug Main

EVAN BUECHLEY, a doctoral student at the University of Utah, was disappointed. He’d spent a lot of time and effort dragging a cow carcass to a wild area and then staking it down to study what scavengers might come to eat it and how. But it appeared that some creatures, perhaps a band of coyotes, had dragged it away.

His chagrin turned to elation, though, upon downloading photos from the motion triggered camera next to the kill. The pictures revealed a badger completely burying the cow, something that has never been witnessed before. Another of the seven carcasses he left out in the wilderness had almost been buried by another badger in under two days.