Editing v0.31:Badger

{{quality|Exceptional|03:48, 21 September 2011 (UTC)}}
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A small mammal (about half the size of a dog) that travels in groups referred to in the community as "congas", badgers distinguish themselves from the common pack critter that occasionally wanders onto your map by their Prone To Rage feature. This means that badgers will often go berserk and attack adventurers, dwarves, and livestock.

For an adventurer, badgers can serve as a superb sparring partner (much better than other critters like gophers or hoary marmots) in order to gain experience in skills like Shield User and Armor User. See this [[Adventure mode#How do I increase my skills and attributes? (powerleveling)|FAQ]] section for more details.

Badgers that are enraged will hunt down common peasant dwarves going about their business on the surface, disrupting early fortress setup procedures as they force a terrified dwarf to run to the edge of the map before being cornered by the badger.

Fortunately, it's still a small and fairly harmless creature due to its size and lack of any notable form of attacks, and a common adult unarmed dwarf will probably cripple it with a single kick (which is not to say that a badger can't get lucky, but it mostly seems to be limited to bruises and scratches).  However, [[children]] are vulnerable to their attacks, especial the young (and hence small) ones.

If you are attacked by aggressive badgers early on while still digging out your fort, consider training some of your dogs to be wardogs - a wardog is more than a match for a badger, and spares you the need to set a valuable soldier dwarf to badger-hunting duty.

[[Honey badger]]s are identical to normal badgers, but found in [[tropical]] and [[desert]] regions rather than [[temperate]] ones.

<gallery>
File:American Badger Sow.JPG| American Badger (female)
</gallery><gallery>
File:European Badger.jpg| European Badger
</gallery>


{{D for Dwarf}}
Here is a lovely quote from Untelligent of the Bay12 forums.

"For ages, the crown of the King of Beasts has rested upon no head, the title long being vacant. Elephants became docile long ago, Carp have shrunk even smaller than they once were and dwarves made less fearful of their terrifying stare, and Giant Cave Spiders had the razor-tips of their fangs filed off.

But now, a new beast, freshly wrought from the blood-forges of Armok himself, has begun its reign of terror over the land. He made it ubiquitous, such that all would know its name. He filled it with fury, such that none would think it harmless. And He granted several of them tremendous size and insatiable anger far beyond that of their normal kin, such that even those who had thought they had mastered them had still more treacherous foes to be slain by.

There is a new King of Beasts, and its name is Badger. Tremble before it."

Hands and feet will be severed. 

This may seem to contradict earlier claims of the badger being harmless. This is true, for a single badger or for small groups. Unfortunately, they tend to enter the map in huge "badger storms", swirling masses of highly irritable, lightning quick, sharp-clawed monsters. Any dwarf unlucky enough to be caught alone in a badger storm will soon find themselves being torn to shreds, reduced to a mangled pile of flesh. 

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