For anyone who has any questions about wildlife in Britain there is a fabulous resource that’s free and available to anyone. This is the Wild About Britain website, and in particular the forums there. You can ask any question and get an answer from a huge range of experts and enthusiasts.
I asked the question about badgers being able to see the infra-red light from my night vision scope, and one response seemed to match my experiences exactly. This is from a WAB member called stripee:
Yes they can see it and always react. Some more nervously than others. I have a night vision scope with infra red. The badgers, foxes etc don’t like it shone in their eyes. I try to shine it for short periods and not directly at them.
If you look at your scope when the red light is on from the front it can be seen for a long distance at a certain angle. I had heard that badgers don’t see red light, but it just isn’t true.
This is good. This backs up what I have observed. It isn’t scientific proof yet, but it adds to the anecdotal evidence.
I’ll keep searching and see what else I can find out. In the meantime I’ll also try some informal experiments and see if I can get some more evidence. There are more formal experiments that could be done to prove the matter one way or another (I’m thinking of a version of the Skinner Box with an infra-red stimulus) but I’d need a fairly captive population of badgers to try it on. If any biology students are looking for an idea for a project, let me know…
I agree with Pablo, the scopes may be emitting a high frequency whine. The first infra red scopes used to emit a whine that was audible to some humans if they had good hearing.
Why not try using just a plain torch with a red filter and a pair of binoculars. They tolerate red light as long as you dont suddenly turn it on directly into their eyes – bring it in to view gradually.
I sincerely hope that there are not any scientists out there who would put a badger in a small cage and give it electric shocks just to find out if it could see infra-red light – I think I would rather not know.
However I doubt that is what you had in mind BM! 🙂
There may be a group of badgers that living free in a research area (such as Woodchester Park) which could be used for some more humane kind of study to see if they reacted to infra-red. Try contacting Proffessor Steven Harris at Bristol University.
Hi Josie – don’t worry. I’m not thinking of any sort of electric shock treatment. There are easier ways of doing this. Being a psychologist I get fascinated by these sorts of experiments and I tend to assume that everyone thinks the way that I do.
What I was thinking of was to have at least three food dispensers that are activated by the badger pressing a pedal. Then, all you have to do is to train the badgers to press the pedal to get food. I don’t know how easy this is for badgers, but it works with most animals and badgers are both curious and fairly bright, so it should be possible. Once the badgers have got used to the idea of pressing the pedal and getting a snack, you arrange the system so that one of the food dispensers shows (or is illuminated by) an infra-red light and the other dispensers are turned off. The badgers can now only get food from the infra-red dispenser, and if they can see the infra-red then they’ll learn to go to this dispenser. You then swap the dispensers around so that a different one is illuminated and then count the number of visits the badgers make to each dispenser. Repeat with random dispensers illuminated. If they can truly see infra-red then they’ll go to the illuminated one much more frequently.
So, all quite humane really. For the curious, the process is known as operant conditioning. This sort of thing was a staple of behaviourist psychology in the 1960s. I’m not sure it proved much other than that it is possible to train animals to do almost anything, but the techniques can still be useful.
In the meantime, I’ll continue my own informal experiments with the NV scope, with IR on and off, and see what I can find out.
I remember a lecture at the Badger Conference about a similar experiment. The aim of the experiment was to determine if the badgers could determine the difference between the scent of different caudal gland secretions. With one scent they were rewarded with food, the other scents no food (this was a captive group of badgers). Needless to say badgers passed the test with flying colours.
I didnt really think you intended to do anything mean to the badgers …. I just find it hard to understand why some scientists ever thought they might get better results giving rats electric shocks than by giving them rewards. Mind you even some dog owners have not worked out that rewards work better than punishment when training their pets.
Good luck with the IR experiments – I suppose if you use the scope on them enough you should get a fairly good idea about whats going on – even if it is not 100% scientifically sound.
I used to watch a badger sett 18 years ago using only a hunting lamp fixed to a monopod with a pair of 10×50 binoculars on top.
badgers do become acustommed to normal torch light very quickly, just start of with a small/dim torch and gradualy increase the size/brightness.
I have watched deer and foxes using a hunting lamp and the soon become used to the light. as long as your field craft is good you will not disturb them too much.
kev.
Hi Kevin, and welcome. I’ve heard about badgers getting accustomed to lights, and I’m sure it does no harm if done properly. I’ve had a few goes at following badgers away from the sett using a torch, and they didn’t seem too bothered. Mind you, I’m still trying to keep these badgers as ‘wild’ as possible, hence the night vision scope. Let’s hope it works that way.
All the best, BWM