What Does “A Colony of Badgers” Mean?
“Colony” describes the genuinely social living arrangement of European badgers, which, unlike their more solitary American cousins, share elaborate underground burrow systems called setts, sometimes passed down and expanded across many generations of the same badger family. A well-established sett can be an impressively large structure, with multiple chambers, entrances, and even designated latrine areas kept separate from living space.
These colonies are typically built around related individuals and maintain a loose social hierarchy, with a dominant breeding pair and their offspring sharing the sett across multiple years. Sett systems can be remarkably long-lived pieces of local infrastructure, some documented setts in Britain are believed to have been in continuous use by badger colonies for well over a century, expanded and maintained by successive generations of the same badger lineage.
Example: “A colony of badgers had occupied the same hillside sett for as long as anyone in the village could remember.”
Related: Collective Nouns for Mammals