Let's go racing!
I caught some NASCAR this weekend. On Fox Sports. Yee haw.
I didn't watch it in great detail, and in fact I'm not sure the actual race was on while I was there... there was footage of some really spectacular crashes, and discussion of same (at least, there were talking heads on the screen, but the sound was down), but no apparent racing. But there was a CGI groundhog(?) that I guess is the mascot for Fox and/or NASCAR, and who has his own little cartoon shorts in between crash footage.
Instead of Bill Murray, this groundhog's nemesis is a badger security guard, and that's where I started paying attention.
There are two "badgers": one is the American Badger and one is the European Badger. (There's a number of related species, but those are the two that just get called unqualified "badger" in common usage.) European Badgers, Meles Meles, have the distinctive black-and-white striped face and pointy nose. American Badgers, Taxidea taxus, are similar, but the stripes aren't as distinct, they have black cheek patches as well, and the "black" is often turns to the grizzled silvery body color farther up on the head, and the head's not so pointy. If you ask someone what a badger looks like, chances are they'll describe the Eurasian variety, so it amuses me to find them depicted in clearly American settings as often happens. Yes, wildlife-art pedant humor.
And yes, the Fox badger (which Googling tells me is named "Lumpy Wheels"... mmkay) is distinctly European.
I didn't watch it in great detail, and in fact I'm not sure the actual race was on while I was there... there was footage of some really spectacular crashes, and discussion of same (at least, there were talking heads on the screen, but the sound was down), but no apparent racing. But there was a CGI groundhog(?) that I guess is the mascot for Fox and/or NASCAR, and who has his own little cartoon shorts in between crash footage.
Instead of Bill Murray, this groundhog's nemesis is a badger security guard, and that's where I started paying attention.
There are two "badgers": one is the American Badger and one is the European Badger. (There's a number of related species, but those are the two that just get called unqualified "badger" in common usage.) European Badgers, Meles Meles, have the distinctive black-and-white striped face and pointy nose. American Badgers, Taxidea taxus, are similar, but the stripes aren't as distinct, they have black cheek patches as well, and the "black" is often turns to the grizzled silvery body color farther up on the head, and the head's not so pointy. If you ask someone what a badger looks like, chances are they'll describe the Eurasian variety, so it amuses me to find them depicted in clearly American settings as often happens. Yes, wildlife-art pedant humor.
And yes, the Fox badger (which Googling tells me is named "Lumpy Wheels"... mmkay) is distinctly European.