My Weekend Crush

Sometimes you just need a little reminder that very different, totally separate entities can still coexist peacefully. And, even more important, that they can actually like and help one another. Here a coyote and a badger use a culvert to cross a highway through the Santa Cruz Mountains in California. The video of this wonderful, playful interaction was posted by the nonprofit Peninsula Open Space Trust which works to preserve land for people and animals to enjoy forever.

The video was posted earlier this month in a post that read:

“We know from scientific studies and Native American records that coyotes and badgers have been known to hunt together. But this is the first documentation (that we know of) where a coyote and badger use a human-made structure to travel together safely.

This video was captured recently as part of our research to better understand how wildlife moves across the southern Santa Cruz Mountains. We have more than 50-remote sensor cameras helping us capture scenes like this which we use to inform our land conservation work.

While badgers have been seen on occasion during our research, they are one of the more rare species for us to capture on camera. Since they prefer to spend most of their time underground, we don’t get a glimpse of them all that often. So, seeing one with a coyote moving through a small space like this is very rare.

With the information we’re collecting from this research, we are building a robust data set to identify the areas where wildlife can safely move across roadways as well as the areas that need to be enhanced for safer crossing. It’s all a part of our work to build a network of protected open space, something we’ve been working on since our founding in 1977.

It’s a real treat when we get videos like this – ones that show some personality and remind us of the relationships between these wild animals and how playful they can be. For more great wildlife videos, check out our recent post that goes into the details of this latest research.”

Right, so if a coyote and a badger - two very different predators - can get along, show mutual respect and act in ways that benefit them both certainly us dumb humans can try a little harder to do the same. Or, if nothing else, perhaps some not-so-dumb human can turn this into a movie. In which case, TAKE MY DUMB HUMAN MONEY. Happy weekend and Valentine’s Day all.