Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Badgers Digging Up Ancient Human Remains

Posted by samzenpus on from the someone-get-a-snake dept.

One of England's oldest graveyards is under siege by badgers. Rev Simon Shouler now regularly patrols the grounds of St. Remigius Church looking for bones that the badgers have dug up. The badger is a protected species in England so they can not be killed, and attempts to have them relocated have been blocked by English Nature. From the article: "At least four graves have been disturbed so far; in one instance a child found a leg bone and took it home to his parents. ... Rev. Simon Shouler has been forced to carry out regular patrols to pick up stray bones, store them and re-inter them all in a new grave."

5 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Burying Bodies by DirtyCanuck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it me or is the tradition of being buried becoming more and more ridiculous the further we venture into the reality that is the future.

    Frankly cremation is the current preference, that doesn't end in a badger exhumation.

    1. Re:Burying Bodies by sznupi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Burning wastes resources... and for what? (well, in many places burying does, too - seriously, concrete tombs and metal caskets?)

      A solace for living participants that there will be some reflection about them; preferably in an orderly manner. That they will be remembered - but ultimately we ourselves don't treat very old memorials, very old customs, very old faiths as anything more than archeological curiosities.

      PS. Also, Ig Nobel 2008:

      ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE. Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.
      REFERENCE: "The Role of Armadillos in the Movement of Archaeological Materials: An Experimental Approach," Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino, Geoarchaeology, vol. 18, no. 4, April 2003, pp. 433-60.

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    2. Re:Burying Bodies by Hylandr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      All these interstate highways have at least 50 feet of available burial ground between the lanes and small critters often don't have much of a chance at making it over to invade.

      Problem solved.

      - Dan.

      --
      ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
    3. Re:Burying Bodies by sznupi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's quite the other way around..."natural" burials scale exceedingly well. Number of people who have ever died is estimated at around 100 billion. Add to that countless other species in the time span of hundreds of millions of years, I don't think cremation of remains (not to mention industrial diamonds) is anywhere near scalable.

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
  2. Re:Vigilantism by Nursie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why would human remains trump badgers?

    Why should our emotional attachment to bit of dead folks mean that cute, furry, stripy badgers should be killed?

    I don't think it's the twilight zone. The UK has already wiped out pretty much every wild animal it ever had that was larger than a badger. And we like badgers.