SXR103 and badgers

Anyone who has taken the OU course "SXR103: Practising science" at the University of Sussex will have been to Beachy Head and looked at the magnificent chalk cliffs. They will also know that these cliffs were built by badgers many years ago - details here. Now I find that badgers built the shingle banks at Dungeness albeit by extension, i.e. when they built Beachey Head that led to the creation of Dungeness. This poster is at the RSPB Nature Reserve at Dungeness and it's a bit blurred because I was so excited to read this!

Chalk

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Originally uploaded by nogbad the bad

So now the dust has settled and I'm starting to wake up after two weeks of late nights and early mornings I can stand back from what I've learnt about geology.

These magnificent chalk cliffs were built by badgers some bazillion years ago. Why they created these cliffs is unknown but it's probably related to the need to keep the sea out and may have been motivated by the need to give bluebirds somewhere to fly (cf Dame Vera Lynn). Badgers are not thought to have been responsible for later work at Stonehenge.

It is no coincidence that they used chalk as the building material - this was before education so chalk wasn't being used in large amounts by schools, there was lots of it lying around with no real purpose.

Support for the badger theory is also offered by the way in which they inlaid bands of flint, these layers give a distinctive black and white pattern which is also synonymous with these nocturnal mammals.

I hope my writing this doesn't spoil SXR103 for any students yet to attend the residential school at the Uni of Sussex.