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Badger hair in shaving brushes from badgers
Journal
Biological Conservation
Short Communication. Received 2 February 2005. Available online 23 September
2005
Authors
Xavier Domingo-Roura, Josep Marmi,
Aïnhoa Ferrando, Francesc López-Giráldez, David W.
Macdonald and Hugh A.H. Jansman
Abstract
The Eurasian badger (Meles meles) is included in
Appendix III of the Bern Convention and protected by national laws in
many European countries. Badger hair is used to manufacture luxury
shaving brushes, although it is frequently argued that the hog badger (Arctonyx
collaris), which in Europe is an introduced and unprotected species, is
the origin of the hair used. We applied an extraction protocol to
recover DNA from the unrooted hair of shaving brushes obtained from
commercial companies in The Netherlands and Spain. The tested brushes
originated from The Netherlands, Spain, France, Italy and the United
Kingdom where the Eurasian badger is a protected species. We sequenced
191 bp of the mitochondrial DNA control region and 170 bp of the
cytochrome b gene and compared the sequences obtained with Eurasian
badger and hog badger reference sequences of the same mitochondrial DNA
regions obtained in our laboratory and from GenBank. Sequences obtained
from four shaving brushes were clearly hog badger sequences, whereas
four sequences clustered with Eurasian badger sequences of both European
and Asian origins. One of the shaving brushes made of Eurasian badger
was produced in France, where it is legal to capture or trade the
species under certain conditions. The remaining three brushes originated
from The Netherlands, where it is illegal to possess, sell, transport or
use for commercial purposes dead Eurasian badgers or products derived
from them.
Keywords
Meles; Arctonyx; Hair; Shaving brushes; DNA
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