Badger's bloodcurdling mating cries cause helicopter man-hunt in Germany

The bloodcurdling mating cries of a German badger caused Rhineland police to deploy a helicopter search in the belief that a woman was being attacked.

Several people in the small town of Linz, located on the Rhine river in western Germany, had phoned the authorities after hearing screams coming from a nearby forest.

Alarmed by the reports, the police station called for a helicopter search, which was carried out with special night vision to scan local woodland.



"Nervous residents rang the police station and said they had heard several loud, frightened screams of a woman in a forest nearby," said a police spokesman in Linz. But after the helicopters had thoroughly surveyed the area, they discovered a far less murderous cause of the chilling cries than had originally been feared.

Instead of a violent maniac and his terrified victim, they discovered a number of romantically inclined badgers engaged in the pursuit of love.

"Subsequent enquiries found that the mating calls of a badger during the mating season in July and August are easily mistaken for human screaming," said the police.