How do badgers eat yew berries without being poisoned?

Abstract

Introduction Badgers are opportunistic omnivores with a very broad diet. They are increasingly common at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, having originated in Richmond Park and entered the gardens in the early 1980s at the southern end. Neal (1948) mentions “one reported at Kew recently”, so there appears to have been an absence of nearly 40 years. Badgers have since inhabited most of the gardens with at least 24 ‘setts’ reported by 2005 (Martin 2005).