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The honey badger (Mellivora capensis, Ratel) is a member of the Mustelidae family. The honey badger is distributed throughout most of Africa and western and south Asian areas of Baluchistan (Eastern Iran), southern Iraq, Pakistan and Rajasthan (western India). It is the only species in the genus Mellivora and the subfamily Mellivorinae. The badgers have been named the most fearless animal in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Behaviour
The honey badger is found in arid grasslands and savannas. Honey badgers are fierce carnivores with a keen sense of smell. They are known for their snake-killing abilities; they use their jaws to grab a snake behind its head and kill it. Honey badgers can devour a snake (150 cm/5ft or less) in 15 minutes.
Badgers have a large appetite for beehives. Commercial honey producers do not take kindly to this destruction and sometimes shoot, trap, or poison badgers they suspect of damaging their hives, although ratel-proof commercial bee hives have been developed.
A bird, the honeyguide, has a habit of leading badgers and other large mammals to bees’ nests. When a badger breaks into the nest, the birds take their share. Other sources say that honeyguides are only known to guide humans; see Greater Honeyguide.
The badger is among the fiercest hunters in its range, with prey including earthworms, insects, scorpions, porcupines, hares, ground squirrels, meerkats, mongeese, and larger prey such as tortoises, crocodiles up to one metre in size, young gazelle and snakes (including pythons and venomous species). They also take lizards, small rodents, birds and fruit. The badger’s ferocious reputation reflects its tendency to attack animals larger than itself; it is seldom preyed upon.
In a 2002 National Geographic documentary titled “Snake killers: Honey badgers of the Kalahari”, a badger named Kleinman was documented stealing a meal out of a puff adder’s mouth and casually eating the meal in front of the hissing snake. After the meal, Kleinman began to hunt the puff adder, the species being one of the badger’s preferred venomous snakes. He managed to kill the snake and began eating it, but then collapsed on the dead snake as he had been bitten during the struggle. After about two hours he surprisingly awoke. Once his paralysis had subsided, the badger continued with his meal and then resumed his journey.
Honey badgers will dig into burrows of small rodents and flush them out for a small meal. The badger’s large front claws make it adept at digging, and it is usually successful at capturing rodents. Birds of prey and jackals, aware of the honey badger’s successful hunting strategies, tend to follow badgers and attempt to steal their kills.
Honey badgers are intelligent animals,and are one of few species capable of using tools. In the 1997 documentary series Land of the Tiger, a honey badger in India was filmed making use of a tool. The animal rolled a log and stood on it to reach a kingfisher fledgling stuck up in the roots coming from the ceiling in an underground cave.
The honey badger is predominantly solitary, although small family groups of up to three individuals are occasionally seen. They are nomadic and range over huge areas, which for an adult male may be as large as 600 km2.
In a recent study (2009) undertaken by the magazine Scientific American it has been found that pound for pound the honey badger is the world’s most fearsome land mammal as a result of its favorable claw to body ratio and aggressive behavioral tendencies. Anglia Television made a documentary on honey badgers called ‘The Meanest Animal Alive’. This film followed the lives of several honey badgers. It featured a young honey badger playing with blades of grass and digging in search of a mouse or lizard. ‘The Meanest Animal Alive’ was aired in the nineties on Animal planet and is on VHS.
Not so tough
Although honey badgers are famously tough. (South Africa’s National Defense Force calls its armored personnel carriers ratels, the Afrikaans word for these beasts.) But we discovered that they’re far from indestructible. Lions and leopards routinely kill them. The badgers’ appetite for ravaging beehives (thus their common name) causes conflicts with commercial honey producers, some of whom shoot, trap, or poison animals they suspect of damaging their hives. Females have just one offspring at a time—not the multicub litters previously assumed—and though they care for their young for more than a year after birth, half of all cubs succumb to predators or starvation and die before achieving independence.
Sources:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0409/feature6/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_Badger
Related topic:
Edwin’s note:
You read it all…you know it all…keep away from the badger, Guys
Photo galleries: Badger in action
Filed under: Awesomeness, Faunas
