Animal File: The Honey Badger
- Animals Everything
- Apr 27, 2019
- 4 min read
You may be wondering why I chose the honey badger for my first wild animal post. Here is my answer to that: why not? The honey badger is a truly fierce creature. They are very determined and will do almost anything to get things they want. They don't really care if they get hurt along the way and are very tough and rough. Let's explore more about the honey badger in this post.
Classification and Relatives of the Honey Badger:
The scientific name of the Honey Badger is mellivora capensis.
Kingdom: Animalia, aka Animals Phylum: Chordata, aka notochord animals Sub-Phylum: Vertebrata, aka vertebrates Class: Mammalia, aka mammals Order: Carnivora, aka mostly or partly carnivorous Family: Mustelidae, aka its relatives, which I will show next Sub-Family: Melivorinae Genus: Mellivora Species: Capensis
Relatives: The honey badger is in the family called mustelidae so it is related to all other mustelidae. It is the 2nd largest mustelidae and the wolverine is the largest. The honey badger is in a different genus than the american badger, though. It is closer in relation to weasels than other badgers, but is still related to them.
It is related to the...
Appearance:
The honey badger has a unique and interesting appearance.
#1) Honey badgers have glossy black coats with a white patch over their heads, shoulders, and neck that looks similar to a cape.
#2) The honey badger has small, bright eyes.
#3) This badger has fleshy lips that cover the strong jaws underneath them.
#4) They have very sharp claws and shovel-like paws to help them scoop out dirt.
#5) The honey badger is "born for battle." It has low, heavy shape with short, bowed legs.
The honey badger usually weighs 25 to 35 pounds and is 12 inches tall at the shoulder.
Habitat:
1) Honey badgers are found throughout Africa and Asia. They live in areas like Congo, India, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, and many more more countries.
2) They typically live in dry areas, but will live in forests and grasslands.
3) They are burrowers, and can dig their hole 6 feet deep with around 7 or 8 tunnels branching off of it, forming a star shape.
Diet & Predators
The honey badger is an omnivore. The honey badger hunts by smell and tracks its prey down. It is great at hunting rats, but will also eat snails, slugs, snakes, rabbits, turtles, and sometimes porcupine. It also really enjoys eating honey. They will also eat insect larvae, beetles, and scorpions when food is scarce and they need an easy meal. Most of the time they catch their prey in holes. They can dig as many as 50 holes in a single foraging period. They also will eat fruit and any unprotected eggs they may find. Badgers will literally eat ANYTHING! There are 60 recorded species of prey to the honey badger in the southern Kalahari alone.
A honey badger may believe it's indestructible, but it is not. They have a few predators that they can sometimes fight off, but not always. The predators of a honey badger are lions, hyenas, cheetahs, leopards, and hunting dogs.
Note: Below is a slide I took a screenshot of from a slideshow I created.
Also, honey badgers are known to be solitary, but reports have shown it isn't uncommon to see them in mating pairs.
Interesting Fact 1: Honey Guide
As you already know, honey badgers have a sweet tooth for honey. You may wonder: How do they get it? A good guess would be by their sense of smell, and they might do that, but there's an even easier method for them. They will follow this bird known as the honey guide until it leads them to honey. Once they find the honey bee's hive, they attack it fearlessly. Their skin is so tough that they can withstand hundreds of stings with the stingers unable to touch them when digging at the hive for the honeycomb. In conclusion the honey badger LOVES honey and it benefits from the honey guide. Below is the sound of the honey guide which is how the honey badger finds them and can use the sound to follow it.
Interesting Fact 2: Snake vs. Honey Badger
Honey badgers are able to kill many types of snakes. They can take down mambas, cobras, and puff adders. They can survive a venomous snake's bite. Its skin is tough enough to where most fangs can't penetrate it. If the venom does get into their system, they usually go into a "coma" where they can rest from a few minutes to a couple hours. This usually doesn't happen until after they've managed to kill it. Also, the badger can be killed if enough venom enters it system because it isn't immune to it. When the badger does wake up it then eats its snake snack from which it earned in a difficult battle of skill.
Adopt a Honey Badger
The World Wildlife Fund for Nature offers a place where you can donate to global conservation efforts by "adopting" a honey badger. I'm going to make it clear that you don't get an actual honey badger. The things you get depend on which package you select. The maximum impact is the $55 Honey Badger Virtual Adoption. You don't get anything but it makes the biggest impact for the honey badger. The most popular is the $55 Honey Badger Adoption Kit. The kit includes a 12" honey badger plush, a photo, an adoption certificate, a species card, and a gift bag. You can also do a $25 or $100 donation. Here is the website address: https://gifts.worldwildlife.org/gift-center/gifts/species-adoptions/honey-badger.aspx
For more info on the Honey Badger check out these sites:
Picture Credits:
Thank you for reading my post. I hope you now know more about the honey badger and have become more aware from it. More posts coming soon so stay tuned. Bye!
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