Honey badger

• 1. Introduction

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  In 2007, while British forces occupied Basra Governorate in Iraq, rumours spread of man-eating badgers. The animal behind the story was the honey badger, Mellivora capensis. Some accounts even claimed that British troops had released the creatures. The British categorically denied it. An army spokesperson said the animals were "native to the region but rare in Iraq" and "are usually only dangerous to humans if provoked". That a mammal could be blamed for a wartime scare says something about its reputation. The honey badger, also called the ratel, is a solitary member of the weasel family. Why has so modest an animal earned such a fearsome name? What lets it stand its ground against animals far larger than itself? What does it eat, how does it raise its young, and where does it fit among its relatives? The answers begin with its skin.

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• 2. Armor in Loose Skin

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  The skin around a honey badger's neck is 6 millimetres thick. That armor suits an animal that fights others of its own kind. The rest of the skin is remarkably loose, so the badger can twist and turn inside it when something grabs hold. The head is small and flat, with a short muzzle. The eyes are small, and the ears are barely more than ridges on the skin, which may also help avoid damage in fights. Short, sturdy legs end in five toes on each foot. The claws on the forelimbs are remarkably long, while those on the hind legs stay short. The soles are thickly padded and bare up to the wrists.

  Adults stand 23 to 28 centimetres at the shoulder and measure 55 to 77 centimetres in body length. The tail adds another 12 to 30 centimetres. This makes the honey badger the largest land mustelid in Africa. African males weigh 9 to 16 kilograms, while females weigh 5 to 10. Across different studies, average adult weight runs from 6.4 to 12 kilograms, with a median of roughly 9. That ranks it third among badgers, behind the European badger and the hog badger, and fourth among living land mustelids once the wolverine is counted. Local conditions matter a great deal. Three wild females in Iraq averaged 18 kilograms. In India, by contrast, one adult female weighed just 6.4 kilograms, and two males had a median of 8.4.

  The teeth are unusual. Many develop irregularly, with some exceptionally small, some set at odd angles and some missing entirely. The cheek teeth are often heavily worn, even though the animal feeds mostly on soft foods. The canines are exceptionally short for a carnivore. The tongue carries sharp, pointed papillae that help with tough food.

  The winter coat is sparse, coarse and bristle-like. On the lower back it measures 40 to 50 millimetres, with minimal underfur. The summer coat is only 15 millimetres long on the back, and the belly is half bare. The sides of the head and the lower body are pure black. A broad white band runs from the top of the head to the base of the tail. The cottoni subspecies is unique in being entirely black.

  Beneath the tail sits an eversible anal pouch, a trait shared with hyenas and mongooses. Its smell is reportedly "suffocating", and it may help calm bees when the badger raids a hive.

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• 3. Territory and Threat

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  In the Serengeti National Park, a honey badger's daily rhythm follows the seasons. In the dry season it is mostly nocturnal. In the wet season it stays active through the day, with activity peaking around dawn and dusk. Studies in India's Sariska Tiger Reserve and Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary found the animals highly nocturnal. The species is mostly solitary, although pairs have been seen hunting together in Africa.

  The range is enormous. Honey badgers live across most of sub-Saharan Africa, from the Western Cape of South Africa to southern Morocco and southwestern Algeria. Beyond Africa they reach through Arabia, Iran and Western Asia to Turkmenistan and the Indian Peninsula. They have been recorded from sea level up to 2600 metres in the Moroccan High Atlas and 4000 metres in Ethiopia's Bale Mountains. Deserts, mountains and forests are the typical habitats, with annual rainfall anywhere from 100 to 2,000 millimetres.

  Digging is a core skill. A honey badger can tunnel into hard ground in 10 minutes. Its burrows usually have a single entrance and run 1 to 3 metres, ending in a nesting chamber with no bedding. It also moves into old burrows left by aardvarks and warthogs, and into termite mounds.

  Each adult controls a home range. Adult males average 548 square kilometres, while females average 138. A female's range changes mainly with food supply, especially while she rears young. A male's range depends on how many females are in heat, so it often overlaps the ranges of about 13 of them. Males are thought to keep a dominance hierarchy. Females tend to avoid one another, though their ranges overlap by 25 percent. Badgers mark their territories with anal gland secretions, feces and urine. In the wild they were confirmed to mark while squatting, a habit suggested to be an "important form of communication".

  When escape is impossible, the honey badger will reportedly attack almost any animal, even lions and hyenas. A threat display comes first. The badger rattles, raises goosebumps, holds its tail straight up, lifts its head high and charges. Sometimes it also releases a pungent yellow liquid from its anal glands. Bee stings, porcupine quills and animal bites rarely penetrate its skin. If horses, cattle or Cape buffalo wander into its burrow, it attacks them. Its voice is a hoarse "khrya-ya-ya-ya", and when facing dogs it screams like a bear cub. It is not untouchable, though. In the Cape Province, the African leopard and the Southern African rock python are potential predators.

  A 2018 study in the Serengeti found that large predators had no effect on honey badger numbers. The likely reading is that the badgers seek out the same kinds of areas that large predators favour, perhaps filling a similar ecological niche.

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• 4. Everything on the Menu

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  In Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, geckos and skinks made up 47.9 percent of the prey species honey badgers ate. Gerbils and mice made up another 39.7 percent. Yet the bulk of the prey by weight came from animals above 100 grams, such as cobras, young African rock pythons and South African springhares. Males and females caught similar-sized prey, despite the difference in their body size.

  The honey badger has the least specialised diet in the weasel family, apart from the wolverine. Much of its food comes from digging animals out of their burrows. It raids beehives for both larvae and honey. It also eats insects, frogs, tortoises, turtles, lizards, rodents, snakes, birds and eggs, along with berries, roots and bulbs. It devours every part of a kill, including skin, hair, feathers, flesh and bones, pinning the food down with its forepaws.

  In the Kalahari, honey badgers were seen attacking domestic sheep and goats, and killing and eating black mambas. In the Nama Karoo, one was suspected of breaking open the shells of tent tortoises. Some individuals have been seen chasing lion cubs away from a kill.

  A popular belief holds that a bird called the honeyguide leads honey badgers to hives. There is no evidence that this happens.

  Competition is real, however. A 2022 study in the southern Kalahari Desert found that black-backed jackals fed in ways that took food from honey badgers, cutting their total food intake above ground by 5 percent.

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• 5. Raising Cubs

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  Honey badger cubs are born blind and hairless, usually one or two at a time. The species has no set mating season and breeds at any time of year. Females have an estimated oestrus period of about 14 days. Gestation is thought to last 50 to 70 days.

  A mother gives birth in a den. For the first three months she carries her young from one shelter to another. When she goes foraging she leaves the cubs behind and returns to suckle them. Sightings of suckling are rare. In one observed case, a female lay on her back with her cub sitting upside down on her belly.

  At three to five weeks old, cubs begin to grow the black-and-white adult coat. Between eight and twelve weeks they follow their mother on foraging trips, and weaning takes place in the same window. A female stays with her cubs for about one to one and a quarter years. In that time she teaches them to climb, forage and hunt.

  Not every cub survives. In Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, one study put cub mortality at 37 percent, from predation, infanticide and starvation. Males are thought to mature sexually at two to three years old. Females are thought to mature around the time they become independent, and they migrate out of their mother's range soon after separating.

  How long a honey badger lives in the wild is unknown. Captive animals have lived for approximately 24 years.

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• 6. Names and Kin

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  In 1777, Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber described a honey badger skin from the Cape of Good Hope and named it Viverra capensis. Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr proposed the genus name Mellivora in 1780. John Edward Gray proposed a tribe name, Mellivorina, in 1865. In the 1860s the animal was placed with the badgers in the subfamily Melinae. Researchers now generally agree it has few similarities to them. It is much more closely related to the martens, the subfamily Guloninae, and it has its own subfamily, Mellivorinae. It is the only living species in its genus.

  The names carry their own stories. Mellivora comes from Latin and means "honey eater". The species name capensis points back to the Cape of Good Hope, where the first specimen was found. The origin of the word ratel is uncertain. It may come from the Dutch ratel, meaning rattle, or from the Dutch raat, meaning honeycomb.

  The lineage is old. The species first appeared in Asia during the middle Pliocene. Extinct relatives stretch back at least 7 million years to the Late Miocene. They include Mellivora benfieldi from South Africa and Italy, Promellivora from Pakistan and Howellictis from Chad. More distant kin include Eomellivora, which diversified in both the Old and New Worlds, and the giant, long-legged Ekorus from Kenya.

  During the 19th and 20th centuries, 16 specimens were described and proposed as subspecies. Size and the amount of white or grey on the back were key points of comparison. Twelve subspecies are now recognised. The white-backed ratel, leuconota, has an upper side of pure creamy white from the face to halfway down the tail, and lives in West Africa. The black ratel, cottoni, lives in Ghana and northeastern Congo. The speckled ratel, signata, from Sierra Leone, has an extra lower molar on the left side of its jaw. The newest, the Turkmenian ratel buechneri, was described by Baryshnikov in 2000 and is larger than its relatives in neighbouring regions.

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• 7. Trouble With People

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  One henhouse raid by a honey badger left 17 Muscovy ducks and 36 chickens dead. Surplus killing like this is common, and the animals are serious poultry predators. They rip thick planks from henhouses and dig under stone foundations, so they are hard to deter.

  Hunting them is no easier. Their tough, loose skin makes them very difficult to hunt with dogs, because they twist around on whatever holds them. The only safe grip is on the back of the head. Anywhere else, even the scruff of the neck, is highly dangerous.

  Disease adds another risk. In Kromdraai, South Africa, in July 2021, a seemingly rabid honey badger attacked a dog and several people in separate attacks over two days before it was shot. An autopsy confirmed rabies, which had spread from both wild and domestic canines. In Kenya the honey badger is a major reservoir of rabies and is suspected to be a significant contributor to the sylvatic cycle of the disease. Parasites known to infect the species include several flatworms and ticks. It has also been recorded with feline parvovirus.

  People have struck back hard. Beekeepers and farmers kill honey badgers, sometimes with poison or traps. The animals are also used in traditional medicine and as bushmeat. Control programmes aimed at other predators, such as caracals, have killed honey badgers by accident. Poisoning alone is thought to have wiped out many populations.

  Still, the IUCN Red List has classed the species as least concern since 2016, because its range is so extensive. Algeria, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan protect it. It also lives in protected areas such as Kruger National Park in South Africa and the Ustyurt Nature Reserve in Kazakhstan. Ghana and Botswana list their populations under CITES Appendix III. India protects its population under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

  Honey badgers are also kept as pets and shown in zoos. They are said to be easy to tame, and some reportedly stop using their anal glands. Even so, they often release the secretions when a handler touches them.

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• 8. Reputation and Myth

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  In Somalia, people believe a man becomes infertile after being bitten by a honey badger, so they give the animal a wide berth. In India, the badger has been accused of digging up human corpses.

  The modern internet-age image is far bolder. Popular media have called the honey badger "pound for pound, the most powerful creature in Africa", the "most fearless animal in the world", the "bravest animal in the world" and the "meanest animal in the world". Those titles come from its ability to repel larger predators. Coverage of those encounters has given audiences a sense of invincibility, and the threat display's noises add to the image.

  Intelligence is part of the legend too. The species is considered clever because it uses tools. A BBC documentary titled Honey Badgers: Masters of Mayhem showed captive animals working together as a team, using tools to open gates and enclosures.

  The attitude has even reached comics. The book Randall's Guide to Nastyass Animals: Honey Badger Don't Care celebrates the animal's supposed fearlessness. Bitcoin advocates have adopted the honey badger as a symbol of the currency, comparing its uncontrollability to the animal's famous toughness.

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