The honey badger ( Mellivora capensis), also known as the ratel, is a mammal widely distributed across Africa, Southwest Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. It is the only living species in both the genus Mellivora and the subfamily Mellivorinae. The honey badger is part of the weasel family, related to skunks, otters, ferrets, and other badgers. This tough little critter has a stocky, flattened body with short, strong legs, along with long claws on the front feet for digging and defense. Renowned for its resilience and ability to fend off much larger animals, the honey badger is an omnivore with a highly adaptable diet.
Physical Characteristics and Adaptations
The honey badger has a fairly long body, with a distinctly thick-set and broad back. Adults measure 23 to 28 cm (9.1 to 11.0 in) in shoulder height and 55-77 cm (22-30 in) in body length, with the tail adding another 12-30 cm (4.7-11.8 in). Females are smaller than males, with males weighing 9 to 16 kg (20 to 35 lb) while females weigh 5 to 10 kg (11 to 22 lb) on average.
Remarkably loose skin allows the animal to turn and twist freely within it. The skin around the neck is 6 mm (0.24 in) thick, an adaptation to fighting conspecifics. The head is small and flat, with a short muzzle. The eyes are small, and the ears are little more than ridges on the skin, another possible adaptation to avoiding damage while fighting.
The honey badger has short and sturdy legs, with five toes on each foot. The feet are armed with very strong claws, which are short on the hind legs and remarkably long on the forelimbs. It is a partially plantigrade animal whose soles are thickly padded and naked up to the wrists.
The winter fur is long, being 40-50 mm (1.6-2.0 in) long on the lower back, and consists of sparse, coarse, bristle-like hairs, with minimal underfur. Hairs are even sparser on the flanks, belly, and groin. The summer fur is shorter (being only 15 mm (0.59 in) long on the back) and even sparser, with the belly being half bare. The sides of the head and lower body are pure black. The coat on the back consists largely of very long, pure white bristle-hairs amongst long, fine, black underfur.
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Distribution and Habitat
The honey badger ranges through most of sub-Saharan Africa, from the Western Cape, South Africa, to southern Morocco and southwestern Algeria and outside Africa through Arabia, Iran, and Western Asia to Turkmenistan and the Indian Peninsula. They live mainly in dry areas but are also found in forests and grasslands. The honey badger can adapt to a variety of conditions, from warm rain forests to cool mountains.
Solitary Nature and Home Ranges
The honey badger is mostly solitary, but has also been sighted in Africa to hunt in pairs. It also uses old burrows of aardvark, warthog, and termite mounds. In the Serengeti National Park, the activity levels of the honey badger was largely dependent on the time of year; in the dry season, it was mostly nocturnal, in contrast to the wet season, when it remained active throughout the day, reaching its zenith during crepuscular hours. In the Sariska Tiger Reserve in India, a study concluded that the honey badger was highly nocturnal; a study in the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary yielded similar results.
Adults control a patch of land known as a home range. Females establish a large home range that changes in size depending foremost on the abundance of food, and particularly when rearing young, while males' considerably larger home ranges depend on the availability of females in heat; this often leads to males' home ranges intersecting with that of about 13 females.
Adult males have an average home range of 548 sq km (212 sq mi), compared to females' average of 138 sq km (53 sq mi). It is suggested that adult males have a dominance hierarchy, and that females tend to avoid contact with each other, displaying less profound territorial behavior in spite of the 25% overlap in female home ranges.
Generalist Carnivores
Honey badgers are generalist carnivores with an extremely wide diet. The Kruger National Park’s habitats are perfectly suited to support the needs of all its inhabitants, whether it’s herbivores grazing on grasses or carnivores hunting for meat. The Kruger is home to a remarkable range of species and every animal has access to the food it needs to survive. The park’s mixture of grasslands, woodlands, and riverine areas provides food for herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores alike.
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More than sixty species of prey were recorded from the southern Kalahari alone. The honey badger's diet consists of a very wide variety of prey. They feed on insects, frogs, tortoises, turtles, lizards, rodents, snakes, birds and eggs. It also eats berries, roots and bulbs. Though their name gives us some hints as to their diet, honey badgers are less picky than most other members of the weasel family. They eat honey, bee larvae, insects, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, berries, roots, and more. Although honey badgers are omnivores, their diet is primarily that of a carnivore. The mean prey mass ranges in size from 2 to 2000 g.
The honey badger has some adaptations for this diet. The teeth often display signs of irregular development, with some teeth being exceptionally small, set at unusual angles or absent altogether. Although it feeds predominantly on soft foods, the honey badger's cheek teeth are often extensively worn.
Dietary Components
Insects and Larvae: Insects and their larvae feature strongly in the honey badger's diet. A favorite is the larvae of dung beetles, hidden away in an incredibly hard, compacted dung ball. These are cracked open as a delicacy.
Scorpions: Scorpions are disarmed by biting off the tail first and are then devoured.
Small Vertebrates: It feeds on a wide range of animals and seems to subsist primarily on small vertebrates. Honey badgers studied in Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park preyed largely on geckos and skinks (47.9% of prey species), gerbils and mice (39.7% of prey). The bulk of its prey comprised species weighing more than 100 g (3.5 oz) such as cobras, young African rock python and South African springhare.
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Snakes: For the honey badger snakes don’t arouse any such fear; they remain undaunted, no matter which snake it is. Snatching at them and tormenting them, tiring them out as the snake defends itself, and eventually biting the snake behind the head to break the spinal cord is their usual method of attack. The dense mantle of fur along the back and neck protects against the bite. Their skin is very thick and has poor blood supply due to there being no blood vessels close to the surface, and so the venom is spread very slowly. Of all the reptilian prey puff adders appear to be high on the preferred list, being eaten regularly.
Honey and Bee Larvae: It often raids beehives in search of both bee larvae and honey. This is where it gets its common name.
Plant Matter: Though a predominantly carnivorous diet, honey badgers also eat fruit, roots, and bulbs.
Hunting and Foraging Behavior
Honey badgers generally hunt alone. They find food by walking slowly continuously smelling mouse and small reptile holes and scent trails. They find most of their prey through digging. The honey badger is a skilled digger, able to dig tunnels into hard ground in 10 minutes. These burrows usually have only one entry, are usually only 1-3 m (3 ft 3 in - 9 ft 10 in) long with a nesting chamber that is not lined with any bedding. They climb up into the uppermost branches of trees to raid bird nests or bee hives.
Activity Patterns
In the southern Kalahari, honey badgers switch from being predominantly nocturnal in summer and diurnal in Winter. However, in areas where honey badgers are affected by human activities they are usually nocturnal. In the Serengeti National Park, the activity levels of the honey badger was largely dependent on the time of year; in the dry season, it was mostly nocturnal, in contrast to the wet season, when it remained active throughout the day, reaching its zenith during crepuscular hours. In the Sariska Tiger Reserve in India, a study concluded that the honey badger was highly nocturnal; a study in the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary yielded similar results.
Interactions with Humans and Livestock
Honey badgers often become serious poultry predators. Because of their strength and persistence, they are difficult to deter. They are known to rip thick planks from hen-houses or burrow underneath stone foundations. Surplus killing is common during these events, with one incident resulting in the death of 17 Muscovy ducks and 36 chickens. Some beekeepers kill any honey badgers they see just to protect their beehives. However, since honey badgers can’t jump, many beekeepers have found that simply securing the beehives a few feet higher off the ground discourages honey badgers from climbing up to reach them and keeps the bees and their honey safe.
Conservation Status and Threats
As of 2016, the honey badger is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List due to its extensive range. It is mostly threatened by killings from beekeepers and farmers, sometimes with the use of poisons or traps, and is used in traditional medicine and as bushmeat. In other cases, control programs that were meant for other predators such as caracals have led to unintentional honey badger deaths.