Honey badgers (Mellivora capensis), also called ratels, are stocky carnivores found across Africa, Southwest Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Despite the name, they are not true badgers: honey badgers are the only living member of their own subfamily within the weasel family, Mustelidae, and they are best known for loose, thick skin and a fearless defense against much larger animals.
Honey badgers have remarkably loose skin that lets them twist around inside it and bite back when grabbed. Around the neck the skin is about 6 mm (0.24 inches) thick, and bee stings, porcupine quills and most animal bites rarely get through it.
They eat a wide range of food, from bee larvae and honey to snakes, lizards and rodents, and they dig much of it out of the ground with long, powerful front claws.
Honey badgers live in many different places across Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. They are found in deserts, mountains and forests, which helps explain why the species is still widespread.
Honey badger key facts
- Scientific name: Mellivora capensis, which means “honey eater from the Cape”.
- Size: 55 to 77 cm (22 to 30 inches) long, plus a 12 to 30 cm (4.7 to 11.8 inch) tail, and 23 to 28 cm (9 to 11 inches) tall at the shoulder.
- Weight: in Africa, males weigh 9 to 16 kg (20 to 35 lb) and females 5 to 10 kg (11 to 22 lb).
- Range: most of sub-Saharan Africa, plus Arabia, Iran and Western Asia to Turkmenistan and India, from sea level up to 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) in Ethiopia.
- Diet: mostly meat, including rodents, lizards, snakes, birds, eggs and insects, plus bee larvae, honey, berries and roots.
- Young: one or two cubs after a pregnancy of 50 to 70 days. Cubs stay with their mother for about a year to a year and a quarter.
- Lifespan: unknown in the wild. Captive honey badgers have lived about 24 years.
- Status: Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, but killed by beekeepers and farmers in many areas.
Main source for these figures: Honey badger on Wikipedia, which cites the IUCN assessment and field studies.
Anatomy and Characteristics
Honey badgers have physical features and defenses that make them hard to attack and hard to hold. They are the largest land-dwelling member of the weasel family in Africa.
Physical Attributes
Honey badgers have long, stocky bodies with a broad back and short, powerful legs. The head is small and flat, the eyes are small, and the ears are little more than ridges in the skin, which leaves little for an opponent to grab.
Each foot has five toes. The claws on the front feet are remarkably long and are used for digging. A honey badger can dig a tunnel into hard ground in about 10 minutes.
The coat is black on the sides and underside, with a wide white or grey band running from the top of the head to the base of the tail. One subspecies is completely black. Their teeth are strong, and they can crunch through tough foods such as tortoise shells.
Defense Mechanisms
Honey badgers have a pouch under the tail that can be turned outward. When threatened, they can release a strong-smelling yellow liquid from it to drive enemies away.
Their loose skin is their best defense. If a predator grabs them, they can turn around in their own skin and bite back. The skin is so tough and loose that hunting them with dogs is very difficult.
When cornered, a honey badger puts on a threat display: it rattles, raises its hair and tail, and charges with its head held high. Honey badgers have been reported to drive off lions and hyenas this way.
Habitat and Distribution
Honey badgers live across a wide range of habitats in Africa and Asia, from hot deserts to mountains and forests. They live in places with as little as 100 mm of rain a year and as much as 2,000 mm.
African Range
Honey badgers live across most of sub-Saharan Africa, from the Western Cape in South Africa north to southern Morocco and southwestern Algeria.
They are found in savanna grasslands, dry scrub and forests. They often reuse old burrows of aardvarks and warthogs, and termite mounds.
They also live high up. Honey badgers have been recorded at up to 2,600 meters (8,500 feet) in Morocco’s High Atlas and 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains.
Asian Territories
Outside Africa, honey badgers range through Arabia, Iran and Western Asia to Turkmenistan and the Indian Peninsula. In India, studies in the Sariska Tiger Reserve and the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary found them to be mostly active at night.
Diet and Foraging Behavior
The honey badger has one of the least specialized diets in the weasel family. It finds much of its food by digging it out of burrows.
Hunting Tactics
Honey badgers use their sharp claws to dig up prey. They chase down small mammals and birds, and they raid beehives for bee larvae and honey. They eat almost every part of their prey, including skin, hair, feathers and bones.
Their tough skin lets them go after dangerous prey. In the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, honey badgers were seen killing and eating black mambas, cobras and young rock pythons.
What Honey Badgers Eat
Honey badgers are mainly carnivores, but they also eat some plant food. Their diet includes:
- Rodents such as gerbils, mice and springhares
- Lizards, including geckos and skinks
- Snakes, including venomous species
- Birds and eggs
- Frogs, tortoises and turtles
- Insects and scorpions
- Bee larvae and honey
- Berries, roots and bulbs
Honey is a treat rather than a staple. In the Kgalagadi study, geckos and skinks made up nearly half of the prey species recorded, and gerbils and mice made up most of the rest.
Reproduction and Life Cycle
Honey badgers have no fixed mating season, and the mother raises her cubs alone.
Mating Habits
Honey badgers can mate at any time of year. Females are in heat for about 14 days at a time. A male’s home range can overlap with those of about 13 females.
Raising Cubs
Pregnancy lasts 50 to 70 days. The female usually gives birth to one or two cubs, born blind and hairless, in a den. For the first three months she moves them from one shelter to another.
Cubs start growing their black and white coat at three to five weeks old. At eight to twelve weeks they follow their mother on foraging trips. They stay with her for about a year to a year and a quarter, learning to climb, forage and hunt.
Not all cubs survive. In one study in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, 37 percent of cubs died, from predators, from other honey badgers and from starvation.
Behavioral Traits
Honey badgers are mostly solitary, roam over very large areas and are famous for their toughness.
Social Behavior
Honey badgers usually live alone, although pairs have been seen hunting together in Africa. Adult males have an average home range of 548 square kilometers (212 square miles), and females about 138 square kilometers (53 square miles).
They are strongly scent-driven and mark their ranges with secretions from their anal glands, droppings and urine.
Daily Activity
Honey badgers can be active at any time of day. In Tanzania’s Serengeti they were mostly nocturnal in the dry season but active through the day in the wet season, peaking around dawn and dusk.
They rest in burrows they dig themselves. These are usually only 1 to 3 meters (3 to 10 feet) long, with a single entrance and an unlined sleeping chamber.
Interaction With Other Species
Honey badgers are both predators and occasional prey, and they compete with other carnivores for food.
Predator-Prey Dynamics
Honey badgers hunt snakes, including venomous ones, along with rodents, lizards and insects.
They have few natural predators because of their thick skin, strength and aggressive defense. Leopards, lions and spotted hyenas do sometimes kill them, and in South Africa they are potential prey of the Southern African rock python. Cubs are the most vulnerable.
Competitive Encounters and Honeyguides
A 2022 study in the southern Kalahari found that black-backed jackals stole food from honey badgers, cutting their food intake above ground by about 5 percent.
A popular story says honeyguide birds lead honey badgers to beehives. Despite how often it is repeated, there is no good evidence that this happens, and scientists remain unconvinced.
Conservation Status
Honey badgers are not threatened with extinction overall, but they are killed in large numbers in some areas.
Threats
Honey badgers are hunted and killed by beekeepers and farmers, sometimes with poison or traps. Poison set out for other predators, such as caracals, also kills them, and many local populations are thought to have been wiped out by poisoning alone. They are also used in traditional medicine and as bushmeat.
Conservation Efforts
The IUCN lists honey badgers as Least Concern because of their very large range. They are legally protected in several countries, including Algeria, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and in India under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972.
Badger-proof beehives help reduce conflict with beekeepers, by keeping honey badgers out without harming them.
Human and Cultural Impact
Honey badgers clash with farmers and beekeepers, and they have also become a worldwide symbol of toughness.
Livestock Conflicts
Honey badgers can be serious poultry predators. They can rip planks off henhouses and dig under foundations, and they often kill more birds than they can eat. One raid killed 17 Muscovy ducks and 36 chickens.
Beekeepers face problems too, because honey badgers raid beehives for honey and larvae. Raising hives off the ground or strapping them shut helps keep them out.
Cultural Perceptions
In popular media, the honey badger is often called the most fearless animal in the world. That reputation comes from its habit of standing up to much larger predators and its noisy threat display.
It has also become a symbol for Bitcoin, whose fans compare the currency’s toughness to the animal’s. Not all of its fame is positive: some people fear it because of its fierce behavior.
In Popular Culture
The honey badger became an internet sensation through a viral video narrated by a character called Randall, which made “honey badger don’t care” a catchphrase and later became the comic book Randall’s Guide to Nastyass Animals.
A BBC documentary, Honey Badgers: Masters of Mayhem, showed captive honey badgers working together and using objects to escape their enclosures, which added to their reputation for intelligence.
Research and Study
Honey badgers are hard to study because they live at low densities and roam over huge areas.
Scientific Observations
Researchers face challenges when studying honey badgers in the wild. Individuals have no unique markings, which makes them hard to tell apart and to count. Camera traps help, but one study needed over 3,400 trap nights on average to record a single honey badger.
Advancements in Knowledge
Scientists have looked into how honey badgers resist snake venom. Fossils show the species first appeared in Asia in the middle Pliocene, and extinct relatives go back at least 7 million years.
Frequently asked questions
Are honey badgers actually badgers?
Not really. Honey badgers belong to the weasel family, Mustelidae, but they are the only living member of their own subfamily, Mellivorinae. They are more closely related to martens than to the European badger.
How big do honey badgers get?
Adults are 55 to 77 cm (22 to 30 inches) long without the tail and stand 23 to 28 cm (9 to 11 inches) at the shoulder. In Africa, males weigh 9 to 16 kg (20 to 35 lb) and females 5 to 10 kg (11 to 22 lb).
What eats honey badgers?
Very little. Their tough skin and fierce defense put most predators off, but leopards, lions, spotted hyenas and large rock pythons sometimes kill them. Cubs are at greater risk.
Are honey badgers immune to snake venom?
They are highly resistant rather than fully immune. Honey badgers regularly kill and eat venomous snakes such as cobras and black mambas, and research has looked at the changes in their bodies that help them survive bites.
Are honey badgers endangered?
No. The IUCN lists the honey badger as Least Concern because it has a very wide range. It is still persecuted by beekeepers and farmers, and some local populations have disappeared because of poisoning.