Honey Badger (Mellivora capensis): Facts, Diet and Behavior

What does a honey badger look like?

A honey badger is built low and broad, with a long, thick-set body, short sturdy legs and a small, flat head. The lower half of the body, legs and face are black or dark brown, while a wide gray-to-white mantle runs from the top of the head to the base of the short, bushy tail. The contrast is a warning signal, much like a skunk’s stripes.

The ears are little more than small ridges of skin and the eyes are small, features that may help protect them in fights. The front feet carry very long, strong claws for digging, while the hind feet have short claws. In one subspecies from central Africa the whole animal is black, without the pale back.

The skin is the honey badger’s best-known feature. It is unusually loose, so a badger gripped by a predator can twist round inside it and bite back, and it is thick, around 6 mm (0.24 in) on the neck. The coarse, bristly fur is sparse, with little soft underfur.

How big is a honey badger?

The honey badger is the largest land-dwelling mustelid in Africa. Adults measure 55–77 cm (22–30 in) from nose to rump, plus a tail of 12–30 cm (5–12 in), and stand only 23–28 cm (9–11 in) at the shoulder.

Males are markedly bigger than females, by about a third in Kalahari studies. Asian honey badgers tend to be a little smaller than African ones, although a few unusually heavy individuals have been reported from the Middle East.

Is the honey badger really a badger?

Despite the name, the honey badger is not a close relative of the European badger or the American badger. Genetic studies place it in its own subfamily, Mellivorinae, of which it is the only living species, and show that it is closer to the martens and the wolverine. Its badger-like shape is a case of similar lifestyles producing similar bodies.

The genus name Mellivora means “honey eater” in Latin, and capensis refers to the Cape of Good Hope, where the first specimen described by science came from. Around 12 subspecies are recognized, differing mainly in size and in how pale the back is.

Where do honey badgers live?

Honey badgers have one of the widest ranges of any African carnivore. They occur across most of sub-Saharan Africa, from the Western Cape of South Africa north to Senegal, Ethiopia and southern Morocco and Algeria. Outside Africa they range through the Arabian Peninsula, Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Iran into Turkmenistan and neighboring parts of central Asia, and east to Pakistan, India and Nepal.

They are absent from the driest core of the Sahara and the Mediterranean coast, but otherwise use almost any habitat with shelter: savanna, dry woodland, thornbush, semi-desert, rocky hills, riverside forest and moist forest. They have been recorded from sea level up to about 4,000 m (13,000 ft) in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains.

What does a honey badger eat?

Honey badgers are opportunistic carnivores with one of the broadest diets in the weasel family. They dig out most of their food, taking gerbils, mice, geckos, skinks, scorpions, beetle and bee larvae, frogs, birds and eggs, and they kill larger prey such as springhares and snakes, including cobras, puff adders and the black mamba. They also eat carrion and some berries, roots and bulbs.

The famous beehive raids are real. Honey badgers tear open wild and managed hives, mainly to eat the protein-rich bee larvae as well as honey and wax, and their thick skin protects them from most stings. The popular story that a bird, the greater honeyguide, leads badgers to hives has never been confirmed in the wild. The full menu, season by season, is covered in what do honey badgers eat.

In the Kalahari, field studies found that adult males ate about 1.3 kg (2.9 lb) of food a day and females about 0.9 kg (2 lb), with prey ranging from 2 g to about 2 kg (4.4 lb).

Behavior and daily life

Honey badgers are mostly solitary. Each adult roams a large home range: in the southern Kalahari, males used on average around 540 km² (210 sq mi) and females around 130 km² (50 sq mi), and a male could walk up to about 27 km (17 mi) in a day while foraging. Ranges overlap widely, and a dominant male’s range may cover those of a dozen or more females.

They can be active by day or night, depending on season, temperature and disturbance; near people they are mostly nocturnal. A badger digs fast and well, and rests in its own burrow, an old aardvark or warthog hole, a rock crevice or a termite mound, often changing shelter every day.

Scent is central to their social life. Honey badgers mark with urine, feces and a pungent secretion from an anal pouch that can be turned inside out, a trait they share with hyenas and mongooses. When threatened they raise their hair and tail, give a harsh rattling growl, release a strong-smelling liquid and charge. This display explains much of their reputation, discussed in are honey badgers really fearless?

Captive honey badgers have become famous for escaping enclosures by stacking objects, opening gates and using sticks or rakes, which suggests good problem-solving skills, though such tool use has rarely been documented in the wild.

Reproduction and life cycle

Honey badgers breed at any time of year, although in southern Africa mating peaks between September and December. After a gestation of roughly 50–70 days, the female gives birth in a burrow, usually to one cub, occasionally two. Newborns are blind and hairless; one captive-born cub weighed about 0.23 kg (0.5 lb) at two days old.

For the first two to three months the cub stays underground while its mother forages, and she moves it between burrows by carrying it in her mouth, every few days on average. From about three months the young badger follows her on foraging trips and learns to dig and hunt. Cubs stay with their mother for 12–16 months, an unusually long time for a carnivore of this size, so a female breeds only once every 14–24 months.

Females are thought to mature at about the time they become independent, while males take two to three years. Cub mortality is high; in one Kalahari study more than a third of cubs died from predation, infanticide or starvation.

How long do honey badgers live?

The lifespan of wild honey badgers is poorly known. Estimates suggest that most live around 7–8 years, limited by injuries, starvation and predation. In zoos they live much longer, with records of about 24–26 years.

Predators and threats

Adult honey badgers have few natural enemies, but they are not invulnerable. Lions, leopards and spotted hyenas do kill them, especially old, weak or young animals, and large pythons occasionally take them. Black-backed jackals sometimes follow badgers to steal prey they flush.

People are the main threat. Honey badgers are killed by beekeepers and poultry farmers whose hives and henhouses they raid, sometimes with poison or traps meant for other predators, and they are taken for bushmeat and traditional medicine in parts of their range. Road traffic and habitat loss add to the losses, and badgers can catch rabies from dogs and jackals.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List classifies the honey badger as Least Concern (assessed in 2016) because of its huge range and its tolerance of many habitats. It is naturally scarce, however, living at low densities, and it has disappeared from some farmed and settled areas. The species is legally protected in a number of range countries, including India, Morocco, Algeria and several central Asian states.

In South Africa, conservation groups have worked with beekeepers to promote raised or secured hives that badgers cannot reach, helping honey production and badgers to coexist.

Myths and facts

“Honey badgers are immune to snake venom.” Not quite. They have a genetic change that makes their muscles resistant to the main nerve toxins of cobras and mambas, but they can still be knocked out or killed by bites. The details are in are honey badgers immune to venom?

“Honeyguide birds lead honey badgers to beehives.” This much-repeated partnership has never been reliably observed. Greater honeyguides do guide human honey hunters, which is well documented.

“Honey badgers fear nothing.” They defend themselves ferociously and will stand up to much larger animals when cornered, but they also flee, hide and avoid danger like any other wild animal.

“Cheetah cubs copy honey badgers.” This is a real but unproven idea. Young cheetahs have a long silvery-gray mantle on a dark body, and some biologists have suggested it imitates the colors of the aggressive honey badger to deter predators.