What Do Honey Badgers Eat? Honey, Snakes and Scorpions

A carnivore that eats almost anything

The honey badger is an opportunistic carnivore with one of the broadest diets in the weasel family. It hunts mostly by smell, walking with its nose to the ground, and when it detects prey underground it digs it out with its long front claws.

A long-term study in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in the Kalahari followed habituated honey badgers on foot and recorded what they caught. Prey ranged from tiny insect larvae of about 2 g to animals of around 2 kg (4.4 lb), and males and females caught prey of similar size even though males are much larger.

How the diet changes with the seasons

What a honey badger eats depends on what is easiest to find. In the Kalahari study, small mammals made up about 80% of the diet in the hot, dry season from September to December, when rodents are abundant. In the hot, wet season from January to April, large snakes made up much of the food eaten, about 58% in that study.

Small lizards and rodents are caught most often, but each one is a small meal. Larger animals such as snakes and springhares are caught less often but provide much of the food by weight. Adult males ate on average about 1.3 kg (2.9 lb) per day and females about 0.9 kg (2 lb).

Snakes on the menu

Snakes are the honey badger’s most famous prey. In southern Africa they eat mole snakes, sand snakes, Cape cobras, horned adders, puff adders and even young African rock pythons, and they have been seen killing and eating the black mamba. They often find snakes resting in burrows or under cover and dig them out.

Badgers are partly resistant to the nerve toxins of cobras and mambas, but they are not immune, and they can be knocked out by a bite. The science behind this is explained in are honey badgers immune to venom?

Scorpions, larvae and other small prey

Many of the honey badger’s meals are small and come from underground. They dig up burrowing scorpions, including venomous species, beetle grubs, termites and the larvae of solitary bees. They also break into rodent warrens and the burrows of other small carnivores; meerkats, yellow mongooses, Cape foxes, striped polecats and African wildcats have all been recorded as prey.

Honey badgers climb well and sometimes raid bird nests in trees, taking chicks and eggs. In the Kalahari they have been seen catching owls, sandgrouse and the small birds that roost inside the huge communal nests of sociable weavers.

Raiding beehives

The name “honey badger” comes from the animal’s habit of breaking into the nests of honey bees, including the African subspecies of the western honey bee. It tears open hollow logs, tree holes and rock crevices with its claws, and eats the honeycomb, honey and especially the brood: the larvae and pupae, which are rich in protein and fat.

Thick skin and coarse fur protect it from most stings. Some observers have suggested that the strong-smelling secretion from its anal pouch may calm or drive off the bees, but this has not been well tested. Honey badgers also raid managed beehives, which brings them into conflict with beekeepers; raising hives on stands or securing them has helped beekeepers and badgers coexist in parts of Africa.

Does a bird lead honey badgers to honey?

A famous story says that the greater honeyguide, a small African bird that eats beeswax, leads honey badgers to bees’ nests, then feeds on the leftovers. The story appears in many books and documentaries, but there is no reliable field evidence that it happens. A 1990 review by ornithologists found no confirmed eyewitness accounts, and researchers who followed honey badgers for years in the Kalahari never saw it.

The bird’s partnership with humans, on the other hand, is real and well studied. In parts of Africa, such as northern Mozambique and Tanzania, honeyguides lead human honey hunters to wild hives and eat the wax once the people have opened the nest.

Carrion, kills and camp scraps

Honey badgers are not fussy. They scavenge carcasses, take food from the kills of larger predators, and occasionally attack livestock such as sheep, goats and poultry. Around safari camps in national parks, some badgers have learned to search for scraps around barbecue areas and to raid garbage bins at night.

This flexibility is a big part of their success. Being able to switch between rodents, reptiles, insects, carrion and honey lets honey badgers survive in habitats as different as Kalahari dunes, East African savanna and Indian forest.