Honey Badgers

[00:00:00] Alex Re: Hello. Welcome to On Wildlife. I'm your host, Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you. We take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week, and I guarantee you you're going to come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. Today, we're going to look at an animal that could give Winnie the Pooh a run for his money.

[00:00:22] While they do have a sweet tooth, they're also an animal that very few want to mess with. And I hope you like getting a little dirty. Because we might be looking into some underground burrows to talk about honey badgers.

[00:00:34] Honey badgers belong to the mustelid family. So some of their closest relatives are weasels, ferrets, and otters. They're the largest mustelid in Africa. Adults can be around two and a half feet long and weigh around 35 pounds. Their scientific name is Melivora capensis, and if we break it down, we can learn more about the honey badger's behavior.

[00:00:59] In Latin, melli means honey, and vora means to eat. And they're named this because honey badgers love to eat honey. And we'll talk more about this later on in the episode. They're also known as ratels. And a group of honey badgers is called a seat. They're the only living species in the Melivora genus, but there are 12 recognized subspecies.

[00:01:22] Most of the subspecies are separated either by where they live or how long their coat is. And one subspecies, called the Speckled Ratel, is separated by its unique extra molar on the left side of its jaw. Honey badgers are native to most of Africa, India, and parts of Asia. They can survive in a variety of different biomes, including deserts, savannas, and forests.

[00:01:49] And you can recognize a honey badger from its distinct coloration. It has white fur along the top part of its body, going from the head to the tail. The rest of its body is completely black. They also display sexual dimorphism, where males and females have different characteristics. Males are larger than the females, and researchers think that this is to help avoid competition for prey between the two sexes.

[00:02:17] Being native to such a dry, hot environment like Africa, heat regulation is a vital piece of survival for honey badgers. They're extremely well adapted to this climate, though. Generally, they're nocturnal, so they don't have to go outside during the hottest times of the day. Some research has shown that as the temperature shifts in their environment with the seasons, so does the honey badger's habits.

[00:02:43] They've been observed being more active during the day when it gets colder outside. This is a good piece of evidence to support the idea that the reason that they're nocturnal is to avoid overheating. They also spend a lot of their time in burrows underground, where it's much cooler. Honey badgers have five toes on each foot, which are armed with long, sharp claws.

[00:03:08] The claws on the front feet are longer than the claws on the back. And these front claws help them dig their burrows and tear apart their food. The burrows, or dens, are usually around 9 feet in length and reach roughly 5 feet underground. They'll usually build a large open chamber at the end where they can curl up to sleep.

[00:03:31] They're also extremely resourceful and often use hollowed out trees. rock crevices, and even burrows from other animals like aardvarks as homes as well. They'll most likely have multiple dens and rarely return to the same one two days in a row. Another unique feature that honey badgers have is their anal pouch, which has scent glands in it.

[00:03:55] This pouch is eversible, meaning that it can be turned inside out. This is a trait shared by mongoose and hyenas, too. They do this when scenting territory, which is basically marking an area to let others know that it's their property. And similar to skunks, they can release a foul smelling odor from their anal pouch if they feel threatened.

[00:04:19] But the scent glands also have another purpose, and it's really amazing. But in order to talk about that, we have to talk about their diet first. And we'll get to that right after the break.

[00:04:42] This week, I want to give a shout out to Nash from Saskatchewan, Canada. His favorite animal is an eagle. Did you know that the golden eagle can hit speeds of up to 200 miles per hour in the air?

[00:05:02] Okay, now back to the episode. Honey badgers can be characterized as predators, foragers, and scavengers because of the diversity of what they eat. Their diet can vary dramatically depending on the time of year and what's available to them. And as I mentioned before, honey badgers get both their common name and scientific name from their love of eating honey.

[00:05:27] In order to get the honey, they have to raid bees nests. But anyone who's stumbled upon a nest knows that bees don't like visitors and will resort to swarming and stinging if you get too close. Honey badgers have an amazing way of getting around this, though. Remember when I was talking about their scent glands?

[00:05:47] Well, it's believed that the scent that honey badgers release from their anal pouch actually has a calming effect on bees, which makes them sting less. That's not always effective, though. And this is where their skin comes into play. Honey badgers are known for their thick skin, and it can be up to 6 millimeters thick, which is even thicker than a buffalo's skin.

[00:06:12] This allows them to withstand bee stings. Porcupine quills usually can't even penetrate their skin. The skin is also really loose, so it allows them to twist around within it, which could help them escape from predators and avoid being harmed by other honey badgers. They also eat a plethora of other things, including fruits, Invertebrates, small mammals, reptiles, fish, and birds.

[00:06:38] In Africa, they're known as snake hunters, and have even been seen consuming venomous species like cobras. These animals seem like they can do it all, and sometimes they even have help from another species. There seems to be a mutualistic relationship between a bird called the honey guide and honey badgers.

[00:07:00] A mutualistic relationship means that both species benefit from the interactions that they have. Honey badgers follow the bird's calls which guide them to useful beehives,

[00:07:16] and the birds get to scavenge on the scraps of the hive. After the badgers take the honey. It's thought that the mothers pass this awareness of the honey guides to their young, because the female has to provide for her young. The honey guide really comes in handy for her. Honey badgers mate year round.

[00:07:35] However, females won't reproduce every year due to the fact that the offspring will stay with her for over a year. Gestation is quick, ranging between 50 and 70 days. That's roughly two months compared to the human nine month gestation period. They normally only produce one to two offspring at a time.

[00:07:56] The cubs are born blind, and the mother can be seen carrying them in her mouth They are a uniparental species, which means that the female is the sole provider for the cubs. The cubs are considered what's called den cubs, which means that they don't leave the den for roughly the first three to four months of life.

[00:08:19] Once ready to be independent from the mom, the cubs face a frightening statistic. Around 50 percent won't make it to maturity. And this is likely because of predation and starvation. This high mortality rate, combined with the small litter size, makes it difficult for this species to grow in numbers. And that can make them very vulnerable to human and environmental threats.

[00:08:45] Their full lifespan in the wild is currently unknown, but in captivity, it's been recorded as long as 26 years. Honey badgers are usually solitary animals, but they have been seen to hunt in pairs during mating periods. And they tend to have overlapping territories, meaning that multiple individuals use parts of the same space.

[00:09:08] Males have larger ranges than females, and the females don't actively mark or defend territories like males do. Like I mentioned earlier, males use those prominent scent glands to mark bases of trees and rocks to reserve their territory. Since they're solitary, scent is a vital piece of their communication.

[00:09:29] Scent allows them to communicate with others, even when they're not in the same area. They also do this with feces and urine. It's also hypothesized that a dominance hierarchy exists with honey badgers, where there are dominant and submissive individuals within a territory. And they use scent to reinforce these relationships.

[00:09:52] Their scenting habits can also be seen as reproductive advertisement, where the females use it to attract males. We're gonna take a quick break, and when we get back, we'll talk about one of the most prominent behaviors of the honey badger.

[00:10:18] Time for today's trivia question. Which marine animal's tooth can grow to be around nine feet long?

[00:10:35] The answer is a narwhal. Their huge tusk is actually an overgrown tooth. And you can find out more about that in our narwhal episode.

[00:10:52] Now, one of the most defining characteristics of honey badgers is their aggressive behavior. They're actually known to be pretty calm in captivity, but you don't want to mess with one in the wild. But why is that? Well, some people believe it's because of all the dangerous predators in their environment, like lions and crocodiles.

[00:11:14] These animals are much larger than them, so their only chance to survive is to be extremely aggressive. Honey badgers are also very important to the habitats that they live in. With such a diverse diet, they act as population control for a bunch of other species. They also consume a lot of species considered to be dangerous or pests, like invertebrates and venomous snakes.

[00:11:40] And even though honey badger populations aren't threatened now, they're decreasing. Their sweet tooth for honey makes them an issue for beekeepers, and they're often killed in order to protect a farmer's products. Many farmers in South Africa believe that the honey badger population [00:12:00] is overgrown. And farmers and beekeepers are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of honey badgers every year in attempts to protect their crops.

[00:12:10] Luckily, the Environmental Wildlife Trust and the South African Bee Industry set forth standards to implement honey badger friendly farming. Some of their strategies include raising beehives off the ground in order to prevent honey badgers from reaching them, using impenetrable casings for the beehives like metal or concrete, fully encasing the bees, and installing motion activated lights and other deterrents.

[00:12:38] If you want to help out honey badgers, You should check out the South African Bee Industry Organization, the Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa, and the World Wildlife Fund. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me as we explored the world of honey badgers. You can find the sources that we used for this podcast and links to organizations that we referenced at onwildlife. org. You can also email us with any questions at onwildlife. podcast at gmail. com. And you can follow us on Instagram at on underscore wildlife or on TikTok at On Wildlife. And don't forget to tune in next month for another awesome episode. And that's On Wildlife.

[00:13:29] Jess Avellino: You've been listening to On Wildlife with Alex Re. On Wildlife provides general educational information on various topics as a public service, which should not be construed as professional, financial, real estate, tax, or legal advice. These are our personal opinions only. Please refer to our full disclaimer policy on our website for full details.