Honey Badger
Kingdom: Animalia.Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Genus: Mellivora
Family: Mustelidae.
Scientific name:Mellivora capensis
PHYSICAL CHARACTERTISTICS:
Honey badgers are famously tough. (South Africa's National Defense Force calls its armored personnel carriers ratels, the Afrikaans word for these beasts.) But we discovered that they're far from indestructible. Lions and leopards routinely kill them. The badgers' appetite for ravaging beehives (thus their common name) causes conflicts with commercial honey producers, some of whom shoot, trap, or poison animals they suspect of damaging their hives. Females have just one offspring at a time—not the multicub litters previously assumed—and though they care for their young for more than a year after birth, half of all cubs succumb to predators or starvation and die before achieving independence.
PROTECTION:
A mother carries a tiny cub, like the two-month-old above, more than a mile to a new den every three to five days. Once the cub can walk well on its own, the mother and cub will sleep in a different burrow almost every night to evade predators and find new prey.
LOCATION:
Little is known about honey badger numbers in most countries where they're found, but they seem to be disappearing in many areas. They're considered endangered in Niger, protected in Israel and India, and near-threatened in Morocco and South Africa. We're worried about them. Their need for large ranges, combined with low reproductive rates and human persecution, may mean that many national parks and other conservation areas are too small to protect sustainable populations.
VENOUM:
Snakes make high-yield meals, and honey badgers track them relentlessly. Wherever snakes try to hide—up trees, in dense brush, or underground—badgers follow and attack. A 13-minute treetop battle with a venomous Cape cobra earned this female badger a pound and a half of meat for herself and her cub. In summer, when snakes are most active, they provide more than half the total food badgers consume. Even lethal puff adders are on the menu.
DIGGING BURROWS:
Equipped with inch-and-a-half-long claws that grow throughout their lives, adult honey badgers can dig themselves out of sight in just a couple of minutes. They capture more than three-fourths of their prey underground. Cubs try to dig on their earliest outings, but not until about eight months old do they become adept enough to help their mothers hunt.
Habitat:
Wide tolerance, from semi-desert to rainforest.
BREEDING:
In southern Africa, honey badgers do not have a breeding season and cubs are born throughout the year. Contrary to information in some field guides, badgers do not regularly have more than two cubs at a time and in the Kalahari badgers raised only one cub after a gestation of six to eight weeks. The cubs are born naked and blind in a hole prepared by the female and she will typically move the cub to a new den every two to five days, by carrying the cub in her mouth. The cub develops slowly with its eyes only opening after two months, and will emerge from the den and accompany its mother on short foraging bouts at three months of age, by which time it has the adult's black and white colouration. The cub's mantle is usually far whiter than its mother.
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