The Honey Badger: The Science Behind the World's Most Fearless Animal

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In 2007 the British military in Basra, Iraq had to issue a formal denial that it had released man-eating beasts on the local population. The animal behind the panic was the honey badger, Mellivora capensis, also called the ratel. It weighs up to 16 kilograms, about the size of a medium dog, and its reputation rests on real hardware. Its skin is so loose that a badger seized by a predator can twist around inside it and bite back, and around the neck the hide is about six millimeters thick, armor that evolved mainly for fights with other honey badgers.

This episode tests the internet legend against the biology. The honey badger eats almost anything, from roots and insects to tortoises, cobras, and black mambas, whose venom fails to bind to its mutated nerve receptors. It digs into baked earth in ten minutes and has been filmed building mud ramps and popping gate latches to escape captivity. Yet it is not invincible. Leopards, lions, hyenas, and pythons kill it, jackals steal its food, and many of its cubs never reach adulthood.

• An eversible anal pouch releases what researchers call a suffocating odor, which may work like smoke on bees while the badger tears a hive apart.
• There is no scientific evidence that honeyguide birds lead honey badgers to beehives. The story is folklore.
• A 2022 study in the Kalahari found black-backed jackals shadow foraging badgers and snatch exposed prey, cutting their calorie intake by 5 percent.
• Males patrol home ranges averaging 548 square kilometers. Mothers raise one or two cubs alone for over a year, and cub mortality in one park study was 37 percent.
• A single badger was recorded killing 17 ducks and 36 chickens in one raid, and in July 2021 a rabid one attacked a dog and several people over two days in South Africa.