The honey badger is a creature that is both part possum and skunk.The South Africans have a saying. “So taai soos a ratel”. Translation. As tough as a honey badger. The Guinness Book of World Record’s six time winner of the world’s most fearless animal is…a thirty pound honey badger that is known to climb into bee’s nests, take bites from cobras, scare off lions, and even to go so low as to bite off a male animal’s…gentleman’s area.( just a example not really doing it.) The honey badger is the only species of the genus Mellivora. Although in the 1860s it was assigned to the badger subfamily, the Melinae, it is now generally agreed that it has very few similarities to the Melinae. It is much more closely related to the marten subfamily, Musteline, but it is assigned its own subfamily, Mellivorinae. Differences between Mellivorinae and Melinae include differences in their dentition formula.( The pattern in their teeth that makes the venom of snakes to get trapped and to chew.) Though not in the same subfamily as the wolverines, which are a genus of large-sized and atypical Mustelinae, the honey badger can be regarded as another, analogous, form of outsized weasel or polecat. The species first appeared during the middle Pliocene in Asia. Its closest relation was the extinct genus Eomellivora, which is known from the upper Miocene, and evolved into several different species throughout the whole Pliocene in both the Old and New World. Honey badgers are generalist carnivores with an extremely broad diet. More than sixty-five species of prey were recorded from the southern Kalahari alone. Badgers eat a host of smaller food items like insect larvae, beetles, scorpions, lizards, rodents and birds. “They will catch the larger reptiles like leguaans, crocodiles (1 meter) and pythons (3 meters) and include the highly venomous adders, cobras and black mamba in their diet”[2]. Larger mammals like the Springhare, polecat and particularly juvenile foxes, jackals, antelope and wild cats, are also caught. Honey badgers also eat honey. As their name suggests, badgers have always been with with honey, even though it is the highly nutritious bee brood they eat. While bee brood does not form a necessary part of their diet they will go to great lengths to raid honeybee hives in search of bee brood when it is available. When the honey badger attacks the hive it cannot go in without any defense so the badger sprays bees when raiding beehives.The smell of the pouch is suffocating, and may assist in calming the bees then the Honey badger attacks the hive and the highly nutritious bee brood they eat. While bee brood does not form a necessary part of their diet they will go to great lengths to raid honeybee hives in search of bee brood when it is available and may cause a lot of damage to apiaries in the process. Badgers will also dig out the larvae belonging to solitary bee species.gets eaten up. The honey badger has a fairly long body, but it is distinctly thick-set and broad across the back. Its skin is remarkably loose, and that allows it to turn and twist freely within it. The skin around the neck is 6 millimeters (0.24 in) thick, an adaptation to fighting. What is this? This is a feature that lets the Honey Badger to attack and defend itself from getting hurt. The head is small and flat, with a short muzzle. The eyes are small, and the ears are little more than ridges on the skin, another possible adaptation to avoiding damage while fighting.
The honey badger has short and sturdy legs, with five toes on each foot like humans. The feet are armed with very strong claws, which are short on the hind legs and remarkably long on the forelimbs. It is a partially plantigrade animal whose soles are
