Honey Badger Still Don't Care

Honey Badgers have many reasons to be fearless. They have very thick (about 1/4 inches), rubbery skin, which is so tough that it’s been shown to be nearly impervious to traditionally made arrows and spears. Further, their skin can take a full blow from a sharp machete without necessarily cutting the skin all the way through. More practically, this skin helps protect the Honey Badger from the teeth of predators.

Along with being thick and very tough, the Honey Badger’s skin is also fairly loose, which allows it quite a bit of freedom of movement within the skin. This particularly aids it when it’s being attacked by larger predators and finds itself in the predator’s clutches. It can then squirm about in its skin and get its long claws and mouth with sharp teeth in such a position to harm the predator that is holding it. This makes it particularly unsafe for an animal to hold the Honey Badger in its jaws, unless it kills it instantly, which is difficult. The Honey Badger can simply squirm around and viciously attack the creature’s face and eyes. While the Honey Badger might ultimately die in such an encounter. The animal that killed it will likely think twice before attacking another Honey Badger. It turns out, there is almost no safe place to hold a Honey Badger without it being able to get itself in a position to attack you. It is thought that if you managed to grab the Honey Badger by the back of the neck and hold it at arms length in the air, that this may be a safe way to hold one, but not a lot of volunteers are out there to test this theory.

Along with sharp teeth, Honey Badgers also have incredibly powerful jaws. This is helpful due to the fact that the Honey Badger will eat every part of its prey, including the bones. The jaws are even powerful enough to eat a turtle, including the shell, without difficulty.

Not only this, but they are naturally not very affected by many types of stings and venom. They can even get bitten by King Cobras and Puff Adders multiple times with little effect, though a strike from something like a Puff Adder that manages to actually penetrate their skin will eventually knock the Honey Badger out for a couple hours. Although it is not known exactly how the Honey Badger’s body resists the effects of these types of deadly venom, it is thought that if the snakes could strike them enough, it’s likely the venom would eventually kill the Honey Badger. Unfortunately for the snake though, they are unlikely to survive long enough in a battle with a Honey Badger to strike it enough to kill it. Further, it takes time for the venom to take effect, so even if they manage to knock it out, the snake will likely already be dead when this happens.

Along with its innate toughness, the Honey Badger is also incredibly intelligent. It has even been observed using tools to catch prey. They also are smart enough to follow Honeyguide birds to find beehives where they’ll eat the larvae and honey.

Interestingly, the Honey Badger also has a reversible anal pouch which has an incredibly strong, stifling odor. They have been observed to use this stench as an additional form of defense against large predators like lions.

This combination of remarkable innate defensive and offensive capabilities has resulted in the Honey Badger seemingly fearing few things. Their aggressiveness has also resulted in few predators, which normally might try to eat something the Honey Badger’s size, choosing to avoid the animal. Even predators such as lions and leopards tend to give the Honey Badger a large berth, though Honey Badgers have been known to be killed by lions and leopards. At the same time, though, they’ve also been observed to chase lions off of a kill and take it for their own, including one instance where three Honey Badgers chased off seven lions from a kill the lions were eating, fearless indeed.

Congrats to Qaz for FTF.