Honey badger

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Honey badger
Honey badger

Honey badger

Systematics
Subordination : Canine (Caniformia)
Superfamily : Marten relatives (Musteloidea)
Family : Marten (Mustelidae)
Subfamily : Mellivorinae
Genre : Mellivora
Type : Honey badger
Scientific name of the  subfamily
Mellivorinae
JE Gray , 1865
Scientific name of the  genus
Mellivora
Storr , 1780
Scientific name of the  species
Mellivora capensis
( Schreber , 1776)

The honey badger ( Mellivora capensis ), also called ratel , is a species of predator from the mustelidae family that lives in Africa and Asia . Despite its name, it is not counted as a badger in the actual sense (Melinae), but in its own subfamily, Mellivorinae.

features

The fur of the honey badger is characterized by its striking black and white color. The upper part, from the top of the head over the back to the base of the tail, is white-gray in color. From this are sharply delineated the lateral and lower parts of the body, including the face and limbs, which are colored black. In African forest regions, for example in the north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo , there are also completely black individuals.

Their physique is stocky, the legs and tail are relatively short, the front legs are equipped with sharp claws. The exceptionally thick skin hangs very loosely on the body. The head is broad and has a short, pointed snout, the eyes are small, and there are no external auricles. These animals reach a head body length of 60 to 77 centimeters, a tail length of 20 to 30 centimeters and a weight of 7 to 13 kilograms, whereby the males are slightly heavier than the females.

distribution and habitat

Distribution area of ​​the honey badger
Prague Zoo

The distribution area of ​​the honey badger includes large parts of Africa and Asia . In Africa they are native to almost the entire continent, from Morocco and Egypt to South Africa . In Asia, its range extends from the Arabian Peninsula to Central Asia ( Turkmenistan ) and to India and Nepal . They inhabit a range of habitats , including grasslands and steppes , temperate forests, and mountainous regions up to 3000 meters. However, they avoid overly hot or humid habitats such as deserts and tropical rainforests .

Way of life

Activity and social behavior

Honey badgers are usually crepuscular or nocturnal, in untouched regions or in cool weather they can also be observed during the day. They mainly use self-dug burrows as sleeping places. These are one to three meters long and end in a small, unpadded chamber. Sometimes they also refer to crevices in the rock, hollow tree trunks or the abandoned burrows of other animals. They usually have several sleeping places in their territory, and since they hike long distances, they rarely use the same hiding place twice in a row. When foraging for food, they mainly move on the ground, sometimes they also climb trees, especially when they want to get honey.

Like most martens, honey badgers live mainly as solitary animals, and sometimes several animals, usually families, couples or small groups of males, can be observed together. They have relatively large, often many square kilometers, grazing areas. They are not likely to have any pronounced territorial behavior, but mark conspicuous points on their migration route with the secretion of their anal glands in order to communicate their presence to other species.

Defensive behavior

Honey badgers are extremely fearless, aggressive animals that, with the exception of humans, have few natural enemies. The loose, extremely thick skin, with the exception of the thin belly layer, can hardly be penetrated even by the teeth of big cats or venomous snakes or porcupine quills. The strong front paws with the long claws and the teeth are further effective weapons of defense. In addition, similar to skunks , they can squirt foul-smelling secretions from their anal glands when attacked. Reports indicate that when they feel threatened, they attack even animals the size of cattle or buffalo .

food

Honey badgers are primarily carnivores. They prey on mammals such as rodents or the young of larger species such as foxes or antelopes . Stand by birds and their eggs, reptiles (including small crocodiles and poisonous snakes), Frogs , carrion , insect larvae , scorpions and other invertebrates on the menu. Honey badgers hunt poisonous snakes and survive their bites, although the molecular basis of venom resistance is unknown. Compared to other species of marten, plant-based food makes up only a small part of the diet, here they consume berries, fruits, roots and tubers, among other things.

They also seem to have a preference for honey , which gives them their name, but it is the very nutritious brood of bees that they mainly eat. Without scientific evidence, it is widely believed that the honey badger has a symbiosis with a small woodpecker , the honey indicator . According to this story, these birds owe their name to an extraordinary behavior: The honey indicator moves around alone or in small groups and guides etc. a. the attention of the honey badger by shouting loudly. Then he flies short distances and waits to be followed. If the honey indicator finds signs of a bee nest in the vicinity, it now waits until the badger has found it and broken open; the latter licks the honey while the bird devours the bee larvae. No documented record of such behavior has yet been found.

Reproduction

Honey badger with young animal in its mouth
Honey badger in the zoo in Jerusalem

There are different observations about the duration of the pregnancy, which is probably due to a delayed implantation of the fertilized egg cell , which also occurs with other martens . Five to six months pass between mating and birth, but the actual gestation period should be shorter. The litter size is two to four newborns, who spend their first weeks of life in a building padded with dry plants. The young stay with their mother for a relatively long time, often over a year. Life expectancy in the wild is not known; in human care it can be up to 26 years.

Honey badgers and humans

Despite their large distribution area, honey badgers are rather rare due to their large area requirements. They are often viewed as a nuisance by humans as they break open beehives to get the honey and sometimes enter stalls to tear poultry. Persecution with poisonous baits and traps has made them rare in some regions, such as South Africa. Honey badger skins are hardly traded. Overall, the honey badger is not yet one of the threatened species.

literature

  • Ronald M. Nowak: Walker's Mammals of the World . 6th edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999, ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 (English).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Danielle H. Drabeck, Antony M. Dean, Sharon A. Jansa: Why the honey badger don't care: Convergent evolution of venom-targeted nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in mammals that survive venomous snake bites. In: Toxicon . 99, 2015, pp. 68-72, doi: 10.1016 / j.toxicon.2015.03.007 .
  2. ↑ Honey Badger Diet at honeybadger.com.
  3. ↑ Dean, WRJ; Siegfried, W. Roy; MacDonald, IAW: The Fallacy, Fact, and Fate of Guiding Behavior in the Greater Honeyguide . Conservation Biology 4 (1), 1990, pp. 99-101. doi : 10.1111 / j.1523-1739.1990.tb00272.x

Web links

Commons : Mellivora capensis  - album with pictures, videos and audio files