Honey badger diet

Honey badger family
Do honey badgers attack humans
Honey badger vs lion

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Traditionally the weasel family was divided into three subfamilies: the otters, the skunks, and everything else. Sometimes the badgers were added as a fourth subfamily, but that was about it. As more modern genetic analysiscame along, showing us some of the underlying relationships that weren't apparent from anatomy alone, it became clear that things were a good deal more complicated than that, and we now recognise about eight subfamilies of mustelid. (And that's not counting the skunks, which turned out to belong to a different group).

The badgers, in particular, turned out to be more varied in their origins than we had previously thought. Their superficial similarities were due to them all having evolved to be heavily-built digging animals, rather than because they all shared one single ancestor. In particular, two kinds of badger, the American and honey badgers, are now recognised as representing their own distinct subfamilies, with just one living species each, and diverging from the other "weasels" very early on - probably before the "true" badgers of Eurasia had first appea

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Honey badgers are native to areas of Africa and Asia, from southern Morocco to Africa’s southern tip, and western Asia’s Caspian Sea, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, and western India. They live mainly in dry areas but are also found in forests and grasslands. Honey badgers are good swimmers and can climb trees.

With its long claws, the honey badger digs burrows up to 9 feet (3 meters) long and up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) deep. A single tunnel ends in a chamber, which is usually bare, where the honey badger rests. But when it comes to making a home, honey badgers aren’t afraid to use what’s already available to them: rock crevices and holes under tree roots, old termite mounds, or the dens of other wildlife such as aardvarks. Burrows made by Cape foxes, bat-eared foxes, yellow mongooses, and springhares are also taken over by the honey badger.

As nocturnal creatures, honey badgers are extremely secretive and difficult to observe in their native habitat. They sleep most of the day, curling up into a ball to protect their face and belly.

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