Honey badgers live in Africa and in parts of Asia. Scientists keep studying them, and one question is how honey badgers resist the toxins in snake venom.

In 2015 researchers found that in honey badgers, hedgehogs and pigs, a receptor in muscle, the one that snake alpha-neurotoxins target, has independently gained amino acid changes that impede toxin binding. They used phylogenetic analysis of mammalian nAChR sequences. Venom resistance has evolved at least four times among mammals, in two different chemical ways at the same sites on the same receptor. Honey badgers, hedgehogs and pigs share one way, while mongooses use another.

A 2022 review said the honey badger is among mammals that show arginine resistance at one receptor site, position 187, along with hedgehogs and wild boar, and it added that more studies are needed on how often these mammals eat snakes in the wild.

To reach food in high places, honey badgers in India have been observed moving and stacking rocks, a field guide reports. In a PBS Nature test, a rescued honey badger pushed its crate closer to a hanging food box and climbed on it. A researcher called this tool use, but also said that honey badgers' intelligence had not yet been formally tested. In the same segment, a researcher said that every captive honey badger there had been able to escape by taking an object to the wall and climbing out. Reports like this are anecdotes and have not been formally tested.

Only a few members of the order Carnivora are reported to eat honey: the pine marten, the honey badger and the brown bear. As of November 2025, scientists had added the striped hyena from camera-trap photos. In a 2022 study, the wax that honey-hunters leave for greater honeyguides after a harvest was also eaten by other animals, including honey badgers.

Honey badgers are slow breeders: females usually have one cub, and more than 12 months pass between births, so they do not breed every year in the wild.

In the southern Kalahari, a honey badger's home range was about 541 square kilometers for adult males, 126 for adult females and 151 for young males, with no distinct core area. In Kgalagadi, male ranges span from 229 to 844 square kilometers, while elsewhere in Africa they average about 500. Ranges vary with food, ground and other badgers.

Honey badgers were once reported to be common around the Cape of Good Hope, but by the 21st century they were regarded as near threatened and locally extinct in Table Mountain National Park, as of December 2024. In May 2024, camera traps there photographed a honey badger entering and leaving a cavity, which it used as a presumed den during the day. The sightings were called an exciting discovery.

Words to know

• receptor: chemical doorway
• anecdotes: single stories
• phylogenetic: family-tree based
• Carnivora: meat-eater order
• cavity: hollow space