Meet the honey badger. Despite its name, it does not mainly want honey. What it wants most from a beehive is the bee larvae, the young bees, although it does eat honey too, along with insects.

A honey badger finds food by smell, and its nose is very sensitive. It has small eyes. Its front feet have long, strong claws, while its back feet are smaller, with short claws.

The menu is wide. Honey badgers eat snakes, birds and rodents, and they eat eggs too. They also eat fruit, roots and bulbs, and they dig for insect larvae and the nests of bees.

A honey badger may walk about 10 to 27 kilometers, which is 6 to 17 miles, in a day looking for food, and it can be active by day or by night. Honey badgers live in many kinds of places, from rain forests to deserts.

A honey badger can close its ears to keep dirt out while it digs. Its skin is thick and loose, and when something grabs a honey badger, the loose skin lets it wriggle free.

Honey badgers sleep in burrows and other hiding places, curled up in a ball. One can dig its own burrow, or take over one that an aardvark, fox or mongoose used. It often sleeps in a different burrow from one day to the next.

An adult weighs about 8 to 12 kilograms, or 17 to 26 pounds, and its body is about 60 to 70 centimeters long. Males are bigger than females.

Honey badgers mostly live alone, and another name for them is the ratel.

A mother has just one cub at a time. She digs a nursery chamber and lines it with grass. The cub is born in a burrow and stays in the den with its mother while it is small.

Words to know

• larvae: baby insects
• sensitive: good at noticing
• chamber: a small room
• rodents: mice and rats
• burrow: hole home