Honey badgers live in Africa and in parts of Asia, and most of them live alone. They do not live in the driest part of the Sahara Desert or along the Mediterranean coast.

Honey badgers make loud, grating sounds, and one of their calls is a high-pitched bark. They also leave scent marks. A gland at the base of the tail makes a strong smell.

Most honey badgers live alone, yet their home ranges overlap a lot, so many honey badgers share the same area.

In the southern Kalahari, male honey badgers were about one third larger than females. Across the species, an adult weighs about 8 to 12 kilograms, which is 17 to 26 pounds. Its body is about 60 to 70 centimeters long.

A honey badger may walk about 10 to 27 kilometers in a day looking for food, and it can be active by day or by night. It finds food by smell, and it digs for food such as insect larvae and the nests of bees. It also eats insects, snakes, birds, rodents and eggs.

A honey badger 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.

Honey badgers can mate at any time of year. A pregnancy lasts about 50 to 70 days, and a mother usually has just one cub at a time.

A mother digs a nursery chamber and lines it with grass. She raises the cub in a burrow, with no help from other adults. While it is small, the cub stays in the den with her. It depends on its mother for a long time, about 12 to 16 months.

As of November 2026, honey badgers in the wild live up to about 8 years, and in zoo care they can live more than 20 years. The IUCN Red List rates the honey badger as Least Concern, which means it is not at high risk of dying out.

Words to know

• grating: rough, scratchy
• overlap: share part of
• Kalahari: a dry region
• pregnancy: time before birth
• Concern: worry