Honey badgers, which are also called ratels, live in Africa and in parts of Asia. Many stories are told about them, and some are argued while field work gives firmer answers.
Many books say a bird called the greater honeyguide leads honey badgers to beehives. That is argued. A 2023 review found that the evidence rests on incomplete, second-hand accounts, and the bird has not been seen doing it in the wild. The same review interviewed 394 honey-hunters in 11 communities in nine African countries. Most doubted the partnership, but many in Tanzania said they had seen it, so, as of November 2026, scientists say it may happen only in some places.
Other stories need the same caution. Stories say honey badgers use their scent to calm bees or empty a hive, but scientists working in the southern Kalahari have not confirmed this, so it is argued. A zoo fact sheet says the idea that ratels pair up and forage together is a myth, because the pairs people see are a mother foraging with her offspring.
Beekeepers in Africa have found that raising hives off the ground and securing the hive openings can greatly reduce losses to honey badgers.
Careful field work gives firmer answers. Dr. Colleen Begg was among the first researchers to study the ecology and behavior of the ratel systematically, and her multi-year work was in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.
A study in the southern Kalahari found that a honey badger's diet had at least 59 kinds of food: mostly rodents, reptiles, birds and snakes, plus eggs, bee larvae, berries, fruit, honey and carrion. A 2003 study of nine honey badgers that had become used to watchers found that the animals switched foods with the seasons and kept their daily food intake steady.
As of November 2026, some lists name 12 subspecies, based on where the animals live and on coat color. The IUCN has not adopted them, and no genetic study had tested them as of its 2016 assessment.
No one knows how many honey badgers there are, as of November 2026. They are active at night, live alone and have large home ranges, so they are hard to count, and sources give no total population estimate.
Words to know
- carrion: dead animals
- systematically: step by step
- subspecies: local type
- foraging: food-hunting
- honeyguide: a guiding bird
