Honey badger (Mellivora capensis): Food and feeding behaviour

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Image: Honey badger (Mellivora capensis).

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Food and feeding behaviour

What do honey badgers eat? Take a look at the menu on this Badger Page.

On this page: Diet | Honey | Feeding behaviour | Related Badger Pages

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Diet

Like the American badger Taxidea taxus , the honey badger is largely carnivorous, although it will eat some vegetable foods. Colleen and Keith Begg, while studying honey badgers in the Kalahari, found that over 60 species of prey featured in the ratel's diet. Some of the species eaten by honey badgers are as follows:

Mammals - rodents (including gerbils and mice), molerats, porcupines, springhares, polecats, and the young of the following species: foxes (including bat-eared foxes and cape foxes), jackals, wild cats, antelope (including bushbuck, klipspringer and kudu).
Birds - eggs and young birds are taken from the nests of ground-nesting species, and also from the nests of birds of prey in trees, including barn owl, raptors such as the pale chanting goshawk, and even vultures. Domestic poultry may also be taken.
Reptiles - tortoises, turtles, small crocodiles (up to 1 metre), lizards (such as geckos and skinks), and snakes (including adders, puffadders, sand snakes, cobras, black mambas, and pythons up to 3 metres long!).
Amphibians - frogs.
Fish.
Carrion - honey badgers will scavenge from dead animals, including those left by other predators such as leopards or lions, and there are reports that even human remains have been dug up.
Invertebrates - bee larvae, beetles, insect larvae, termites, scorpions, spiders.
Honey - see below.
Plant foods - various fruits, berries, tubers and roots. In the Kalahari, honey badgers are very fond of Tsama melons ( Citrullus lanatus ) when they are in season.

In addition to the above, honey badgers are also known to raid rubbish bins and tips to find food.

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Honey

Honey is of course the one type of food that everybody associates with this species. And no reference to honey badgers and honey would be complete without a mention of a bird known as the greater honeyguide. However, honey is far from being the staple diet of the honey badger. What is more, those who have investigated the association between the honey badger and the honeyguide have found little hard evidence to back up the oft-quoted story of the bird leading the badger to bees' nests so that both can share the feast inside.

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Feeding behaviour

Honey badgers find much of their prey through their powerful sense of smell. Many of their prey species live underground and are rapidly dug out and eaten. However, the honey badger is also a capable climber, and will scale trees in order to find food such as the nestlings of birds.

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Related Badger Pages

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References

b001 , b002 , b003-01 , b004 , b010 , b011 , w001 , w178-01 .

Picture credits

The honey badger photo used at the head of this Article is © Tim Davis / Photo Researchers, Inc. Used with the permission of the (External) Northern Ohio Ferret Association . Credits for the photos used in the right-hand margin of this page for site navigation can be found on the Credits page.

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