Mellivora capensis, Schreber, 1776
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publication ID |
https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.5714044 |
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DOI |
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5714051 |
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persistent identifier |
https://treatment.plazi.org/id/038F87D4-CA52-FFBC-CFED-3B6CF6BCFEF0 |
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treatment provided by |
Conny |
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scientific name |
Mellivora capensis |
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Honey Badger
Mellivora capensis View in CoL
French: Ratel / German: Honigdachs / Spanish: Ratel
Other common names: Ratel
Taxonomy. Viverra capensis Schreber, 1776 View in CoL ,
Cape of Good Hope, South Africa.
Ten subspecies are recognized.
Subspecies and Distribution.
M. c. capensis Schreber, 1776 — S Africa N to Angola, Mozambique, and Zambia.
M. c. buechneri Baryshnikov, 2000 — C Asia including Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
M. c. concisa Thomas & Wroughton, 1907 — Algeria, Morocco, and Subsaharan Africa from Mauritania to Ethiopia.
M.c. cotton: Lydekker, 1906 — C Africa from Gabon to Tanzania.
M. M.c. inaurita Hodgson, 1836 — Nepal.
\g M.c. indica Kerr, 1792 — India and Pakistan.
M. M.c. maxwell Thomas, 1923 — Kenya and Somalia.
\J M.c. pumalio Pocock, 1946 — S Arabian Peninsula and Yemen.
M. M.c. signata Pocock, 1909 — Guinea and Sierra Leone.
\f M.c. wilsoni Cheesman, 1920 — Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. View Figure
Descriptive notes. Head-body 73: 3-95 cm (males), 81.2-96 cm (females), tail 14.3-23 cm (males), 15.2-22.5 cm (females); weight 7.7-10.5 kg (males), 6.2-13.6 kg (females). The Honey Badger is a short, stocky animal, with strong limbs and a short tail. The upperparts, from the top of the head to the base of the tail, are gray to pale yellow or whitish, and contrast sharply with the dark brown or black of the underparts. Completely black individuals have been reported from some parts of Africa. The tail is black, with a gray or white tip. The front feet are broad, with strong, long claws (> 25 mm), whereas the hindfeet have small claws (15 mm). There are two pairs of mammae. The skull is massive, with short orbital processes and robust teeth. Dental formula: 13/3,C1/1,.P 3/3, M1/1 =32.
Habitat. Honey Badgers are found in diverse habitats including deep forests, subtropical dry evergreen forests, tropical thorn forests, open Acacia, Combretum and Terminalia woodlands, open riparian woodland (dominated by Acacia albida), Tarai or marshes, floodplain grasslands (dominated by Vetivaria nigritana), bushveld, afro-alpine steppes, rocky hills and kopjes, Rhigozum scrub sandveld, savannah, dry swamps, waterless sandplains, coastal sandveld, and deserts. They tolerate habitats with a rainfall of over 2000 mm (annually) as well as arid areas with less than 100 mm annual rainfall. Honey Badgers are found from sea level up to 4050 m.
Food and Feeding. The diet is mostly mammals, insects, amphibians, reptiles and birds, but also includes roots, berries, and fruit (such as ber Zizyphusjubata). Favorite foods are honey and the larvae of honeybees (Hymenoptera). However, their adaptation to burrowing, together with the abundance of subterranean animals found in six stomachs, suggests that honey is only a secondary food item. Consumption of honey may also be seasonal because it is more widely available in the drier months of the year. In October and November, Honey Badgers in the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, South Africa, were found to eat mainly rodents, which occurred in 60% of scats and made up c. 30% of the volume of food. Ostrich (Struthio camelus) chicks, Spring Hares (Pedetes capensis ), Meerkats, as well as domestic sheep and goats, were also eaten. They are strong diggers, and do not hesitate to dig after rodents or other prey hiding underground. Food items are detected mostly by smell or sound. Excess food may be cached in a den. When Honey Badgers eat, the food is held between the front claws while the forelegs rest on the ground. Beehives are opened by tearing away the wood of trees; honey combs are also scooped out from the cracks of rocks with the claws of the forefeet. Grubs are removed from the comb with their incisors. The clay capsules of estivating lungfish (Protopterus aethiopicus), cases of insect pupae, carapaces of turtles, or skins of animals are peeled away to expose the softer inner parts to be eaten. Honey Badgers dig large spiders out of holes 15-25 cm deep in the ground. Fish are caught with the claws at the edge of streams or from drying pans. They may raid campgrounds or dumpsters at night and are widely blamed for breaking into poultry houses and apiaries. The anecdotal relationship between the Honey Badger and a bird, the greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator), may be mythical. Although these two animals may occur together at the nests of bees, a complete observation of this supposed symbiotic relationship, from the initial attraction by a greater honeyguide of a Honey Badger, through guiding to a nest by the honeyguide, to the breaking open of the nest by the Honey Badger does not exist.
Activity patterns. Primarily nocturnal, although diurnal observations are numerous. Honey Badgers shelter in burrows, thick brush, caves, clumps of fallen bamboo, hollow trees, old ruins, rock shelters, dens excavated by themselves, or abandoned burrows. Hollow trees are entered from the top.
Movements, Home range and Social organization. Honey Badgers are good swimmers and can chase turtles underwater. They can also climb trees. Daily movements average 10-30 km, with males covering longer distances than females. Female Honey Badgers forage in a relatively small area, covering c. 10 km /day. They zig-zag short distances from bush to bush, digging on average 10-2 holes/km. Males engage in long-distance foraging, covering c. 27 km /day; only c. 1-3 holes/km are dug. Mean straightline distance between dens from one day to the next is c¢. 2: 5 km for short-distance foragers and c. 10- 1 km for long-distance foragers. Males and females differ significantly in their rate of travel (3-8 km /h and 2-7 km /h, respectively), straight line (6- 2 km and 2.4 km) and actual distance (13- 8 km and 7- 7 km) moved during an active period, but do not differ in the percentage of their home range area traversed in a single day (3%). Honey Badgers are mostly solitary, but pairs may be seen and aggregations may occur at feeding sites. Occasionally, after foraging in a particular area for most of the night, a male may suddenly move off to a location less than 9 km away, where it may meet up with other adults. On one occasion in Zimbabwe, six animals met up; they showed no aggression but continuously uttered a wide range of grunts, hisses, squeaks, and whines while rolling in the sand, sniffing each other, and scent marking. Such gatherings may last more than 18 min, and the Honey Badgers may retreat to the same den during the day. Radio-telemetry in the southern Kalahari revealed that the mean home range size of adult males (541 km?) wassignificantly larger than the mean home range size of adult females (126 km?). While mean home range overlap in females was moderate (13%) and home range centres were regularly spaced, females did not appearto actively defend a territory and no direct interactions between females were observed. Scent marking appears to mediate spatial-temporal separation and females show a loosely territorial spacing pattern. In contrast, the home ranges of males encompassed the overlapping home ranges of up to 13 females. Young males tended to have smaller home ranges (151 km?*) than adult males and showed a spacing pattern more similar to adult females than adult males.
Breeding. Mating occurs throughout the year and there appears to be no distinct breeding season. The gestation period is 50-70 days. Litter size is commonly one to two. Only the motherraises the young. The young are born blind and helpless inside a burrow. At two days of age, one captive Honey Badger weighed c. 0-23 kg and was hairless except for a few hairs on the face; the head and body length was 19- 7 cm, and the tail was 3-8 cm. It uttered squeaks and low guttural sounds during the first weeks, usually at feeding time; vocalization changed to deep, drawn-out, ominous growls at ten weeks. Within three months, the young have a fully developed adult pelage. The claws are fully formed on each foot at four weeks of age. The eyes open after 33 days and teeth begin erupting at 36 days and are fully developed at around three months. Adult size is reached after six months. Attempts at walking progress from a swimming motion (using all four legs) at age two to three weeks,to a forward dragging movement by the front legs at age five weeks, to a trot, similar to that of an adult, at eight weeks. Climbing starts at ten weeks. The young reach independence after 12-16 months.
Status and Conservation. Classified as Least Concern in The IUCN Red List. Honey Badgers do not occur at high densities and are considered uncommon throughout their range. Persecution by beekeepers and livestock farmers is probably the greatest threat to this species.
Bibliography. Begg, C. et al. (2005a, 2005b), Begg, K. (1995), Dean et al. (1990), Kruuk & Mills (1983), Smithers & Chimimba (2005), Stuart (1981), Vanderhaar & Hwang (2003), Wozencraft (2005).
No known copyright restrictions apply. See Agosti, D., Egloff, W., 2009. Taxonomic information exchange and copyright: the Plazi approach. BMC Research Notes 2009, 2:53 for further explanation.
