You all should be more interested in honey badgers.
The honey badger or ratel is a tenacious small carnivore that has a reputation for being, pound for pound, Africa's most fearless animal despite its small size. It is even listed as the "most fearless animal in the world" in the 2002 Guinness Book of Records. Tales of their fondness for honey and the foraging association between the Greater Honeyguide and honey badgers have reached almost legendary proportions. Despite the wealth of fireside stories and folklore that surround them and their extremely wide distribution, honey badgers are still relatively unknown and seldom seen.
World-wide honey badger distribution:
Q: Are honey badgers invincible?
A: The Honey badger has been referred to as "the meanest animal in the world", and they are often considered to have no enemies, apart from man. However, in reality there are a number of records of them being killed by lion, leopard and on one occasion an African rock python. Some authors suggest that badgers are impervious to bee stings (and even bullets), but badgers have been stung to death by honeybees, particularly when they are caught in apiary traps (Kingdon 1989; personal communications). There is good evidence to suggest that, like other mustelids and viverrids (e.g. mongooses, hog-nosed skunks), badgers are less sensitive to venoms than many other mammals (personal observations).
Could you even pretend to be this badass? Do people regularly wonder if you are invincible?
Q: Do honey badgers emasculate their prey?
A: Honey badgers are reputed to go for the scrotum when attacking large animals. The first published record of this behaviour was a circumstantial account by Stevenson- Hamilton (1947) where a badger reportedly castrated an adult Buffalo. Other animals alleged to have been emasculated by honey badgers include wildebeest, waterbuck, kudu, zebra and man. This has also been reported by other African tribes, but no direct evidence exists to support this behaviour.
Here is a picture of a honey badger, chilling out and eating a SCORPION:
Honey badgers are generalist carnivores with an extremely wide diet. More than sixty species of prey were recorded from the southern Kalahari alone. Badgers eat a host of smaller food items like insect larvae, beetles, scorpions, lizards, rodents and birds. They will catch the larger reptiles like leguaans, crocodiles (1 meter) and pythons (3meters) and include the highly venomous adders, cobras and black mamba in their diet. Larger mammals like the Springhare, polecat and particularly juvenile foxes, jackals, antelope and wild cats, are also caught.
They locate their prey predominantly by their acute sense of smell and catch most of their prey through digging. As many as fifty holes may be dug in a single foraging period and badgers may cover distances that exceed 40 kilometers in a 24 hour period. Honey badgers are accomplished climbers and can easily climb up into the uppermost branches of trees to raid bird nests or bee hives. In the Kalahari they have been seen raiding various raptor nests, including the Pale Chanting Goshawk, which is frequently seen in association with badgers.
As their name suggests, badgers have always been associated with honey yet it is the highly nutritious bee brood they eat. While bee brood does not form a necessary part of their diet they will go to great lengths to raid honeybee hives in search of bee brood when it is available and may cause a lot of damage to apiaries in the process. Badgers will also dig out the larvae belonging to solitary bee species.
In the Kalahari badgers were rarely seen drinking water at the available waterholes, and derived most of their water requirements from their food and from the Tsama melon (Citrullus lanatus) during seasons when they were available.
Honey badgers may also pirate food from other carnivores and will scavenge from the kills of larger animals although they are primarily hunters of their own food.
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