The Most Fearless Animal in the World
Honey badgers are jet black except for the gray mantle, separated by a white stripe, extending from the crown to the base of the tail. The colour of the mantle and stripe may vary from one individual to another and often becomes darker with age. The hair is coarse and is longer on the hind legs and tail. The badgers striking colouration makes them easily recognizable and they could only be confused with the much smaller Striped polecat (Ictonyx striatus) and Striped weasel (Poecilogale albinucha) both of which weigh less than a kilogram. Honey badgers have a distinctive jog-trot and stand approximately 30cm high. Males may be twice the size of females. Honey badgers are well adapted to their digging lifestyle and have a powerful and stocky build, with no external ears, a broad muscular back, bowlegged front legs and formidable fore claws that may reach 40mm in length.
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(see badgers and bee-keepers) 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.
While the honey badger is listed in the Guinness Book of records as the "Most fearless animal in the world" (2004), they are not invincible and adults are frequently killed by leopard and lion.
Their black & white colouration is thought to provide a warning to other predators of their strength and tenacity. Their display consists of the emission of a strong smelling smell from the anal scent glands and a loud, rattling vocalization. This display is accompanied by rushing movements towards the predator and is frequently successful in driving large predators away. There are numerous stories of honey badgers chasing lions and leopards off kills. In Kalahari we twice saw honey badgers chase off leopards that stalked them.
Young cubs are particularly vulnerable, and cub mortality in the southern Kalahari was 47% with only half the cubs born reaching independence. The cause of death included starvation, infanticide (killed by other males) and predation. It is likely that black-backed jackals kill badger cubs and there is also a record of a cub being killed by two golden jackals Canis aureus in Northern Niger (Dragesco-Joffe 1993).
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