Quick Take
- Leopards can reach speeds of up to 36 miles per hour.
- Honey badgers’ claws can grow to 1.5 inches.
- It is counterintuitive that a 35-pound mammal can successfully force an apex predator to flee upward.
The feeling of hunger is not pleasant for people or animals. Unlike humans, though, animals can’t just order up DoorDash or swing through a drive-thru when they’re hungry. Predators have to hunt for their food, no matter how tired or starving they may be. Sometimes they are even willing to hunt aggressive prey just to get what they need to stay alive. Such is the case in the video above.
Hungry Leopard Hunts for Food
The short YouTube video clip was filmed by tourists on safari in Africa. The MalaMala Game Reserve channel shared this footage with its one million-plus subscribers. They frequently share brand-new videos of wild animals such as crocodiles, lions, jackals, vultures, elephants, and more.
Honey Badgers Put Up a Fierce Fight
As the video starts out, we see that a fleet of vehicles is on an African safari. Here, these tourists get to experience wildlife in its raw form. Suddenly, they see a leopard hunting for food, and it has its sight set on two mature honey badgers just up ahead. According to BBC Wildlife Magazine, “Honey badgers, particularly young ones, can be predated by larger predators such as lions, leopards and hyenas.”
Well, these honey badgers are far from little, and so this leopard has his work cut out for him. He charges in at up to 36 miles per hour and plows into them both. He grabs one and takes off, thinking he has the victory. But this is only the beginning of his troubles.
The second one follows in a close pursuit. We get small glimpses through the trees in real-time of the leopard dropping the honey badger and trying to fight them both off. By the end of the video, we see the leopard perched up in a tree doing what he can to stay away from these mammals.
Are Honey Badgers Aggressive?
Honey Badgers live longer lives in captivity than in the wild.
©Braam Collins/Shutterstock.com
Honey badgers (Mellivora capensis) of the family Mellivora are a small but mighty species. As Live Science puts it, they may be known as being adorable, but they are also extremely aggressive. “The honey badger’s aggressive nature does not make them an easy meal.”
Honey badgers weigh anywhere from 11-35 pounds and reach about 11 inches in height. Something so small can’t be that fierce, can it? They have 1.5-inch-long claws that are a powerful weapon against their predators. In fact, these claws are known to crack the shell of a tortoise. So, we can only imagine how fierce this fight was to make this leopard back off. More like run off, if we’re being honest.
