[imagesource: YouTube / Latest Sightings]

The honey badger has a reputation, and deservedly so, for being one of nature’s more dogged creatures.

That’s not to say it goes out looking for trouble all of the time, but more on that later.

The latest video doing the rounds shows one honey badger at &Beyond Kirkman’s Kamp in the Greater Kruger coming face to face with three leopards.

Field guide Dan Fiser and business consultant Paola Murguia were on hand to witness the battle, which was recounted to Latest Sightings:

“We were parked near a mother leopard and her two cubs, who were sitting on the Sand River bank. We followed them as they moved upstream. The two cubs walked into the reeds and we heard a loud commotion which the mother reacted to. Then all three appeared, wrestling with a honey badger.”

“Our initial reaction was that they had caught something, but we didn’t know what. We were shocked when we realized it was a honey badger because they are well known for being fearless and tough animals. The three leopards took turns trying to take the honey badger down – an unfair battle one would think.”

In the moment, it boils down to fight or flight.

No prizes for guessing which approach the honey badger took:

Remarkably, the duo reported that the sighting ended with the honey badger “trotting off as though nothing had happened”. I’d go as far as to say it strutted off triumphantly.

Researchers who have spent time observing honey badgers don’t deny their ferocity in the face of danger. However, in an ideal world, they’d be happily left to their own devices.

An excellent article in The Atlantic outlines exactly this:

Although they are brave and built for survival, “it’s not like they’re going out just to pick fights,” Liz Johnson, a senior wildlife-care specialist who works with honey badgers at the San Diego Zoo, told me.

Johnson describes them as “a little mellower” than nature documentaries might make them out to be—even bashful.

“It’s been hard for researchers to study them in the wild, because they do everything they can to avoid interaction with humans,” she said.

That being said, their curiosity and problem-solving abilities are the stuff of legend.

Stoffel is world-renowned for his escapology and ability to get one over on Brian Jones, who runs the centre:

Jones keeps a drawer full of chocolates in his desk. This fact has not gone unnoticed by Stoffel, who one day scrambled into Jones’s office, determined to have a taste. Because Stoffel couldn’t open the drawer with his claws, he quickly changed tactics, lying on his back under the desk, lifting his feet up, and kicking the drawer open from underneath.

“They are a terror,” Jones admitted to me happily. “But I love them, I love them, I love them.”

Same here, Brian.

[sources:latestsightings&atlantic]