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Honey
badgers are essentially solitary with no male involvement in parental care
in a non-territorial polygynous or promiscuous mating system. In depth
information is only available from the southern Kalahari .
In southern
Africa, honey badgers do not have a breeding season and cubs are born
throughout the year. Contrary to information in some field guides, badgers
do not regularly have more than two cubs at a time and in the Kalahari badgers
raised only one cub after a gestation of six to eight weeks.
The cubs are born naked and blind in a hole prepared by the female and she
will typically move the cub to a new den every two to five days, by carrying
the cub in her mouth. The cub develops slowly with its eyes only opening
after two months, and will emerge from the den and accompany its mother on
short foraging bouts at three months of age, by which time it has the
adult's black and white colouration. The cub's mantle is usually far whiter
than its mother.
Research in
the southern Kalahari showed that cubs stayed with their mothers for a
minimum of 14 months, before becoming independent. This is in marked
contrast to the Eurasian badger which may become independent at 3 months.
This long period of dependency is needed for the cub to learn how to hunt
efficiently as digging and climbing require a degree of co-ordination and
technique that is lacking in the juveniles for the first eight months. Techniques for catching rodents in their
extensive tunnel systems and escape holes and killing poisonous snakes
require skills that must be learnt from their mothers.
Juveniles may reach
almost adult size within eight months and a son may
be far larger that his mother. When one sees
two badgers foraging together in the wild, these are usually a mother
and her cub, rather than a "pair", even when one badger is
substantially larger than the other. |
