The badger that defied the lion

Christelle Randall has never been lost for words. So, not least because her Friday night offering attracted a large weekend readership, let's make it a Christelle in Africa weekend for Salut!. She thought she was adding a few paragraphs to tag on to the tale of Snout the cobra and Cedric the croc. But it was just too good to throw away like that......

Here are two fantastic nature stories.

Firstly, the other day one of the resident collared leopards Thilo stumbled across an enormous python who had just killed an impala.

As the python lay sleepily post-meal, no doubt congratulating himself on his pretty impressive kill, Thilo jumped down from her hiding place, killed the python (unable to put up any resistance due to being so full and physically unable to move due to the impala not being digested and still fully in tact in his belly) and promptly ate both python and the impala inside!

I can't help but feel really sorry for the poor python who would normally have put up quite a fight but in this case was literally immobile yet impressed at how smart Thilo was..

The second story accompanies the great picture above.

The lion is Zero, Karongowe's resident male, who is the uncontested king of the jungle weighing in at 250kg.

There aren't many animals who would dare to cross his path apart from this bold honey badger that is. Unlike their distant relative, the normal badger, they are carnivores and despite being small are ferocious little creatures.

They fight to the death and have been known to go for male genitals during any attack (animal and human).

They aren't afraid of anyone as was witnessed with this encounter. Zero was lying in a river bed resting after eating so he was quite full.

Some of the past GVI volunteers actually saw this encounter and said out of the blue a honey badger appeared and came right up to Zero. They looked at each other for a few minutes and the honey badger wavered a little.

He obviously decided this might be a battle he wouldn't win and turned his back to go the other way.

Suddenly mid path the honey badger had a change of heart, turned back and faced Zero head on again, determined to continue along his chosen path.

They looked at each other for a bit longer, Zero patiently tolerating him, possibly cause he was too full to move. The honey badger took what appeared to be a big breath and continued walking past Zero and up the river bank with Zero watching him, a little incredulously. I think this photo almost captures a mutual respect between these two animals.

Comments

[Dumdad]

Honey badger is my hero!

[Peter Bradshaw]

Hi Christelle. This story is fab. The whole badger vs Zero thing is a classic underdog story!!

[hmmmmmm]

Don't fuck with honey badgers

[mimi14930]

the honey badger is the epitome of bravery. it'll only be a fair contest if the honey badger were the same size and weight as the lion. then that will be a fair challenge. and if a honey badger were as big and heavy, the lion has no chance in hell in winning.