page_title: Honey badger
section_title: Taxonomy
hierarchical_section_title: Honey badger / Taxonomy
caption_attribution_description: English: Skeleton of an Cape ratel, with some skulls of Indian ratels below, from the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle
context_page_description: The honey badger, also known as the ratel, is a mammal widely distributed in Africa, Southwest Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Because of its wide range and occurrence in a variety of habitats, it is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
  It is the only species in the genus Mellivora and in the mustelid subfamily Mellivorinae. Despite its name, the honey badger does not closely resemble other badger species; instead, it bears more anatomical similarities to weasels. It is primarily a carnivorous species and has few natural predators because of its thick skin, strength and ferocious defensive abilities.
context_section_description: Viverra capensis was the scientific name used by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in 1777 who described a honey badger skin from the Cape of Good Hope.Mellivorae was proposed as name for the genus by Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr in 1780.
  Mellivorina was proposed as a tribe name by John Edward Gray in 1865.
  The honey badger is the only species of the genus Mellivora. Although in the 1860s it was assigned to the badger subfamily, the Melinae, it is now generally agreed that it bears very few similarities to the Melinae. It is much more closely related to the marten subfamily, Guloninae, but furthermore is assigned its own subfamily, Mellivorinae. Differences between Mellivorinae and Guloninae include differences in their dentition formulae. Though not in the same subfamily as the wolverines, which are a genus of large-sized and atypical Guloninae, the honey badger can be regarded as another, analogous, form of outsized weasel or polecat.
caption: Skeleton from the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle
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