The honey badger is threatened in South Africa. The species is on the vulnerable list, having been trapped and poisoned on a large scale, especially in places such as the northern Cape Province.
The greater honey guide bird of eastern Africa Indicator indicator loves to eat honey but it cannot open bees' nests by itself. So when it finds one, it goes looking for the ratel, or honey badger Mellivora capensis. The badger tears open the nest with its strong claws, badger and bird both feast on honey, beeswax, and bee larvae. In the 1970s, it was recorded that 2,700 bee hives out of a total of 24,000 were damaged by honey badgers in Tanzania in a single year.
The honey badger is found in Africa and the Middle East through to eastern India. The honey badger prefers tropical deciduous forest, temperate forest and rainforest, temperate grassland, tropical savanna and grasslands. It avoids the deserts, where the climate is hot and arid, and the equatorial jungles that are too wet and too dense.