Honey badgers—YIKES!
Honey badgers. Their name sounds so—sweet.
But they don’t care. And you know what? That’s not just an internet meme. They really, really, don’t: fierce, smart, disgusting, they put the “omni” in omnivore. And if everything else about them weren’t awful enough, they sound terrible, too:
The voice of the honey badger is a hoarse “khrya-ya-ya-ya” sound. When mating, males emit loud grunting sounds. Cubs vocalise through plaintive whines. When confronting dogs, honey badgers scream like bear cubs.
Here’s the original honey badger don’t care YouTube video, which was posted in 2011 and now has 82 million views. Yep, you read that right, 82 with six zeros after it. But since my finger is not on the pulse of YouTube, I’d never seen it before until a couple of days ago. If you haven’t seen it either, warning for language and for all-around revulsion factor. But it’s funny:
You don’t care, honey badger? Well, nah nah nah nah nah; neither do we. The honey badger has been classed as a species of Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. So there, honey badger.
They bowdlerized it to “Honey badger doesn’t care?”
Guess YouTube DGAF.
“When mating, males emit loud grunting sounds. Cubs vocalise [sic] through plaintive whines.”
Sound a lot like humans.
Anybody else getting the wrong comment count?
Comments are showing for me, but the count is wrong on the main page.
yep
If anyone is into disgusting revolting creepy stuff, there is a thread on Twitter called Nature is Scary that is full of disgusting revolting scary stuff (Nature is Disgusting is my name for it).
That count thing happens to me on your site sometimes but this time it was correct, showed 3 came up 3.
Youngest daughter called me several years ago and told me her son, now six is a Honey Badger and then sent me the little video. She thought as he approached four years old he had learning problems since his speech was strange and when she tried to work with him he would make a loud squeaky chirp noise and look the other way.
She took him to a child development person where they tested him while she looked on watching him speak in complete sentences, identify objects, all except the MacDonald’s arches, which was a first for them but she does not do fast food for her kids.
Anyway, Grandson Honey Badger came through with above average flying colors and I asked her what she thought the problem was and she said, “He’s just an asshole, like his dad and I love them both.” And Honey Badger don’t care.
Now count is 3 but comments are 6.
The narrator is obnoxious, not the honey badger. Plus his voice is off putting. Go honey badger, just be yourself. BTW, honey badgers seem a lot like wolverines in that they fear nothing. Which brings us to Red Dawn. 😉
Honey Badger don’t need no help. Go conserve something weak.
Hey Parker! What’s wrong with the stereotypical over-the-top flamboyantly put on “gay” voice?
Obnoxious? Sure…that’s the whole point…Narrator DGAF. 😉
The narrator is what makes the clip, IMHO.
The Honey Badger video was a mainstay at Hot Air until they kicked the old commenters off by going to Facebook registrations.
I have always loved that video and its relatives. I still laugh out loud at the original one even though I have probably seen it 20 times.
Is it in fact a wolverine disguised as a skunk? Who decided to name it the honey badger, anyway? Does it eat beehives whole?
Robert Ruark wrote a novel with the title “The Honey Badger”. Apparently, when approaching a human, the honey badger goes for the genitals. Or so says Ruark.
And, says the novel, it’s a great metaphor for the American woman.
There’s some Africa in it, Ruark having spent time in Africa, which is where, I suppose, he draws his metaphor.
Remember how, in Stranger in a Strange Land, the Martians’ worst epithet was “egg eating”?The bees would agree, I think.
There was a PBS TV show on the Honey Badger a while back. Three of the Honey Badgers faced down some lions. The lions backed off and didn’t tangle with the honey badgers. And yes, they do love honey.
Richard Aubrey:
I doubt Ruark is much read today. He was too manly, as were his themes.
Today we are told, as you well know, to prefer wimpy, sexually confused boys who might be transgender girls, but who all need safe places lest anyone say “Boo” or “Merry Christmas” to them.
Not exactly what shooting a charging bull elephant between the eyes at 20 yards or less is all about.
Frog. He has one or two placed in Mau Mau rebellion. I did some subSaharan African studies in college and asked one of the grad students about Ruark.
“Too much bopped the bloody kaffir on the head with my nine-cell flashlight.”
Not sure he, like Hemingway, appeals to the more manly men, or to those wishing to become manly by osmosis.
My father had a college friend who got beat up pretty early in the war and ended up censoring correspondents’ pieces. His view was that Hemingway was better before he found out he was HEMINGWAY.
Just for grins, see Kipling’s “The Bull That Thought” and see if you think you could pass it off as Hemingway.
They are not the same as the lovable, cuddly American Badger.
I actually read much Ruark as a teen, probably unlike most here.
He was about manliness. The Kaffirs he dealt with were necessarily obsequious for economic reasons. Most were mere grunts, human load-carrying mules. He deeply respected those who hunted with the hunter, who carried the heavy, high-caliber double-barreled rifle for him, were with the hunter step by step. Brave.
Kaffir, BTW, has a much longer history than Boer usage. Muslims for 1000+ years have called unbelievers Kafirs, and they made their way thru darkest Africa long, long before the white man.