It’s no secret that honey badgers are some of the toughest animals in the wild. Videos of them taking on venomous snakes, surviving brutal bites, and carrying on like nothing happened have made them legendary. But what makes honey badgers so resistant to deadly snake venom?
A scientific journal by Holding, Biardi and Gibbs (2016) shows that an evolutionary trait of certain receptors in honey badgers enables them to shrug off deadly venomous snake bites.
How Snake Venom Works
Many venomous snakes use special toxins called neurotoxins to kill their prey. These toxins don’t just cause pain—they go straight for the nervous system, shutting it down so quickly that muscles become paralysed. The target of these toxins is something called the muscular nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, or nAChR for short.
So, what is this receptor?
Imagine your brain sends a message down your nerves saying, “Hey muscle, move!” That message reaches the end of a nerve and is passed across a tiny gap (called a synapse) using a chemical messenger called acetylcholine. On the other side—on your muscle cells—sits the nAChR, a special protein that acts like a gate. When acetylcholine binds to this gate, it opens, and the muscle knows it’s time to move.
Snake venom tries to hijack this process. Neurotoxins in the venom mimic acetylcholine, but instead of opening the gate, they jam it shut. Once that gate is blocked, the muscle doesn’t get the message, and the result is paralysis.
Honey badger rolls back and feigns death, either in complete exhaustion or in the hopes that it gets left alone. Luckily for the honey badger, it was not left alone this time.
The Honey Badger’s Secret Weapon
Now here’s where the honey badger shines. In most animals, the part of the receptor that the venom binds to has a particular shape and charge. But honey badgers have a small tweak in their receptor: at position 187, they’ve swapped out one amino acid (tryptophan) for another called arginine.
A Honey Badger stares at us through the tuft of grass. Honey Badgers are often quite shy animals, often running away from the vehicle but we were lucky to find this one come out of its burrow in the a termite mound.
Arginine is positively charged, and so are many snake neurotoxins. Like two magnets with the same charge, they repel each other. This means the venom can’t latch on to the receptor and jam it shut. The gate stays open, the muscles keep working, and the honey badger stays standing—even after a venomous bite.
Not Just Brute Strength
Sometimes, honey badgers do get temporarily affected by venom; they might pass out for a short time, but they usually wake up, shake it off, and go right back to eating the snake that bit them.
This kind of resistance is a brilliant example of evolution at work. Over thousands of years, the honey badger has developed a molecular defence that keeps it alive in situations that would be fatal for most animals.
Their resistance to cytotoxic (tissue-destroying) or hemotoxic (blood-affecting) venoms is less well understood and may be limited. These types of venom cause different effects, like haemorrhaging or necrosis, which honey badgers might not resist as effectively as they do neurotoxins.
So, while they’re not completely immune and can be affected (especially temporarily), they are unusually resilient and often survive bites that would be fatal to most other mammals.
A honey badger forages in a dry riverbed. One of the few times I have been lucky enough to capture one of these elusive animals before it runs off.
The honey badger’s venom resistance is not due to magic or invincibility—just a clever evolutionary tweak at the molecular level. A single amino acid change prevents snake venom from locking up their nervous system. It’s one of nature’s best examples of how small changes can lead to incredible survival strategies.
That’s really interesting, Dean. So a honey badger would survive a black mamba bite, as the venom is neurotoxic – but puff adder venom is cytotoxic, so may kill it. I’m trying to think of other venomous snakes you have out there?
Honey badgers are such characters! Like some dogs that are small and act big. Very entertaining animals, and very resilient… thank you for the detailed blog. The pictures are so funny, very expressive little critters, I’m glad the endangered guy was helped…
Hi Dean, fascinating story on the Honey Badger and it’s molecular defense system. They just never give up fighting and this defense saves them from the snake bites. Thanks for this vital information about the Honey Badgers system.
Super photos of honey badgers, Dean.
And a really interesting article on these very special animals.
Thanks for this fascinating article Dean. I learned so much about the honey badgers resistance to certain snake venoms, and if bitten, how their body reacts. Posts like this help us understand more about how various animals can survive if attacked/injured by another.
Fascinating, Dean! Too bad there’s no way to give that amino acid via a vaccine to humans who live in snake-infected regions! Maybe someday…
great post. Very interesting.
What a memorable fund! I’d love to taste the honey although I’d have to think twice about putting my hand into a deep hole filled with bees! While they’re stingless, I’d have to overcome my instincts that they aren’t!