Who’s Your Honey Badger

They say a dog is a man’s best friend. I wouldn’t know. Family allergies meant I only experienced the friendship of a plethora of stuffed animals, some plastic My Little Ponies, and a couple of short-lived and unruly guinea pigs.

But I did grow up watching The Lion King – in which Simba took the Pumba & Timon duo up to three – and reading in The Jungle Book about how a hundred years before them a pack of wolves adopted baby Mowgli.

More recently, the National Geographic dove into ocean waters to marvel at some sperm whales who took a deformed bottlenose dolphin under their fins. And Google image searches unearth a bizarre collection of photographs documenting even weirder relationships within the animal kingdom.

But my favorite ‘I got your back’ relationship within the animal kingdom surfaced after an effeminate New Yawk voice – identified as Randall – hijacked a National Geographic video to spice up its narration on the honey badger. It went viral and now everyone from within the t-shirt industry to social entrepreneurship theories takes to using the honey badger as a mascot and a metaphor.

But who is the honey badger’s friend?

A slightly less edgy YouTube narration on the honey badger revealed that – contrary to Randall’s assertion that ‘honey badger don’t care’ – honey badger does care – a lot – about this little bird called the greater honeyguide. Honey badger lets the Greater honeyguide lead him to beehives where he does the dirty work of tearing open the hive to eat the honey and the bee larvae and then leaves the leftovers for the bird.

This odd couple got me thinking back to Mowgli and Simba and the deformed dolphin. The wolves didn’t care that they should’ve mauled Mowgli, and Pumba & Timon didn’t care that Simba should eat them. Somehow the sperm whales felt the deformed dolphin would add strength to their pod. These honey badgers of the animal kingdom aren’t just relentless in their care, they’re indiscriminate.

I figure if the animals can nail this virtue, how much more should we humans be able to embody this honey badgnerness?

I don’t know if a man needs a dog as a best friend – I made it through with stuffed animals and a handful of My Little Ponies. But I do believe that we all need a little bit of honey badger.

And the quickest way to find the honey badger is probably to look for who can be your Greater honeyguide. Nature is symbiotic after all.