Honey badger vs wolverine: size, bite, and who wins

The short answer

A wolverine is the bigger animal. A honey badger is the harder one to finish.

They also never meet. Honey badgers live across sub-Saharan Africa, the Arabian peninsula, the Indian peninsula and parts of western Asia, in tropical and subtropical forest, thorn forest and open woodland. Wolverines live in the boreal zone of the northern hemisphere, in alpine forest, tundra and the shrub transition ground at or above the treeline. The habitats do not overlap. One animal belongs to hot, dry, thorny country and the other belongs to snow, so the matchup lives entirely in internet threads, which is probably why it refuses to die.

Both animals are mustelids, the family that also covers the otters and the weasels. That shared ancestry is why they read as two versions of one idea: low body, short legs, heavy neck, far more muscle than the silhouette admits to.

Size: the gap is real

Measured by one source for both animals, the University of Michigan's Animal Diversity Web, the numbers line up like this.

A honey badger is 60 to 70 cm long in the body, stands about 25 cm at the shoulder, and weighs 8 to 12 kg. A wolverine is 65 to 105 cm, stands 36 to 45 cm at the shoulder, and weighs 9 to 30 kg.

Translated out of centimetres: a honey badger stands about as tall at the shoulder as a house cat, with a great deal more packed onto that frame. A wolverine stands about as tall as a stocky spaniel and can reach the weight of a medium dog.

It pays to notice where any single weight came from. The National Park Service lists Yellowstone's wolverines at 38 to 47 inches long and 13 to 31 pounds, well under the species-wide top end. Wolverines range right across the northern hemisphere, so a figure from one study area describes that area first.

Built for two different problems

The honey badger's famous feature is its hide. San Diego Zoo describes skin thick enough to withstand bee stings, porcupine quills and even dog bites. It is also loose. A honey badger held by the back of the neck can turn around inside its own skin and bite whatever is holding it. Animal Diversity Web makes the same point more plainly: the skin is thick and loose enough to stop a predator getting a firm grasp. Add a massive skull, strong teeth, long front claws for digging and defence, and an apparent resistance to snake venom. The result is an animal that survives being caught by something larger.

The wolverine's equipment points at dinner. The Park Service describes strong teeth and well-developed muscles in the head, neck and shoulders, built to rip into and feed on frozen flesh and bone. Animal Diversity Web records a very powerful bite, with which they crush bone. A wolverine spends winter opening carcasses that froze solid weeks ago.

The honey badger's kit keeps it alive. The wolverine's kit opens frozen meat.

About that bite-force number

Search this matchup and a confident PSI figure for each animal turns up fast.

We left those numbers out, because we could not trace either one back to a source worth linking. What the reputable sources give you is qualitative, and it still does the job: the wolverine crushes bone, and the honey badger carries a massive skull and strong teeth. An untraceable figure with a decimal point in it still reads as science, which is exactly why it travels.

Field note: the honey badger's best weapon is a reputation it almost never has to use. Most of what it does is make the next few minutes look expensive.

Where they live explains more than the fight does

A wolverine needs cold, snow and enormous amounts of room. Animal Diversity Web puts a male's home range at 600 to 1,000 square kilometres, and the Park Service states plainly that wolverines do not live at high densities anywhere throughout their range. In Yellowstone, three tracked males averaged 350 square miles each. One animal, 350 square miles. That is the kind of room it takes to make a living up there.

A honey badger lives at the other end of all this. Animal Diversity Web records the species from sea level to 4,050 metres, across ground running from southern Africa to western India. Heat, dry dirt, snakes, bees, hard digging.

The two animals were shaped by two different places. Neither was shaped by the other.

So who wins

Nobody can answer this from observation, because the fight has never happened.

Pressed for a guess on flat ground, the bigger animal with the bone-crushing bite is the sensible pick. A wolverine at the top of its range carries more than twice a honey badger's weight, and the sources above are clear about what those jaws are built for.

The guess comes with an asterisk. Every feature those same sources list for the honey badger points one direction: whatever gets hold of it has trouble keeping hold of it. Grab one by the neck and it turns inside its own skin and reaches your face. That is a bad animal to be holding, whatever you weigh.

Which is roughly why we put one in the story.

The badger we drew

Belli is our honey badger, and the real animal's logic is his whole personality. He learned somewhere along the line that being difficult to handle is the same thing as being safe. So he wears the intimidation like a coat and keeps his good heart underneath, where nobody can use it against him.

The temper has rules. Belli goes off at unfairness, at stupidity, at anything needlessly complicated, and then becomes personally offended that the situation required explaining at all. Real danger to somebody he cares about works the other way on him. The swagger goes quiet and he just moves.

You can meet him, and everyone else who ended up in this story, on the Atomic Critters Universe page. He also has his own Belli Badger collection, including the Belli Journey unisex tee.

More in this series: do otters hold hands, and does the famous picture tell the whole story.