VIDEO: Honey Badger Kills Monitor

Although fights between animals may seem extremely violent to us, they’re the norm for them.

Animals are used to fighting.

They fight for food, for territory and for supremacy.

After all, it’s survival of the fittest in the wilderness.

This video captured the moment a honey badger fought and killed a monitor.

According to Live Science, badgers are small mammals with flat, wedge-shaped bodies, broad feet with long claws and coarse hair that can be black, brown, gold or white. They are related to ferrets, minks, otters, weasels and wolverines. All of these animals are members of Mustelidae, the largest family in the order Carnivora.

The classification of badgers is complex. According to Daniel Heath Justice, author of “Badger” (Reaktion Books, 2015), “Categories are under constant revision, rendering the taxonomic accuracy of any study … temporary at best.”

Justice acknowledges that there continues to be a debate about which animals should be considered “true badgers.” “Scientists generally agree on three species: the Eurasian badger, the Asian hog badger and the North American badger.”

Including the honey badger in this group is controversial, he wrote, because it is genetically and genealogically distant from the others. However, the honey badger, also called the ratel, is generally still included among “badger-kin.”

Badgers prefer dry, open grasslands, though they are very adaptable. Some also live in woods, quarries, hedgerows, sea cliffs and moorland. American badgers are typically found in the Great Plains region of North America.

They can also be found in the western United States, central western Canadian provinces and in the mountainous areas of Mexico, according to the Animal Diversity Web (ADW) at the University of Michigan.

Honey badgers are found in southern Africa; hog badgers live primarily in Southeast Asia, India and Sumatra. The Asian badger extends across Russia and into China and Eastern Europe. The European, or Eurasian, badger spans from Ireland and Spain all the way to eastern Russia, China and Japan, according to ADW.

Badgers are also found in large numbers in the United Kingdom. Government officials have taken steps to “cull” the population to prevent the spread of tuberculosis from badgers to cattle.

Badgers are nocturnal, meaning they are most active at night and sleep during the day.

Badgers have strong limbs and sharp claws that help them dig burrows and find food underground. They make their homes by digging tunnels and caves and use grass and leaves for bedding. A badger’s home is called a sett. Setts have a special chamber reserved as the bathroom because badgers are clean creatures, according to the Somerset Wildlife Trust.

Many badger species are very social creatures and live in groups called a cete or clan. A clan shares territory and setts. Setts can be centuries old and are used by many generations of badgers. One sett can be 22 to 109 yards (20 to 100 meters) or more long, according to the Somerset Wildlife Trust.

Most badgers are omnivores, which means they eat both plants and meat. Typically, though, they mainly consume earthworms and the larvae of daddy long legs.