Odours And Attitude: A Comparison Of How Two Toughs Get Going

Robin and the Honey Badger’s mission is to recharge biology with originality for you, the non-specialist reader. Exploring the Bio-edge is a series of e-essays presenting lateral thoughts in search of ever more interesting stories from biology. In this e-essay: we feature the second author’s namesake in the flesh, the real honey badger, checking the reality of this mustelid by careful comparison with a species so far and yet so near: the wolverine. Our interpretation turns fict into fact and hype into hypothesis by grounding these notorious animals in the ecological map of the globe.

Each morning Robin and the Honey Badger wake up to a world of Nature with new curiosity. Which aspects of the natural world have been underlooked? Which adaptations or non-adaptations of organisms have been downplayed because of some theoretical bias? Which observations have yet to be integrated because of interdisciplinary timidity? How laterally can we think as we cruise the bewildering diversity of life forms on Earth? Join us in our mission of Exploring the Bio-edge in a series of e-essays that fearlessly - but accurately - cover all corners of biology.