ZM's Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley: Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley's Fact of the Day (of the Week!) - Honey Badger Week!

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Hello and welcome to Fact of the Day of the Week. In this episode, Vaughn lifts the lid on the mighty

honey badger. It's time for… Fact of the Day. This week's Fact of the Day theme is the humble,

unstoppable, fearless, beautiful, really cute, extra cheeky honey badger.

Are you going to play the original honey badger video? That guy? Yeah, honey badger don't give a

shit. Honey badger is like just doing all that wild stuff. Here he is eating a snake. I mean people

have got to have something to do on their own time and I would encourage you to see all sorts of

amazing honey badger content. Aren't they super violent? No, they're just not scared of anything.

Wasn't that the thing that the honey badger was like a wild? Yeah, wild, unstoppable. The big

thing is they are commonly… This isn't even… This is a sub-fact. Oh my god. I always say them

as a whole week of this. The most fearless creature on earth. They do not know retreat.

Is that the Fact of the Day? No, no, no. This is a sub-fact. They are generally considered by

zoologists and animal experts as a fearless creature. They don't show fear like other animals.

They're so cute. Damn cute. I don't like it. For those who don't… They're like a South African

Tasmanian devil and you know I got love for the Tasmanian devil. It's my favourite animal.

Quite sloth-like. Yeah, they are. They do look a bit sloth. With those claws. Like a fast sloth.

A fast sloth. A less slothful sloth. Well, today's fact is that I'm going to ease you in with why

it's called the Honey Badger. Please do. It is the Honey Badger. It's a Latin name. Its scientific

name is Malavora capensis, which translates to Honey Eater of the Cape. Now the Cape,

they're talking about a South Africa because that was where they were first identified.

They also know in South Africa as a rattle, which is a Dutch word, they think, because it makes a

rattle-y sound. Does that? Yep. And it also rattle… What was it? Rattle is a Dutch word

for honeycomb. Right. R-A-A-T is a Dutch word for honeycomb because they love honey more than

anything else. Honey badges. Honey badges have a big old sweet tooth. That's why they're called

Honey Badgers because they get into beehives and they're just like gorge themselves. Immune to be

venom. Really? Immune to be venom. They just eat the bees too, like they wouldn't mind.

They'll eat the bees. If they've got honey on them, they'll eat it. They just get in here and

they just arm them, arm them, arm them, arm them, arm them, arm them. Does that spike their blood

sugar levels? Well, they'll have crash in the afternoon. They don't give a toot. They're a

Honey Badger. Honey Badger don't give a toot. And they're out there and they just get in there

and they'll eat anything. They're omnivorous, so they'll eat honey. Basically, that's honey and

meat for them, which sounds like a hell of a diet. What a great diet. What about honey and meat?

What about honey soy chicken wings? They would absolutely love them. And they would go to no

end. Honey, what about like a honey glazed fried chicken? You know, like crispy, like a little

officer? Yeah, yeah. So they are all over Africa. Also, I didn't know India and the Middle East as

well, the Honey Badger. Okay. They're all around there, but they never made their way to Korea

because if they had, they'd be in big trouble because you know the Koreans love sweet chicken.

Yeah, they do. Sweet fried chicken. They'd be in real trouble. So honey glazed. So cute. So wild.

Do we talk about hairlines? Yeah. I guess they've got like a little real

straight hairline. Straight fringe with the white. Do we talk about last week, the video about

Stoffel? Stoffel the Honey Badger? No. Okay, that's everybody's homework. Stoffel, we should have

sold us some Fact of the Day week long sponsorship to Honey Badger Saloon in Wellington.

I thought you were going to play that.

Hey, there's that Honey Badger Saloon in Wellington. Yeah, there is. It's a saloon?

It's a saloon, yeah. That gives me a real like, this is a crazy place. This gives me like,

shit goes down at the Honey Badger Saloon. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, what happens? What's on there?

Is there specialty cocktails? Hailey's after Welling. If we could send her on a reconnaissance.

I'm happy to go. Yeah, Fetherson Street. So get in there. Oh, I love Fetherson Street. Please,

please get a photo. Oh my God, look at the photo. Yeah, you look at this. Yeah, good stuff. Look

at that. Oh, now we all need to go to Wellington. Get on my flight, one o'clock. Yeah. All right,

we're going down. She'll be sitting at the front because she's gold now. I'm 4A.

It doesn't matter. We're down the back. I'll be down the back. I'll be down the back.

We're 23. 23B. Like the little Honey Badger I am. So today's Fact of the Day is the Honey Badger.

It's its Latin name translates to honey eater of the Cape because it loves nothing more

than getting into a beehive and just gobbling up all their honey. Fact of the Day Day Day Day Day

People are learning. I love hearing that. I love hearing when people learn from Fact of the Day.

I've just realized that my entire life, I thought a beehiver and a badger were the same thing,

but I thought everything was a beehiver. When you were calling them honey badgers,

I imagined you were calling them honey beehivers, which for some reason I was not okay with,

but I'm now very okay with the honey badger. We're learning. Welcome aboard.

Today's Honey Badger Fact of the Day, Day 2 of Honey Badger Week.

This is a pretty great fact. Honey badgers are part of the Weasel family.

So they are related to otters, ferrets, badgers, and skunks. I don't like ferrets.

I don't like you, Shana ferrets. I've been having a good chat about ferrets lately

because about pests, stones, weasels, ferrets, yuck, etc. Get rid of all of them. Get rid of all

of them out of this beautiful country of ours, but they are of that same family and much like

skunks can produce a smelly odor. Honey badgers. Yeah, honey badgers. From the butt.

From the butt. So as skunk sprays, they spray organic sulfur liquid, but a honey badger doesn't.

It's sulfur, is it? It's a sulfur-y... So you end up smelling like ototodoro.

Yeah, like rotten eggs and spoiled food and stuff. It's called a, yeah, it's a,

the skunk spray is made of organic sulfur-containing files. And so, but honey badgers don't spray it.

They don't squirt it. Okay. They literally dump a stink bomb. They turn when you went to the shop

and got a stink bomb and set it off. They turn their, they've got glands just above their bum

under their tail and it literally turns itself inside out and goes boom. And like a prolapses.

Yeah. It pops out. It pops out like a yogurt container. And it just, it's called a stink bomb,

not a spray, but they don't spray it. They don't propel it. They literally just go,

it's just out and it just goes. Now, if you've ever been to the vet because your dog's had a

blocked anal gland or a vet who does one, you'll know that that smell is ungodly. Yeah. Sounds

like a reason not to get a dog. Horrible, horrible, horrible. But it works in the same way, except

they can voluntarily choose to dump theirs. Right. Now, you might be thinking, Vaughn,

what do they do it for? Because I know skunks do it when they're being hunted or predators after

them. Yeah. Or they're scared. But yesterday you told us that honey badgers are the most

fearless creature in the world. Yeah. Yeah. You did. Well, they do it for a multitude of reasons.

They do it to mark their territory, to almost sort of like aggressively taunt people that are

hunting them. Like if a lion's hunting them, apparently it's not an affair. It's just like,

yeah, come get it. Like they, and they also believe it may, because the honey badger eats honey,

loves honey so much that that's where it got its name from, honey eater of the cape, the cape

in the South African Cape. They believe it may have a sleeping effect on bees. Oh my God.

They make the bees knock some out. You know how you smoke out a bee honey, it chills them all out

and they relax. So the honey beaver can get in there and eat all the honey badger. The honey

badger, sorry. So the honey badger can get in there and eat all the honey. Yeah. And the bees

are just like boo. Yeah. Honey man, tick my honey man. Mark the territory and press fellow honey

badgers because apparently the smellier the better. So a honey badger comes in and they're like,

whoa, whoa, we got a big dog in the house. Right. Okay. Yeah. And you know,

impress predators who are hunting them to be like, oh, come and get some. And it has a sleepy

effect on bees. It calms them down. So they're less likely to attack while they are raiding there.

Are you worried that you're going to run out of honey badger effects? I've got so many honey

badger effects. Okay, good. Because it is honey honey badger week. I don't want us to know. It's

honey badger week. So much to know about my ever, you know, they're up there now with the Tasmanian

Devil for me. Are they favorite animals? Okay. I love it. Absolute little, little character,

little monster, little terror, little chaotic unit. So today's fact of the day is the honey

badger like its cousin the skunk can produce a very, very smelly liquid. Hi, and welcome to

Honey Badger week for this week's fact of the day week. We've learned so much about the humble

honey badger. And boy, I bet it's rocketing up everybody's charts of favorite animals. Yeah,

they're pretty great. Yeah, they're pretty great. Well, today's fact of the day is the honey badger's

skin is six millimeters thick. Whoa, okay. That is comparable to the skin of the Cape Buffalo,

an animal that weighs 50 times more than the Honey Badger. Oh my God. What's a pig? I'm just

trying to think of animals. Well, I looked up human skin. The mean skin thickness of males is

between 0.6 of a mil and three mil. So half. What about granny's skin? That's always a bit.

Are granny's skins thin? Yeah, thinner skin. Oh, okay. So the thinnest of the skin is that the

thinnest of the skin on females is thicker than the male's skin is thinner skin. Thinner skin is

hard to say. Thinner skin. Where's our thinner skin? Is it the neck? Because I feel like my

neck's aging. I don't know, but your thinner skin is one and a half mils, but your thicker skin is

only 2.8 mils. Is that why some of our jokes rain? Is that why some of our personal jokes aimed

at Haley hurt her more? No, it's like funny because we're all laughing. The high-end ones,

the high-end ones stay with her longer. We're just like ribbing and we're all getting it. The light

jabs don't get through. Yeah. No, it's funny. It's funny. It's funny. It's funny. I get it.

She's having fun, don't you guys? She's laughing. She's laughing. She's having fun.

So then when you compare that to a honey badger, yeah, their skin is twice as thick as ours.

That's insane. So it's twice as much to get through.

Terrible for tattoos and piercings. I wouldn't stick. Yeah. And you'd imagine the honey badger

would love a tattoo. Yeah, they're bad boys are bad boys. Yeah, yeah. Tramp stamps and stuff just

for a laugh. Did you have other animal thickness? The top 10 animals with thicker skin. I'd love to.

Elephants? Elephants are up there. Number 10. They've got real crusty skin, eh?

Why have you ridden them? Twice. Oh, wow. Canceled. Not recently. Canceled. Twice.

Hippopotamus is on the list. Oh, yeah. As are honey badgers. Camels have very thick skin.

Armadillas, of course. Of course. You've got to say armadilla. Armadilla. I don't want to hear

armadillo ever said. It's got to be armadilla. Whale sharks have thick skin. Bicens have thick skin.

Yeah, bison. Sperm whales, rhinos, elephants and crocodiles. Bicens make great handbags.

Bicens do. They do. Bicen leather. Yeah, oh my god, yeah. There's a company that does strictly

bison leather bags and oh, they're nice. Is that why Native American bow and arrows were like

leagues ahead of other bow and arrows? Because they had to penetrate the thicker skin. Maybe.

And yeah, but it's the honey badger is one of the few sort of like, yeah, because non-pacoderm

yeah, land-based mammals on the list. They were camels and bicens.

Thick skin. Yeah, thick skin. Is my heels on that list?

So what are your heels made of? Thick. No, she's still about the heels of it.

Oh, right, the heel. Okay, yeah, right. You thought of a huge thing and she had

heels made out of another animal. Like crocodiles or something. No, no, no, I mean my natural heels.

God, they got to be thick. Yeah. They've got cracks in them. Oh, mate. Craters in them.

You should see them after it's sanded down. Yeah, that's when she likes to actually hit them with

that sanding thing. Yeah, pumice stone. Get a pumice stone on those heels. Yeah, but also the

skin is rubbery. Yeah, the honey badger skin is rubbery and too big for them. Do you know why?

So if something bites them, they can twist and turn and get out of the grip.

God, they're so smart. Yeah, so smart, so smart, so smart, so smart. And the average so much on

honey badger. The average bee sting can't get through them, which is also very handy because

we talked about how much they love yumbing up honey straight from the hive and the bee larvae.

And yeah, so that they can't get through, they've got to sting them in a certain place to be able

to get through and deposit it into a part of their body that can, you know, the venom can affect them.

The eyeball. The poison. So today's fact of the day here on Honey Badger Week, tune in two more to go.

And this is a way. Well, what's next week going to be? We're going to keep theming.

Well, we can't see. Find it organically. Today's fact of the day is honey badgers

have some of the thickest skins amongst the animal kingdom.

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Today's work is we continue Honey Badger Week. I told you it's going to take a dark turn.

And for that dark turn, I would like to turn to page 176 of the 1941 volume of Fauna of British

India. Okay, going back a long time. Not flora. Not flora. It is page 176 where I will read you

about Malavora Indica, the Indian rattle. Now we've talked about this. The Honey Badger is also

known as the rattle. Yeah. Believed to be drawn both from a Dutch name for Honey and also the

noise it makes. Yes. Well, throughout its life, when it's happy, when it's angry, it makes a

rattling noise. It goes on to say it has a tale without hair about one-fifth to one-sixth the

length of the head and body. Four claws very large. We know about this. We know what it looks like

now. Next page, 177. Now this is a digital scan of the original print. So it's in that

real weird oldie time font. That's quite hard to read. Okay. It goes on to say about the dimensions.

Habits. Like most of the subfamily, the Indian rattle is exclusively nocturnal. Not true.

Okay. They didn't have Honey Badger Effect of the week. They didn't have Honey Badger Effect.

Honey Badgers are out there doing their thing all matter of times.

Throughout India, this animal has a reputation of digging into graves of men in order to feed

upon the dead bodies. Honey Badger. Honey Badger, no. Honey Badger, what are you doing? You're

reading my grandeur. Oh my God. We're doing these accents because it would have been very inappropriate

for us to do Indian ones. Yeah. Well, Fletch wanted to and I totally wasn't allowed.

He did. He'll do it for you if you call up I-100-Dale-Z-M. He'll do it for you. You can also

ask for his Persian rug merchant. That's a really good, that's great character work.

It's phenomenal stuff. Several of the native names for the Indian rattle mean Gravedigger.

Really? And also, it is the same belief in Persia with regard to the Badger and all probability

equally without at least foundation that it is true of the rattle to eat dead bodies.

That's manky. That's a manky Badger. Yeah, that's a manky Badger. Naughty Badger.

Pablai Kodimvala. Kodim. Which is Gravedigger. Okay. I translated it.

So today's segment, it's taken a dark twist. It really did, didn't it? But you thought this

rascal was going to be Badger. No, not a honey Badger. No, no, no. Who's a naughty honey Badger?

Also, they wouldn't do it these days because of the formaldehyde and such. Yeah, would have been

good for the honey Badger. But the honey Badger would just probably like eat it and be like,

that's not good. I don't feel good. And then just have a nap and wake up and be like, whoa,

I won't do that again. I'm a honey Badger. I'm going to do it again. I'm numb. So today's

fact of the day, in a dark turn, honey Badgers in India would know when to dig down into fresh

graves and eat recent human remains. It's Honey Badger week. What are we doing next week? Have

we decided? Well, I had somebody suggest you said coffee as the fact of the day. Oh my God.

I've done a lot of coffee facts previously though. But I'm still absolutely shocked

that instant coffee was made in in vicargal, invented in vicargal. Unbelievable. Yeah. No,

no, wait, did we talk about that was on the podcast? I remember swearing at you straight

afterwards. Yeah, you did. I swore I made some suggestions, some very sexual suggestions to

you for doubting me and my knowledge on in vicargal's history with instant coffee. Yeah.

Well, it's the final of Honey Badger week. Yeah, I'm sad personally. I love this little animal more

at the end of it than I did at the start. Yesterday, we talked about the thick skin

of the Honey Badger. Yeah, tantamount to the water buffalo. They've got the same thick,

you know, thick skin and that's a big creature in this guy's real little tuffy.

You can call them any name and they won't cry. Yeah, they just just bounce us straight off them.

So I would like to talk about their bite today. Okay. The Honey Badger has a bite

of the force of 1,300 psi pounds per square inch. Okay. 1,300 pounds per square inch.

Trying to think, well, my bike tires are like 80. Not that, mate. Yeah, you've got really high

pressure tires. Yeah. When I borrowed your bike. Thank you. They'd need to carry that fat, jumping

ass around. Gosh. No, that can't ride tires or some shit, right? Yeah, they're good tires.

Yeah, they don't get punctures. Oh, it's good though, because you're a fluctuating, you know.

Yo, yo. You've got to handle that. You've got to know. Exactly. So 1,300 psi bite force,

which is stronger than lions and tigers. Okay. Oh, mine. But it's no match for the Honey Badger's

cousin, the Wolverine. Oh, wow. Are they cousins? Hugh Jackman's powerful bite is over 1,700 psi.

Yes. The Wolverine and the Honey Badger are both of the Weasel family. Okay. But they're just way

tougher than dumb ordinary Weasel's ferrets and stoats. Yeah, right. But apparently,

somebody did message me saying, if you love the Honey Badger, you're going to love the Wolverine.

I've long loved the Wolverine. Yes. But I feel like the Wolverine doesn't exert as much personality

as the Honey Badger. No. It's very, very tough. There's no doubt about it. It's got a stronger.

So you might be thinking, Wolverine, what is the most powerful bite in the animal kingdom?

Daddy Long Legs. It's the hippopotamus. Oh, yeah. It's mammal wise. It's the most powerful bite.

It is. And the Wolverine is just below the hippopotamus. That's why the hippopotamus kills

so many people. It's Africa's most deadly animal. Well, and Columbia's now. Oh, yeah.

Bubblow. Bubblows are out, aren't they? Yeah. And they're just absolutely breeding like no

man's land. So, yeah, the hippopotamus, people don't see it. It's underwater. They'll step

in the territory. They launch out of the water and just, boom, bite for you. And they can open

their mouth wide enough to get like a kitten. That's insane. Yeah. So they are very dangerous.

So the Wolverine's bite is just less than the hippopotamus and the Honey Badgers is a bit less

than a Wolverine. But a very, very powerful bite, so powerful, it can bite the... I'm back on the

Honey Badger. Yeah. It can bite a turtle or a tortoise and crack open the shell. Oh my God.

Wow. Like, open up a nut. Yeah. Or eating a muscle. Yeah. Yeah. It's eating the muscle by biting

through the shell rather than putting it on the barbecue for five minutes and just when it starts

open, just crack them open and then put a lemon, put a garlic, put a garlic, put a garlic, put a

butter, put a bit of butter, put a bit of butter, put a bit of butter, put a bit of sweet chili

sauce. Greenery on top. That's why you get a whole barbecue. It's worth the muscle so you can have

all sorts of different things. Yeah, beautiful. Good stuff. And then you don't take the top of the

shell open and then you let it cool down a little bit and then you hold it up to your mouth and you

go and lick it out. Do you stop at that green lip muscle? Do you stop at that thing at the

supermarket that's always spraying them? No. Yuck. No. I don't trust that thing. We've talked about

it before. Where's the salt? What are coming from? It's weird. Yeah. Yeah. It's not coming direct from

the ocean. It's recirculating. And it recirculates? No. I don't know about that. No, proper fish

shop. Okay. Yeah, right. So today's fact of the day is the Honey Badgers bite is one of the most

powerful in the animal kingdom, but it's no match for its cousin, the Wolverine.

Fact of the day, day, day, day, day.

Well, if you enjoyed that, give us a rating and review and be sure to tell your mates.

You know what? I reckon your script reading is getting better. I think it is too. I give it five

stars. Yeah. Just like I'd give this podcast. I'm telling my friends about your script reading too.

Thank you. Much like I'm going to do about this podcast. Thank you, Vaughan and Hailey for that.

Good boy. ZM's Fletch Vaughan and Hailey.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.