Summary
Were honey badgers weaponized by the UK during the Iraq war? Who would win, the greatest fighter on earth, or a honey badger? What about a honey badger vs. a lion? Or a hyena? Or a cobra? How come honey badgers are so absurdly brave? Why are they such creative escape artists? Honey badgers are the toughest animals on the face of the planet, and today we talk all about them.
Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BoUEfR7tUcfFvlEeMabjbZ1F4meRuA7197t6Xv7-Hp4/edit?usp=sharing
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In 2007, during the Iraq War, Iraqi locals accused the British of releasing man-eating badgers |
| 0:09.2 | to create chaos and demoralize the opposition. |
| 0:13.3 | This absurd anecdote comes to me by way of Casper Henderson's book, The Book of Barely Imagine |
| 0:19.0 | Beings. |
| 0:20.4 | In it, he details the rumors. |
| 0:23.6 | Some claimed that the animals were eating their cows. |
| 0:27.3 | Others claimed they were attacking the local forces in support of the UK. |
| 0:32.9 | Now, scientists thought this was ridiculous. |
| 0:35.4 | They suspected at the time that it was just some flooding |
| 0:38.4 | north of the area that caused an unusual influx of endemic badgers, and this is what it was |
| 0:45.0 | likely to be, but this did not stop the Iraqi rumor mill from turning. Other earnestly held |
| 0:51.6 | beliefs at the time included the theory that the British were putting |
| 0:56.1 | snake eggs in the Iraqis water, that the British were using rabid bomb-sniffing dogs, and |
| 1:04.4 | that they had fitted the local squirrels with surveillance devices. |
| 1:13.8 | That's the context that we're dealing with. |
| 1:21.3 | If being scared of badgers sounds comedic to you, it won't by the end of the show. |
| 1:30.9 | Today we are going to talk about the honey badger, Melivora Capensis. An animal the Guinness Book of World Records calls the most fearless animal in the world. I'm Mackin. This is Species. |
| 1:42.7 | Welcome to the show. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers listening, to my mother in particular, of course, and to the mothers of the animal kingdom in general. We literally would not be here without you. Thank you. Today's episode is going to be pretty brutal. By the way, we are going to be talking about honey badgers, and so violence is going to be the topic de jour. |
| 2:03.9 | So I hope you can all brace yourselves for it. |
| 2:06.3 | If you find this show valuable, you can support it. |
| 2:09.4 | Of course, we have no paywalls, no advertisers, just people who derive value from the show and give back to it. |
| 2:17.4 | A dollar an episode might not sound like much, |
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