Fearless Honey Badger takes on 6 Lions.  | Caught in the Act

On a late afternoon game drive, Giles and his guests were enjoying a lion sighting before heading back to their lodge for the night. We were about ready to leave, I think, and I all of a sudden saw two honey badgers pop out of the reeds. I knew their reputation, so I knew that things were going to happen. I prepared the guests. I said, just get your cameras out and have a look at this. When they came out of the reeds, the honey badgers literally walked into the middle of the lions. There was two adult lionesses in the pride and four sub-adults. The sub-adults immediately took action. The four sub-adults attacked the honey badgers, and it was quite incredible. It was a very aggressive little time. They make the most remarkable sound. Their Afrikaans name is rattle, and it must be from the noise that they make. It's this... They rattle a lot when they are agitated, and it's quite a fearsome noise to hear, so it intimidates the lions, I'm sure. This is just one of the many defence mechanisms these animals have. I think that the lionesses knew what these things were, and they didn't want to get involved, and the youngsters hadn't had much experience with this, so they were just playfully going for them and swatting them around a bit, and then it got more serious when the honey badgers started reacting and attacking the youngsters, and then even more so when the lionesses suddenly got involved, and the one lioness severely mauled the one badger. She bit it across the midriff here. You could see it was sort of in the sand, and her whole mouth pretty much covered most of the honey badgers. The fight itself was definitely a life-and-death situation for the honey badgers. It was very serious. It was quite a traumatic experience, especially if you haven't seen things like that before, so my guests were obviously very worried for the honey badgers. They saw the small size of the badgers and thought that they didn't really have a chance. But the badger had one last defence card up its sleeve. The honey badger has this incredible ability to rotate almost completely in its own skin. It's got very loose skin, and it turned round and bit her on the nose, fortunately severely enough for her to let go, and she let it go, and the honey badger ran right back in to try and get some more of the lion. It does seem like it's outmatched completely, but they are such tough creatures and so ferocious that they managed to beat up the six lions. Incredible. Luckily, both honey badgers got away fairly unscathed, and I think the poor lioness was a little worthwhile. All things considered, it was definitely one of my best sightings. The interaction was incredibly rare, and we were very fortunate to witness it and capture it on film.