Honey badgers are well-known for their aggression and fearlessness — they will readily challenge animals much larger than them, including lions, horses, cattle, and Cape buffalo. They’ve even been observed eating venomous snakes, falling asleep after receiving a serious dose of venom and, after a few hours, waking up healthy again. But it gets better: they’re also master escape artists.

In South Africa, a conservationist learned this lesson the hard way. When his male honey badgers escaped from his pen and was mauled by a lion, he knew he had to keep the fearless badger contained. To give him some entertainment, he paired the male honey badger with a female.

Unfortunately, this only exacerbated the problem, and the honey badger couple demonstrated the true value of teamwork.

Together, they quickly learned how to open the door by working together to unbolt the two bolts in unison.

And, if they didn’t feel like doing that, they would just dig under the chain-link barrier fence.

Obviously, this didn’t go over well with the conservationist, so at great expense, he built a concrete fortress, which the honey badgers couldn’t climb or dig underneath. Or so he thought.

Ever clever, the honey badgers used whatever they could find around their enclosure to scale the walls. Trees, packed mud, rakes, logs…there was little that the honey badgers couldn’t use as a tool to escape. So, not only are honey badgers fearless, but they are also extremely crafty.

Watch the action in the video below.

Honey badgers are quite intelligent. In fact, they have relatively big brains for their body size. Learn more about their incredible intelligence in the video below.