In the early 2000s, wildlife conservationist Brian Jones rescued an orphaned honey badger from a trap near Kruger National Park in South Africa and brought him to Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. He named him Stoffel. It seemed like a straightforward rescue.

 

It was not.

Honey badgers are already the most fearless animal on Earth relative to their size. They take on lions, shrug off snake venom, and have loose, rubbery skin that twists in an attacker's grip so they can fight back from any angle. Stoffel had all of that, plus a brain that refused to accept any boundary humans tried to impose on him.
After being mauled by lions, Jones built Stoffel a secure private enclosure. Stoffel picked the lock with a stick. Jones added wire. Stoffel pushed it off. Jones added more locks. Stoffel defeated each one.

Jones introduced a female honey badger named Hammy, hoping company might settle him down. Instead, Stoffel taught her everything he knew. Within days she was picking locks alongside him and they escaped together.

Jones built what he called Honey Badger Alcatraz. Stoffel used branches as ladders to scale the walls. Jones cut the trees down. Stoffel and Hammy rolled rocks to the wall and stacked them high enough to climb over. When that failed, Stoffel started using rakes, spades, and mud balls as platforms.

Eventually he stopped just escaping. He started breaking into the keeper's house at night instead.

Jones described the whole thing as living inside a cartoon where the animal always wins. Stoffel is still at Moholoholo today. The rules, as far as he is concerned, have never applied to him