By Margi Lilienfeld
Every now and then, I am treated to a special Simbithi delight: a visit from a troop of banded mongooses (Mungos mungo). Their arrival is usually heralded by a chorus of high-pitched twitters, whistles, chirps, and grunts—an energetic symphony of communication that lets me know they’re in the garden. I love watching their robust romps as they weave through the undergrowth, brimming with curiosity and purpose.
As they dig with their long front claws, I often hear louder, hyper-excited chattering—an unmistakable sign that one has found a special treat. Although they forage in groups, banded mongooses are not co-operative feeders. Each individual hunts for their own food, and when a particularly juicy prey item is found, a squabble often breaks out. Usually, the mongoose who gets to it first, wins the prize.
Their diet consists mainly of insects—beetles, termites, and ants—tracked down using their highly developed sense of smell. But their menu is more varied than that. They also feast on Myriapods (millipedes and centipedes), small reptiles, rodents, frogs, birds, some fruit and eggs of both birds and reptiles. When faced with a hard-shelled egg, these clever creatures display a remarkable tool-using behaviour: they roll or carry the egg to a rock, pick the egg up in their forepaws, and hurl it backwards between their hind legs to smash it open. African millipedes, which coil into tight spirals as a defence, are no match for this technique and are similarly smashed open and enjoyed with delighted chitters.
Another ingenious behaviour includes rolling hairy caterpillars or toxic prey in sand to remove defensive hairs or secretions before consumption. Famous for their snake-fighting prowess, mongooses rely on lightning-fast reflexes to dodge strikes and often work together in co-ordinated attacks to overcome large snakes. Despite the myth, they are not immune to snake venom and can be fatally bitten. Other predators include lions, wild dogs, hyenas, and large raptors.
When a potential predator is spotted, an alarm call is sounded immediately. Most of the adult mongooses then stand up on their hind legs to identify the danger, before they quickly disperse with ultra-high-pitched squeals and chirps. If they are surprised by a large predator, when no escape is possible, they huddle together, lying on top of each another with their heads facing out, towards their attackers. This highly co-operative defence behaviour is often successful in deterring lion and other large predators from attacking them. I love their brave and curious nature so aptly described by Rudyard Kipling in his writings of Rikki Tikki Tavi.
The Fascinating Social Lives of Banded Mongooses
Banded mongooses (never mongeese) live in impressively large groups—the largest average group size of any carnivore. While typical groups contain 10 to 30 individuals, some can grow to as many as 75. These groups are centred around a core of breeding adults who reproduce three or four times a year, with younger members breeding less frequently.
In an intriguing form of co-operative breeding, all the females in a troop come into oestrus simultaneously. Dominant males aggressively guard the older, more socially dominant females, and mate with them. Interestingly, the dominant females sometimes slip away to mate with younger males. Not all females in a group will breed, and both sexes use kin discrimination to avoid inbreeding. After a gestation period of about 60 days, the most astonishing thing happens: nearly all females give birth on the same night.
It’s believed that subordinate females synchronise giving birth on the same night as dominant females to reduce the risk of infanticide. The pups of dominant females tend to have a head start—they’re slightly more developed and the older females also have larger litters. In times when resources are limited only the dominant females breed. Yet, once the pups are born, the entire troop steps in to care for them. All lactating females allow any pup to suckle, and each pup forms a special bond with a single helper—often a non-breeding adult—who babysits in the den and later acts as an escort during foraging trips. These relationships are long-lived and the pups and their helpers can even recognise each other solely by their vocalisations.
At around three weeks, pups begin eating solid food and by five weeks, they start joining the foraging missions. They are nutritionally independent by three months and reach sexual maturity at around 10 months.
Mongooses have an especially keen sense of smell, and experiments have shown that they can detect the gender, age, dominance status, and reproductive condition from scent marks. Scent communication is especially important in competition between individuals of the same sex, and scent also helps identify whether another mongoose belongs to their group, a neighbouring group, or is a stranger.
When a group becomes too large, dominant females may evict younger ones en masse. Unrelated coalitions of female and males come together to form a new troop. Typically, there are equal numbers of males and females in a troop. Aggression between members of the same troop is very low but relationships between different groups are highly aggressive with fatalities and injuries occurring during encounters with other groups. Surprisingly, should an encounter occur when females are in oestrus, they will allow males of the opposing troop to mate with them.
Daily Life and Communication
Being diurnal, banded mongooses emerge from their den shortly after sunrise and forage for several hours. They then have fiesta in the midday heat, lying together in the shade, before resuming foraging in the cooler afternoon. Communal grooming takes place and strengthens bonds between members of a clan. Banded mongooses spend the night in communal dens, which may be termite mounds, burrows beneath bushes, or even spaces beneath Simbithi decks. These dens often have multiple entrances and sleeping chambers. Though they move dens every few nights, they will remain in one place for longer during breeding periods, while rearing young pups.
Their home ranges can span up to 4km2 and contain several dens. When co-ordinating such a complex social life, communication is key. Banded mongooses have a repertoire of at least 15 distinct vocalisations, including discrete calls and complex sequences. Their vocal flexibility is a product of their rich social structure, contrasting starkly with the simpler calls of our more solitary marsh or water mongooses.
A Note for Simbithi Residents
As enchanting as these visitors are, it’s important not to feed them as they can quickly become a nuisance by raiding food supplies and scavenging. Additionally, as with our vervets, there is significantly increased aggression within troops when banded mongooses are foraging in garbage compared to natural foraging habitats and this results in an increased number of injuries within a troop. A study in Botswana determined that certain populations of banded mongooses accessing human food were found to be endemically infected with a novel strain of a Mycobacterium pathogen.
I have used several different collective nouns for mongooses in this article but left my favourite for last, a curiosity of mongooses. How fitting for these clever, curious, and endlessly entertaining little neighbours of ours on Simbithi Eco-Estate.
The Other AGM:
The photographs for this piece are inspired by Kirsty Bissett’s regular posts on our Simbithi Wildlife Group, in which she chronicles the congregations held by the mongooses in her garden. They have been dubbed ‘The AGMs’!
