Miocene (Pt 21): Mongooses and More

A modern mongoose

When Africa, moving north, collided with Asia around 19 million years ago, a number of hoofed animals, and other large herbivores, headed south to colonise the continent. Naturally, where herbivores go, predators follow, so an influx of carnivorous animals occurred at around the same time.

Until this time, Africa had been an island continent, separated from the larger northern landmasses and lacked many of the kinds of carnivore we are familiar with today. It had, for example, no cats, dogs, or bears, or even such quintessentially "African" animals as hyenas. All of these, and others besides, belong to the group of mammals known as "carnivorans", which essentially includes all large land-dwelling mammalian carnivores today, apart from the Tasmanian devil. They had evolved in the north, and the new land bridge gave them their first chance to reach the more southerly continent.

Compare the Mongoose

The mongoose family includes over 30 different species, found across Africa and southern Asia. That's excluding a few species of "mongoose" found on Madagascar, which were discovered, back in the last decade, to be more closely related to some of the other carnivores of the island than they were to the "true" mongooses on the mainland. On the other hand, it does include a small number of species that aren't commonly called "mongooses" in English. Ironically, in fact, it's one of these latter that's probably the most familiar of all mongoose species to westerners: the meerkat (Suricata suricatta).

(As an aside, the word "meerkat" is Afrikaans... which is a bit odd, since it means something completely different in Dutch).

Even when they aren't singing Hakuna Matata or trying to sell you car insurance, meerkats are common features on wildlife documentaries (at least they are in Britain; I can't speak for other countries) and in zoos across the world. In part, this is because they're rather cute, sociable animals, with complex, telegenic, lives that involve a lot of cooperation. But, while meerkats are probably the most social of all mongooses, they are by no means the only ones. Another example, for instance, is the banded mongoose (Mungos mungo), which lives in groups almost as large as those of meerkats.