Banded mongooses are widespread across southern Africa. Unlike slender mongooses, they breed throughout the year, resulting in numerous family offspring. These small predators live in large family groups, typically consisting of 30 to 40 members, though clans of 50-75 individuals are not uncommon. Within these groups, adult males, females, and young ones live peacefully together, occupying various burrows in their territory. At night, they huddle together in large sleeping chambers, up to 2 cubic meters in size. During the day, they forage together in the savannah.
Mungos Mungo
Banded Mongoose
Banded mongooses primarily feed on invertebrates and insects, supplementing their diet with eggs, small snakes, and fruits. Unlike their slender mongoose relatives, they are more robust, weighing between 1 to 2 kilograms and measuring about 60 centimeters in length, nearly half of which is their long tail.
Banded Mongoose
Striped little predator
GUIDE KNOWLEDGE: BANDED MONGOOSEK
Within their groups, banded mongooses are highly social and exhibit minimal hierarchical organization. They engage in communal grooming and reinforce their group bonds through mutual scent marking. Often, you can see them standing upright on their hind legs to keep watch and warn the group of approaching predators with sharp calls. Although they forage together, each mongoose hunts for beetles and millipedes individually. They have developed clever methods to break open hard-shelled food, such as standing on their hind legs and throwing armored beetles and eggs against rocks.
Banded mongooses also support each other in raising young. Typically, the mothers in a group give birth around the same time and will nurse each other's young. A litter usually consists of up to six pups, born blind and weighing 20-50 grams. The pups open their eyes after about ten days and are guarded by an adult "nanny" while the rest of the group forages. This role is often taken on by a male rather than a parent.
When not raising young, banded mongooses roam several kilometers daily within their territories, which range from 40 to 400 hectares. They find shelter in different burrows at night, maintaining up to 40 burrows within a single territory. Despite their peaceful family dynamics, they aggressively defend their territories from other groups, with territorial disputes sometimes resulting in fatalities. Due to numerous predators, the survival rate is generally low, with only about 50% of the young surviving past three months.