Mongoose fighting a cobra Do you want to watch?
A mongoose is a small carnivoran member of 33[2] living species in southern Eurasia and mainland Africa of the family Herpestidae.[1] Four additional species from Madagascar in the subfamily Galidiinae, which were previously classified in this family, are also referred to as “mongooses” or “mongoose-like”. Genetic evidence indicates the Galidiinae are more closely related to other Madagascar carnivorans in the family Eupleridae, which is the closest living group to the true mongooses.
A well-known fictional mongoose is Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, who appears in a short story of the same title in The Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard Kipling. In this tale set in India, the young mongoose saves his family from a krait and from Nag and Nagaina, two cobras. The story was later made into several films, and also a song by Donovan, among other references. A mongoose also features in Bram Stoker’s novel, The Lair of the White Worm. The main character, Adam Salton, purchases one to independently hunt snakes. Game Freak’s Pokémon franchise has a Pokémon named Zangoose that is based on and named after the mongoose.
As noted earlier, the mongoose is a prohibited animal in the United States (with the exception of Hawai’i). However, an exception was made in the 1963 case of “Mr. Magoo”, a mongoose brought to the Minnesota port of Duluth by a merchant seaman. Mr. Magoo, as the animal was to become known, faced being euthanized but a public campaign resulted in the intervention of the Secretary of the Interior, who spared his life, and the mongoose lived out his days on display as the most popular attraction of the Duluth Zoo, until 1968.[17]
