SUMMARY
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Banded mongooses are gregarious, diurnal mammals that live in grasslands, woodlands, rocky terrain, and riverine areas of southern Africa. Within these areas, they prefer to inhabit termite mounds (Neal, 1970). Banded mongooses are small brown creatures measuring up to 40 cm long. They are distinguished from other mongooses by the light and dark band patterns on their hind.
Banded mongooses feed upon many types of small vertebrates and invertebrates, but their primary foods are millipedes and beetles. They spend the majority of their day foraging within their home range, leaving early in the morning and returning late at night. While foraging, each of the up to 48 individuals stay close together, but find food on their own. Because their diet consists of such small animals, banded mongooses must travel long distances each day in order to acquire a sufficient amount of food. Therefore, food availability is a large influence in shaping their social spacing. Banded mongooses possess home ranges with a nesting/mating territory as opposed to a classical because defending an area large enough to fulfill their dietary needs would be too energetically costly (Rood, 1975). Defending a nesting/mating territory provides banded mongooses with the necessary shelter and protection without too high of an energetic demand. Living in large social groups provides banded mongooses protection in numbers (ie. selfish herd, cooperative defense, etc.) and enables the members to be more efficient by sharing responsibilities such as guarding the den and communal care of young (Neal, 1970).
Banded mongooses possess a linear dominance hierarchy, but the ranking mainly serves the purpose of leading packs, leading retreats from predators, and leader defensive attacks. Reinforcement of dominance is usually not necessary because banded mongooses have low resource restraints, which makes dispersal a viable option. Therefore, enforcement of dominance in time of low ecological restraints requires lots of energy with little fitness benefits. In fact, suppression of subordinates may actually do more harm to the pack if it causes members to disperse. Only in cases when there are low resources do dominant banded mongooses exert their power. An example of such a situation includes evicting pack members in times of low food availability (De Luca and Ginsberg, 1999). Although aggression between packs is high, social interaction amongst pack members are very cooperative as can be seen in social hunting, raising of young communally, and cooperative defense. This type of cooperative behavior in banded mongooses provides them with increased survival rate and fitness benefits (Kingdon, 1977).
| General Description | Habitat and Habitat Utilization | Social System | Social Spacing | Social Relationships | Social Cooperation | Summary | References |
* This web site was completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Biology 323, Animal Behavior, at Davidson College in the Spring Semester 2005