Death by a thousand cuts…
Growing up, one of my favorite books was Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the tale of a mongoose protecting a family from cobras written by Rudyard Kipling in 1894. To this day I still have a huge respect for mongooses just from that story, but until now I didn’t know how much of it was true and how much was made up to be entertaining.
After a bit of research, it turns out not much was made up and mongooses are some of the most impressive creatures on the planet.
They are opportunistic hunters, capable of taking out everything from grasshoppers and scorpions to fish, hares, and egrets, but they will forever be associated with the ability to hunt extremely dangerous snakes.
Mongooses have two main characteristics that allow them to take out venomous snakes. The first is lightening fast reflexes, which they use to avoid strikes after making the snake snap at them multiple times to tire it out. The second is layers of stiff rigid hair, thick loose skin, and acetylcholine receptors which make the animal resistant or immune to snake bites. Combine those with its daring personality and you’ve got yourself a pure bred cobra killer.
But it’s not just cobras and venomous snakes they are capable of taking out as we see in this crazy video.
Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly where it takes place but it’s likely in Africa (the native range of the banded mongoose) but a python decided to make a run at a lone mongoose to secure itself a meal, but it didn’t know another of the characteristics of mongooses.
As put in the video’s description…
“Mongooses are often seen living in groups called colonies. When a threat like a snake or a bird of prey approaches, they come together and form a tight-knit circle, heads facing outward. This united front is like a human community coming together to protect itself from external threats…
Just like humans, mongooses are protective parents. When danger looms, they’ll do whatever it takes to keep their young ones safe.”
Safe to say, this python learned a hard lesson that it will not be able to recover from.
One mongoose is enough to be a real problem, I can’t imagine the damage that a whole swarm of them can inflict…
