Common dwarf mongoose
Helogale parvula
— Where the name comes from
Helogale joins the Greek hélos, “marsh”, and galéē, “weasel”: “marsh weasel”, which is a questionable description of an animal of the dry savannah. Parvula is the Latin diminutive of parvus, “small” — “the very small one”, and it is exact: at barely three hundred grams it is the smallest carnivore in Africa.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Carnivores
- Habitat
- Wooded savannah and bushland, always near abandoned termite mounds
- Range
- Eastern and southern Africa, from Ethiopia to South Africa
- Size
- 18–28 cm of body, 210–350 g
- Diet
- Insectivore — mostly beetles and termites, then lizards and eggs
- Lifespan
- About 8 years in the wild
— Characteristics
- 01
It is the smallest African carnivore.
- 02
It lives in groups of ten to thirty dominated by a breeding pair.
- 03
It sleeps inside abandoned termite mounds, changing to another every few days.
— What sets it apart
It has an arrangement with a bird. Hornbills of the genus Tockus follow mongoose groups to catch the insects their passage puts up, and in return act as lookouts: they raise the alarm on sighting a raptor, including species that threaten only the mongooses and not themselves. The mongooses, when the bird is late, wait for it before leaving the termite mound. Neither can raise the other’s young, but in the morning they wait for each other.
