Head to head
Meerkat vs Banded Mongoose
This is a comparison with a twist: a meerkat is a mongoose. It is one species, the smallest, in a family of around 34 mongoose species spread across Africa and southern Asia. So the real question is how the meerkat differs from the other mongooses, and the closest fair comparison is the banded mongoose, another small, highly social, group-living African species that people often mix up with meerkats in wildlife footage.
| Meerkat | Banded Mongoose | |
|---|---|---|
| Relationship | One species of mongoose (the smallest) | One of about 34 mongoose species |
| Where it lives | Dry southern Africa, especially the Kalahari | Across sub-Saharan Africa |
| Home | Large self-dug burrow systems | Usually old termite mounds |
| Sentinel behaviour | Yes, a dedicated guard stands upright watching | Less formal; the group stays alert together |
| Markings | Faint dark bands on the back, dark eye patches | Bold dark bars across the rear half of the body |
| Diet | Insects, scorpions, spiders, small reptiles | Beetles, millipedes, and other invertebrates, eggs |
| Snake killing | Not a notable snake hunter | Will mob a snake as a group but does not specialise |
| Group size | Around 3 to 30 | Around 10 to 40 |
Meerkat vs Mongoose: common questions
Is a meerkat a mongoose?
Yes, completely. The meerkat, Suricata suricatta, is a member of the mongoose family, Herpestidae, and is the only species in its genus. It is sometimes called the suricate. So every meerkat is a mongoose, but most mongooses are not meerkats; the family also includes the banded, dwarf, yellow, and Egyptian mongooses, the kusimanses, and the snake-hunting Indian grey mongoose, among others. Meerkats are simply the small, upright, desert-dwelling, intensely social members of that family that television has made famous.
Do meerkats kill snakes like other mongooses?
Not as a speciality. The snake-killing reputation of mongooses comes mostly from a few species, above all the Indian grey mongoose of the Rudyard Kipling story, which regularly takes on cobras and has a strong resistance to their venom. Meerkats will mob and drive off a snake that threatens the group, and they are somewhat resistant to scorpion and snake venom, but their diet is overwhelmingly insects, scorpions, spiders, and small reptiles that they dig out of the sand. A meerkat versus cobra fight is not a routine event.
What is the difference between a meerkat and a banded mongoose?
Size and markings first: the banded mongoose is chunkier and grey-brown with a set of about ten dark bars running across the back half of its body, while the meerkat is slimmer, sandy, and has dark patches around the eyes and only faint banding. Behaviour next: meerkats dig their own large burrow networks and use a formal sentinel system, standing tall on a mound while the others forage, whereas banded mongooses den in termite mounds and forage as a loose, chattering group without a dedicated lookout. They also barely overlap in range, with meerkats confined to the arid southwest of Africa.