Chapter 16 Fourteen mongoose and mink

the silent patrol Meerkat Most people mistake the mongoose or Egyptian mongoose for a member of the mink family, the weasel-like animal, but the mongoose belongs to a completely different family: the civet family, which also includes the mongoose, the civet, and the like animal.The mink family and the civet family also belong to the order Carnivora, and animals of the same order include bears, coyotes, cats, dogs, cat bears, and raccoons. [Note] The new classification has separated animals such as mongooses into the mongoose family. Thirty-two species of animals in the civet family are called mongooses, which originally originated in Africa, Asia, and the southwestern tip of Europe.However, later humans unwisely spread them to other corners of the world.Meerkats are nimble and graceful animals as well as keen and skilled predators, best known for their Kiplingesque veneer of cobra killers .Indeed, some of them are so agile that they can catch venomous snakes, and some even specialize in hunting prey that is extremely dangerous to other animals.They are not immune to snake venom; they are just much smarter and usually faster than snakes.

【Note】Rudyard Kipling, 1865︱1936, a British writer, was born in Bombay, India, educated in England, and returned to India in 1882.His works include poems, novels and short stories. He is especially good at short stories. Most of the stories reveal the veil of Western mechanical civilization society. Outstanding works trace back to the eternal mystery of India and show the contrast and irony produced by cultural differences. It is not too difficult to imagine that the meerkat has changed from a wild predator to a companion animal at home, because even now, this transformation is still happening, and the process may not be much different from the pre-Ptolemaic period in Egypt.The vigorous Egyptian mongoose, which is about three feet long (about 90 centimeters), has a range as far as the northwest of southern Spain. It seems unlikely that humans have manipulated their genes and actually domesticated them.It is also plausible that, as in the case of elephants, mongooses (at least one of the present thirty-two species) were used and housed by humans because of their benefits, but not Breed any particular variety.They don't need to perform any duties, they are just brought back from the wild by humans thinking they need them; this time humans have played the role of gatherers in the two roles of hunter/gatherer.

Meerkats are small, ferocious predators, but at least some species are easily tamed.When I went bird watching in Sri Lanka, the guide I was traveling with took an adult mongoose, and the mongoose poked its head out from between the buttons of his shirt.In India, I've seen people carry mongooses in jacket pockets, on their hands, or on their shoulders.In Africa, too, I have found that mongooses are kept in every household, and they often let visitors into their territory, hoping to get some good food from them. In some parts of Africa and Asia, the presence of venomous snakes near homes is a very real problem.Once, a family living in a thatched hut next door to mine on the shores of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya was terrified one night when a cobra fell from a roof beam onto a bed for about 10 minutes. There was thirty seconds of confusion, and there was a lot of noise.No one was hurt except for the escaped snake, but everyone was, as you can imagine, on edge.

Rodents are of course an ever-present problem around homes, stealing and destroying food, biting babies, causing fires by biting through power lines, causing the bubonic plague because of the fleas they carry are all abominations .Meerkats are equally adept at hunting snakes or rodents, and their constant assaults, both indoors and outdoors, make them popular guests as well.Even more surprising, they have the added bonus of being huggable.They are affectionate as they seem to genuinely enjoy human contact and will approach humans proactively, which is also a endearing trait. In Egypt, the mongoose was considered a sacred animal for its many virtues.Before Roman times, mongooses were kept in large numbers and were clearly an essential animal for the economics of homes and huts.They are inexpensive pets because they forage for food to feed themselves, which is why people wanted to keep them in the first place.Additionally, they may have been a retailable item.Roman ladies kept them as pets to show their fashion.At the time, households without mongooses were probably even rarer than households with mongooses.The meerkat appears on at least one coin struck at Panopolis during the time of Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 76-138). In addition, mongooses have been depicted in the mosaics of Pompeii.There are countless descriptions of mongooses.

[Note] AD 76︱138, the emperor of the Roman Empire, whose full name is Publius Aelius Hadrianus, was born in Spain.Most historians believe that the Roman Empire reached its peak under this emperor, and one of the most important contributions during his reign was the rearrangement and fabrication of the Roman Code.Nevertheless, he was not popular with the populace in Rome. As population density increased (a global phenomenon), the problem of snakes under human beds decreased, and so did the mongoose population.In countries where mongooses are produced, such as Europe and the United States, they are still widely kept as pets.Although according to current records, the only mongoose ever kept by humans is the Egyptian mongoose, it is very likely that other species of mongoose were brought to other parts of Africa or Asia for the same reason, either before or now.

Once transported elsewhere, mongooses are a real problem.This ferocious small predator not only hunts small birds, including domestic fowl, but also reptiles and other small mammals.On isolated islands, they can cause great harm to the poultry on which small farms depend, and since they are exotic, there are no local predators to control their numbers, and of course they can cause great harm to local wildlife pressure. The mongoose is another animal that humans can use and coexist with, but has never been domesticated.There are considerable differences between this model of using animals and raising them.A completely wild mongoose is not substantially different from one that sleeps on its owner's pillow, but a dog or a very late domesticated cat is nothing like their wild type.

★ mink The mink family, the so-called weasel family, is composed of sixty-four species of predators.Included in this category are the weasel, ferret, polecat, ferret, silver marten, otter, mink, fisherman, marten, ermine, wolverine, badger, and skunk. The genus Mustela is divided into three species [Note], one of which is the American black-footed mink, which is currently on the verge of extinction. They are distributed in the western states and plains of Canada, and have never been domesticated by humans.The other two are both called polecats; one is the European polecat and the other is the Asian polecat.Domestic animals bred from one or both of these are commonly called ferrets, and in the US pet market as ferrets or polecats.

[Note] In the current classification, there are more than three species of mink. In fact, the European polecat may be the only ancestor of the present-day house mink.Some hold to the old theory that the domestic mink descended from West Asia to Europe, and point to certain skeletal features to support this contention.However, the current breeds of domestic mink and European breeds are actually quite similar (from breeding pattern to coat color type), so Europe seems more likely to be the domestication site of domestic mink. So, when did domestic mink breeding start?According to records, the breeding of ferrets began in the fourth century BC, but that seems to be too late.Ferrets may have arrived in the Middle East as early as 1,000 to 1,500 BC, implying earlier domestication in Europe.From some references in classical literature (including the works of Aristotle, Pliny (Note 1) and Strabo (Note 2)), we seem to be sure that the text mentioned and polecats, however, we may never know exactly when and where they were raised.

[Note 1] There were two officials and writers named Pliny in the Roman era. Pliny the Great’s Natural History is one of the most important works of Latin classical literature; Pliny the Younger is Pliny the Great. Linney's nephew, the collection of letters has ten volumes. 【Note 2】Greek geographer and historian. Although mongooses and minks belong to two completely different animal families, the developmental plots of the human-animal relationship between the two seem to be quite similar.Young mongooses and minks are easy to spot and capture, and if captured at a young age they are well adapted to human society.However, the results of the two are different.The mongoose was never really domesticated, and the mink became what we know today as the domestic mink.Both species, whether in captivity or domestication, are very useful tools for rodent control.

In addition, mink can provide us with another additional service.Since ancient times, people have used mink in a hunting sport, especially in Europe.This movement is to put the mink into the burrow, and then use the mink to drive the rabbit out of the nest.Hunters will even shoot the marten used to startle the rabbits so that they rush out of hiding.As far as I know, humans do not use mongooses in this way. Although neither the meerkat nor the mink is considered an important domestic animal for humans, nor is it extremely useful, they are both valued and interesting animals.In fact, there are many other animals that have the same purpose, but why did humans choose these two animals instead of others?This is really puzzling.Across the entire spectrum of domesticated animals, humans have probably attempted to domesticate more species than we know of a handful of species from the evidence we currently have.A successful experiment will leave a bright mark in history, and a failed experiment will leave almost no trace.