Why Can a Mongoose Take on a Cobra?

Mongooses are small, weasely mammals that can -- and do -- kill and eat big, venomous king cobras. Learn how they manage to come out on top in this grudge match in today's episode of BrainStuff. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam Here. There aren't very many
animals out there that could fight a king cobra and
eat it for dinner, but a mongoose is one of them.
Before we go any further, let's talk about mongooses in general.
Have you ever seen a mongoose? There are twenty nine

(00:23):
species of them, and not all of them look the same,
but they are all long bodied, short eared, sort of
weasily looking animals. They aren't very closely related to weasels, though.
If you're an animal in the order Carnivora, which is
the order of mammals that are mostly carnivorous and have
teeth adapted for flesh eating, you can either be on
team dog or team cat. Weasels are related to dogs,

(00:48):
and however much mongooses look like weasels, they are firmly
on team cat. In fact, a mere cat is a
type of mongoose, and cat is right there in its name.
Mongoose is living colonies, and most species live in Africa,
although one species, the Javan mongoose, has been introduced to
Europe and has also wreaked havoc and ecosystems all over

(01:08):
the world, especially on islands like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica.
Although mongooses are small, they're bright, feisty, and what scientists
call non discriminatory predators. That is, if they can catch
it or kill it, they'll eat it up to and
including venomous snakes, and an animal like that can do

(01:29):
a lot of damage on an island. But how can
it be that a skinny mongoose can take on one
of the most venomous snakes in the world, like the
hulking king cobra, whose venom can kill an adult human
and around thirty minutes. The grudge match was popularized in
red Yard Kipling's short story Ricky Tiki Tavy, But that's

(01:49):
not the only time a mongoose has contributed to popular culture.
A Hindu fable about a mongoose in a snake dates
back to at least three hundred b C. And in
the nineteen thirties Only on the Isle of Man claimed
a talking mongoose named Jeff spelled Gef by the way,
lived in their walls by turns, threatening them, protecting them,
killing rabbits for their dinner, and telling them jokes. The

(02:12):
story became a tabloid sensation, and the paranormal investigation that
resulted is the subject of a recent book called Jeff,
The Strange Tale of an extra Special Talking Mongoose. In
the real world, a few specialized traits have allowed mongooses
to add venomous snakes to their list of entrees. First starters,
mongooses are quick and agile, and have strong jaws and

(02:34):
thick hides to block those pointy cobra fangs. They also
don't mind rushikan cobra, which is, in spite of its
size and extravagantly toxic venom, actually very shy and uninterested
in tangling with anybody. If King Cobra's made lists, humans
and mongooses would be at the very top of these
snakes avoid list. But mongooses have another advantage body chemistry.

(02:58):
It's not impossible bowl for a mongoose to get sick
or even die from a cobra byte, but their bodies
make a glycoprotein that binds to the proteins in cobra venom,
so a moderate amount of snake venom won't hurt them.
They are fascinating creatures mongooses, but best left to their
own devices. If you live in the United States, you

(03:19):
definitely can't have one as a pet. They are prohibited
animals in every state except Hawaii, where they've been upgraded
to the designation of dangerous invasive species. Islands really are
delicate ecosystems. In Hawaii, even the decidedly less bitey hummingbird
is prohibited because of the havoc it could wreak on
pineapple pollination. Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields and

(03:46):
produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart
Radio's How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots
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