Yellow mongoose
| Common name | Scientific name | Average weight of adult male | Average length or shoulder height | Diet | How do they live | Feeding time | Gestation period | Number of young at birth |
| Mongoose, yellow | cynictis penicillata | 700 g | length 50cm | carnivorous | colonies | day | unknown | 2-5 young |
Another one of my favourites. I've already spent quite some time on horseback following these little critters enjoying their antics. I was amazed to see how fast those little front paws can dig out an insect or how fast they can make a plan with those black scorpions that occurred in the area where we stayed.
You'll normally see them alone running across the road but they do live in in colonies as well. They are excellent diggers and dig underground tunnels and chambers.
They only feed during daytime. Just the other day I saw one dragging a dead snake that looked to me like a Egyptian Cobra across the road. The snake was about three times as long as the mongoose. I don't know if the meerkat killed the snake. Maybe it was just another snake that was killed on the road by a motor vehicle. The majority of snakes are killed on our roads at night when the snakes gets onto the "tarmac" to get some heat from the road.
When anything interests the meerkat they would stand on their hind legs and use their tail for balance.