A small, stripey carnivore that looks like a desert version of a mongoose wrapped in a designer coat. Also called the giant-striped mongoose or Grandidier’s vontsira, it lives only in a tiny area of southwestern Madagascar, in the spiny desert and dry scrub around the Mahafaly Plateau and Parc National de Tsimanampetsotsa. Its fur is pale brown or greyish, but what really stands out are the dark stripes: usually eight broad, chocolate-coloured bands running down the back and along the sides, with a bushy tail to match. It’s larger than its close cousin, the broad-striped Malagasy mongoose, but still only about half a kilo to a bit over that in weight—light enough to slip effortlessly through thorny undergrowth and between rocks.

This species is a specialist of one of Madagascar’s harshest habitats. The spiny forest where it lives is hot, dry and prickly, with sharp-spined Euphorbia and other desert plants, very little shade and only 10–40 cm of rain a year. Grandidier’s mongooses are mostly nocturnal and crepuscular, spending the day hidden in rock crevices or burrows, then emerging at dusk to forage. They usually live alone or in monogamous pairs, moving over home ranges around one square kilometre as they search through leaf litter, under rocks and in cracks for food.

Their diet is a good example of how finely tuned they are to their environment. All year round they eat a lot of invertebrates—big beetles, giant hissing cockroaches, scorpions and other arthropods—which they crunch with strong jaws and sharp teeth. But studies of stomach contents and scats show that small vertebrates, such as rodents and lizards, actually make up most of the diet by weight: about 58% of the biomass in the dry season and as much as 80% in the wet season, when such prey is more active.

Distribution

Country

Population est.

Status

Year

Comments

Madagascar

3,000-5,000

Official estimate

EN

2015