In addition to being hugely chatty creatures, scent also plays a key
role in mongoose life. It actually allows them to identify each other.
They live in tight gangs - extended family units with distinct boundaries between rival territories.
One
of the experiments that didn’t make it into the show tested the
importance of scent in maintaining these boundaries and involved me
standing in a mongoose latrine in the fierce midday sun collecting a
bucket of fresh poop.
After a few minutes the mongooses themselves turned up en masse catching me red handed with a scoop of their poop in my hand.
They
all stood up and looked at me as if I was nuts. Which was fair enough, I
felt decidedly awkward being busted for such a peculiar theft.
I took the mongoose poo and dumped it in the middle of their neighbours’ territory.
The
result was a frenzy of sniffing and chattering that suggested that
scent is clearly very important for communicating an enemy invasion.
I discovered - READ MORE- to see clip link- http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04b6982#clips
No comments:
Post a Comment