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Banded mongoose groups show little lasting movement change after simulated rival encounters

Group of banded mongooses moving through grass in Uganda
Research · Behaviour

A study published in 2026, based on field experiments conducted in Uganda from January 2016 to May 2017, tested whether the threat of a rival group changes how banded mongooses (Mungos mungo) move through and use their territory. Banded mongooses live in stable social groups and encounters between neighbouring groups can be frequent, highly aggressive and sometimes lethal.

Researchers worked with five habituated groups on the Mweya Peninsula in Queen Elizabeth National Park. They simulated territorial intrusions using fresh scent marks, faeces and urine from a neighbouring group, recordings of the rivals’ aggressive calls and a brief presentation of rival males held safely in covered traps. Control trials used scents, calls and males from the focal group’s own members.

GPS collars and handheld GPS tracking recorded movements before, during and after the presentations. Of 44 trials, 33 had sufficient GPS data for analysis: 15 simulated intrusions and 18 controls. This allowed the researchers to compare both fine-scale movements over hours and broader patterns over the following week.

Movement changed the next day but not across the following week

On the day after the presentations, groups spent more time in the core of their home range. When they did move through peripheral areas, they travelled further and faster. The authors considered whether this pattern reflected avoidance of risky boundary areas after a threat from neighbours. Similar changes, however, also appeared after the control presentations. They therefore suggest that the control stimuli may not have been completely neutral to the mongooses. By the following seven days, there was no clear lasting change in home-range use.

Sources and image credit

  1. Preston, E. F. R., Kyabulima, S., Croft, D. P., & Cant, M. A. (2026). The effect of simulated intergroup encounters on movement patterns and home range use in banded mongooses. Wildlife Biology, 2026(3), e01625. https://doi.org/10.1002/wlb3.01625Primary peer-reviewed open-access study, first published 29 April 2026; CC BY 4.0.

Image: William Stephens — banded mongoose group photographed in Uganda near the Mweya study area; via iNaturalist/Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0 · Source

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