"Austin Powers... he's the snake to my mongoose. Or the mongoose to my snake? Either way it's bad. I don't know animals."
— Dr. Evil, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
It's one of the most famous instances of Animal Jingoism out there. Mongoosesnote — weasel-like carnivores belonging to the family Herpestidae — are universally thought of as the mortal enemies of snakes. The snake can be one of many kinds, but it's usually a cobra, especially if the work is set in the Middle East or India. Cobras play a major role in the lore of both of these places, and mongooses were renowned for their ability to hunt and kill them while evading their venomous fangs. The mongoose is usually a generic variety, sometimes based on the Indian gray mongoose but in cartoons often not looking terribly like any real species. Also note that although meerkats are the most popular mongoose species, they are not usually used for this trope in media.
The association of mongooses with cobras specifically was introduced to the world at large in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a story from The Jungle Book. Many depictions of the animosity between mongooses and snakes since then have been based on the one in that story, with the mongoose as a heroic defender of the innocent and the snake as a cruel, cunning villain. This dichotomy extends even to fantasy creatures, as the Basilisk and Cockatrice's reputed arch-enemy is the weasel, which may be based on travelers' tales of mongooses killing cobras (people in medieval Europe did not know what a mongoose was, but were familiar with weasels), while the ichneumon or echinemon, a creature described as resembling a mustelid or mongoosenote was said to be a natural enemy and killer of asps, crocodiles, and dragons. It is worth noting that, in ancient Greek, Roman, and medieval zoology, creatures such as snakes, crocodiles, and dragons, or such as weasels and mongooses, would not have typically been seen as sharply distinct from one another.
It is also worth noting that in Real Life, mongooses do not actively seek out snakes in preference to other prey—they feed mainly on other small mammals. However, their legendary ability to kill snakes has made them popular as semi-domesticated pets in India and the Middle East.
If a mongoose and a snake are on opposing sides, the mongoose will typically default to the heroic position, since Snakes Are Sinister, however this is not necessary and it is entirely possible for the trope to be neutral in its portrayal. If this is the case, and neither the mongoose nor the snake are depicted as good or evil, then the emphasis is usually on their opposing natures rather than the desire of the mongoose to kill the snake.
Even if a work doesn't actually depict the two animals fighting, the image of the mongoose and the cobra as mortal enemies is such a popular one that it has become a common visual shorthand in visual media for two evenly-matched adversaries.
Compare Cat/Dog Dichotomy and Tiger Versus Dragon for other common forms of Animal Jingoism involving feliforms. See also Primate Versus Reptile.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Kodocha: The "natural enemies" Sana and Akito are represented as a mongoose and cobra, respectively.
- Love Pistols: Subverted — Shima, the mongoose, is in love with Aogiri, the viper.
- Magical Witch Punie-chan: In Episode 3, Elise summons some cobras to attack Punie, who summons some mongoose to counter this. The result is a rather gory scene of the mongoose killing and eating the cobras.
- The Morose Mononokean: Abeno alludes to the snake vs. mongoose when Ashiya suggests pitting himself against the human-hating Executive to help him activate and control his "influence" powers. Abeno warns that the intended practice would just devolve into a death-match if this triggers Sakae's demon-hating personality that's residing inside Ashiya.
- My Hero Academia gives this a humorous spin with Habuko Mongoose, an old friend of Tsuyu Asui who has a snakelike head.
- Pokémon the Series:
- "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak": A Gastly transforms into a mongoose (as in, an actual real-world, non-superpowered mongoose, and not a mongoose-like Pokémon, as Zangoose and Yungoos had yet to be created at the time) to scare Jessie's Ekans (pictured above). The games would later take the trope to its obvious conclusion, as noted below and in the Video Games section.
- Jessie herself later acquires a Seviper, a snake Pokémon noted for its rivalry with the mongoose-based Zangoose, resulting in a minor Running Gag where Seviper would drop everything and disobey Jessie if there was a Zangoose around.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena: "The Sunlit Garden Prelude": Nanami is trying to ruin Anthy's reputation, and one of her plans is to hide a snake in Anthy's home and spread rumours that Anthy is the kind of girl who keeps snakes — her plan fails when Anthy's pet mongoose eats the snake.
- Tekken Chinmi: As part of his lessons with Master You Sen, Chinmi watches a show where a mongoose is pitted against a snake. The snake attacks multiple times, but the mongoose always dodges. When the mongoose attacks, it dodges the snake's attempted counterattack, bites it on the head, and never lets go until the snake is dead. The lesson for Chinmi is to always ensure that one hit is enough to decide the battle, rather than launching multiple hits that just end up as The Worf Barrage, just like how the mongoose waited for the perfect chance for the decisive finishing bite.
- YuruYuri: The anime adaptation uses a mongoose and a snake to represent the rivalry between Sakurako and Himawari.
Card Games
- Magic: The Gathering: Both of the cards that depict a mongoose, Blurred Mongoose
and Nimble Mongoose, show the creature in the act of killing a snake.
Comic Books
- The DCU: The first transformation Beast Boy was able to perform was transforming into a lime green mongoose to protect his parents from a cobra.
- G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel): Destro has a sculpture of a mongoose and a cobra on his desk.
- Gotlib: Inverted in a strip on cobras where the mongoose is a bully and the cobra is a helpless, short-sighted victim (that looks more like an earthworm with its eyes and glasses on the hood). At the end of the strip the artist confesses his documentation got mixed up and it turns out the cobra is actually the more dangerous of the two (showing a realistic cobra), but it doesn't matter because he doesn't like mongooses.
- Marvel Universe: The Whizzer is a rather bizarre take on this trope. He was bitten by a snake and saved with an infusion of mongoose blood, which gave him Super-Speed... somehow.
- The Simpsons: One issue has Dr. Nick running an animal talent competition. While waiting, Milhouse asks Bart to hurry up because his pet mongoose gets irritable if it hasn't had its shots (and is in fact crawling on his head). Then Nelson remarks how it's funny Milhouse brought a mongoose, because he brought a snake... this results in a massive brawl.
Fan Works
- Marooned in Madagascar: The fabled animosity between [mongooses and snakes is so strong that even a New World serpent intuitively knows what mongooses are and that they pose a threat to him after mistaking Mary Ann for one.
- Old West: Mon Hellsing is a mongoose with loathes snakes and makes a profession of hunting them down. When he's hired to track down Benjamin Hares, he demands a raise to the usual fee in exchange of bringing the snake in alive instead of dead.
- Princess Fantasy DX 2: When Jafar in his giant cobra form is about to take the lamp back from Rajah, so that the latter only has moments to make another wish, the Genie begs Rajah to wish for a giant mongoose.
Films — Animation
- The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue, Murgatroid the snake describes how Rob once saved him from a mongoose. In the United States.
Films — Live-Action
- Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me: Dr. Evil describes Austin Powers, his Arch-Enemy, as "the snake to my mongoose, or the mongoose to my snake".
"Either way it's bad. I don't know animals."
- Casino Royale (2006) opens on a group of gamblers betting on a fight between a mongoose and a cobra.
- Fangs Of The Cobra has a fight scene between a cobra and a mongoose staged onscreen, with gory results. Being a Hong Kong film PETA really doesn't have a say about actual animal cruelty being depicted for entertainment.
- First Kid: A metaphorical example — Luke Davenport (the titular "First Kid", i.e., the son of the President) uses the online handle "ViperBoy" and chats with someone called "Mongoose12". It turns out that Mongoose12 is his disgraced former bodyguard, carrying out a plan to kidnap Luke.
- Snake And Mongoose, while it doesn't depict an actual snake or mongoose, is about one of the greatest rivalries in drag racing history, and is named in reference to this trope.
- Sssssss: Stoner's mongoose chitters very aggressive and tries to escape its cage every time a snake — or a lab assistant injected with snake-transformative venom — gets near it. When it finally gets loose, it attacks the first large snake it sees (the transformed David) with a ruthless persistence.
Literature
- Amos Daragon: In the first book, Amos orders his army of knights to carry mongooses in cages, since they'll be going up against basilisks, in order to kill the monsters.
- The Cobra Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn: The titular Cobras are actually Super Soldiers, and the project devised to counter them is called "Mangus", which sounds like "mongoose".
- Discworld:
- Pyramids: Teppic mentions during his assassin test that the inflatable mongoose produces a substance that counteracts some snake venoms.
- Witches Abroad: The narration notes that the Sisters (actually snakes turned human by Lilith's magic) instinctively recognise Magrat as being the human equivalent of a small furry animal. After a Beware the Nice Ones scene it adds that "The trouble with small furry animals in a corner is that, just occasionally, one of them's a mongoose."
- Making Money: The Post Office thinks that it's a good idea to put mongooses in the post boxes in order to deal with the snakes. (Which were themselves added to the boxes to deal with the toads, and so on.)
- The Familiars by Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson: Book 3, Circle of Heroes, involves the main characters venturing into the Abyssmal Canyon to gather a mongoose and a cobra, which they need for their quest. The mongooses and cobras live in different parts of the canyon and hate each other, each killing the other species on sight. It takes a while for the mongoose and cobra chosen for the quest to trust each other.
- Hayven Celestia: Played with. The cobra-like ssareth are attempting a Benevolent Alien Invasion of the mongoose-like montrose, as they need a new homeworld and the montrose need protection from the krakun, but some of the montrose still resent the ssareth's takeover.
- The Jungle Book: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is the Trope Codifier for modern audiences, establishing the mongoose and the snake as enemies in pop-consciousness.
- The Lair of the White Worm: Adam brings in multiple mongooses over the course of the story to help combat his estate's snake infestation, and yet these same mongooses have a habit of attacking Lady Arabella whenever they see her. Adam even facetiously notes that due to how ingrained the hatred of the snake is to the mongoose, Lady Arabella must be a snake. It eventually turns out that he's, unwittingly, mostly correct.
- Panchatantra: The story plays this trope straight with a tragic ending, as the mongoose saves a baby from a venomous snake, only to be killed by the baby's mother, who assumes the blood on its maw is the baby's.
- The Priory of the Orange Tree: The dragon-fighting priory of the title employs ichneumons, depicted here as mongooses big enough to ride and natural serpent-killers.
- The Sun Eater: In Empire of Silence, Hadrian tells a story at a dinner party of Roban taking him to see a fight between a mongoose and a venomous snake as a thinly-veiled insult against Grand Prior Ligeia Vas.
Live-Action TV
- Once Upon a Time (2011): Alluded to. In Season 1, Henry recruits Emma (his birth mother) to defeat Regina (his adoptive mother) and restore everyone else's happy ending. He dubs the plan "Operation Cobra". A few seasons later, he's working with a post Heel–Face Turn Regina so that she can get her happy ending. Upon learning the name of the old plan, she immediately decides this one will be "Operation Mongoose".
- Wayne and Shuster had a sketch where Johnny Wayne plays a detective who discovers that Frank Shuster's character is the villain. The villain tries to get away by wielding a snake as a weapon to ward off pursuers, but when he gets out of sight, Wayne's character is relaxed considering the villain is heading for the mongoose compound. Sure enough, the mongoose makes short work of the snake.
Music
- "Cobra vs. Mongoose" by Shonen Knife alludes to the rivalry between the cobra and the Mongoose.
Tabletop Games
Sports
- A drag racing friendly rivalry in The '70s involved Don "The Snake" Prudhomme and Tom "The Mongoose" McEwen; their "funny cars" were decorated in their respective motifs. Both were fierce competitors, accomplished drivers, and had top-tier mechanics and underlings in their retinues, which made these men the face of funny car drag racing during that decade.
Toys
- Beanie Babies: Runner the Mongoose's poem is all about how much he loves to kill snakes. He was quickly retconned to an unspecified member of Mustelidae (weasel family), even though mongooses are not a member of that family.
- Mattel Toys made a series of Snake versus Mongoose die-cast model cars based around motorsports racers "Snake" Prudhomme and "Mongoose" McEwen. Mattel even became the pair's principal sponsor, keeping their funny cars and racing rivalry primed and topical for years, which in turn bolstered Mattel's Hot Wheels cars.
Video Games
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!: ends with a wizard's duel a la Sword in the Stone between King Graham and the evil wizard Mordack. When Mordack becomes a cobra Graham turns into a mongoose. The manual actually calls this spell Rikki Tiki Tavi after the Rudyard Kipling story. It also speculates that people who knew of the story told the creator of the mongoose spell, who named it after it. Take this with a grain of salt, as Word of God puts the series in Earth's past, not a parallel dimension in intermittent contact with our present.
- Nikoderiko: The Magical World: The heroes of the story are Niko and Luna, a pair of adventuring mongooses who goes up against the anthropomorphic cobra Grimbald and his serpent army.
- Pokémon: Zangoose and Seviper are based on a mongoose and a snake respectively, and their defining traits are their mutual hatred of each other.
- In Pokémon X and Y, Zangoose and Seviper are some of the few different-species Pokémon that can be encountered in a Horde Battle together. When this happens, they will focus their attention on fighting each other instead of attacking your Pokémon.
- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Origins: A Friendly Enemy version. A Zangoose and Seviper can be seen exploring Guildmaster Island, with each one remarking on how they can't let their rival get ahead of them. However, they're not as hostile as they initially seem: each one ends up giving you missions to rescue the other at some point, and their dialogue makes it clear that they're trying to hide how much they care about their rival.
- Scribblenauts Unmasked: During the boss fight with Sinestro on Oa, Maxwell has to counter everything Sinestro creates with something that scares Sinestro's creation. One of the things Sinestro can summon is a snake, and the correct response from Maxwell is to create a mongoose.
Webcomics
- Kevin & Kell: A strip set at the Inter-Species Relationship Support Group shows couples working on averting Animal Jingoism, including a cobra and a mongoose.
Western Animation
- Camp Lazlo: Patsy (a mongoose girl) suggests she can track Jelly Cabin's missing snake because of her species. Though eventually she turns out to have been lying to impress her crush Lazlo.
- He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002): Rattlor —a Snake Person— has a crippling fear of mongooses that Orko is more than happy to use against him.
- Littlest Pet Shop (2012): Sunil the mongoose is terrified of everything, except cobras, which he will gladly beat the the ever-loving tar out of.
- My Gym Partner's a Monkey: Lampshaded in an episode where Slips the python befriends a mongoose but wonders how they can keep their friendship intact after learning from a documentary that they are supposed to be enemies.
- The Simpsons:
- "Eight Misbehavin'": At the end, Homer and Butch Patrick do a show where they ride on a unicycle around a pit of cobras (and robots shaped like cobras). When the cobras start attacking Homer during his performance at the zoo, a mongoose is released to combat them, but decides to attack Homer instead.
- "Judge Me Tender" has a brief gag where, on their way to the Ugly Dog Contest, the Simpsons pass by a stand where a man is giving snake-mongoose counseling.
- Timon & Pumbaa: Timon the meerkat is usually depicted as cowardly by mongoose standards. But the Origins Episode "Once Upon a Timon" involved him and his colony being threatened by a large cobra, who he would eventually defeat in order to rescue a Damsel in Distress and regain the respect of his colony.note
- Wild Kratts: One episode features snakes and mongooses and shows a mongoose killing a snake, while explaining the physiological mechanism that allows the mongoose to be immune to the snake's venom.
