New World Distribution

Introductions

The small Indian mongoose was introduced onto islands of the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean in the late 1800s by owners of sugar cane plantations to control rapidly expanding populations of Rattus sp.. Introduced populations currently inhabit 29 Caribbean islands⁴, Hawaii^{3, 7}, Fiji², British Guiana⁹, Colombia⁶, Surinam⁵, and the northern Mediterranean island of Korcula⁸.

The first successful introduction of the small Indian mongoose into the western hemisphere included four males and five females (one of which was pregnant) imported from Calcutta, India¹. These animals arrived in Kingston, Jamaica, on 13 February 1872 and were released on a sugar plantation north of Kingston. Within a few months, young animals were observed. The immediate success at controlling rodent populations resulted in rapid distribution of the mongoose throughout much of Jamaica by the planters, and, in the 20 yrs following successful introduction onto Jamaica, Espeut and other planters sent mongooses to many of the other Caribbean islands and the Hawaiian Islands.

LIterature Cited

1. Espeut, W. B. 1882. On the acclimatization of the Indian mongoose in Jamaica. Proceedings of the Zoological Society, London, 1882:712-714.
2. Gorman, M. L. 1975. The diet of feral Herpestes auropunctatus in the Fijian Islands. Journal of Zoology, London, 178:237-246.
3. Hinton, H. E., and A. M. S. Dunn. 1967. Mongooses: their natural history and behavior. University of California Press, Berkeley, 144 pp.
4. Horst, G. R., D. B. Hoagland, and C. W. Kilpatrick. 2001. The mongoose in the West Indies: The biogeography and population biology of an introduced species. Pp. 409-424, in Biogeography of the West Indies: Patterns and Perspectives (C. A. Woods and F. E. Sergile, eds.), Second Edition. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Fl. 582 pp.
5. Husson, A. M. 1978. The mammals of Surinam. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands. 569 pp.
6. Seaman, G. A. 1952. The mongoose and Caribbean wildlife. Transactions of the North American Wildlife Conference, 17:188-197.
7. Tomich, P. Q. 1986. Mammals in Hawaii: a synopsis and notational bibliography. Second ed. Bishop Museum Press, Honolulu, 295 pp.
8. Tvrtkovic, N, and B. Krystufek. 1990. Small Indian mongoose Herpestes auropunctatus (Hodgson, 1836) on the Adriatic islands of Yugoslavia. Bonner Zoologische Beitrage, 41:3-8.
9. Westerman, J. H. 1953. Nature preservation in the Caribbean. Publications of the Foundation for Scientific Research in Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles, 9:1-106.