ichneumon

a mongoose, Herpestes ichneumon, of Africa and S Europe, having greyish-brown speckled fur

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

ichneumon

[ik′nü·mən]

(invertebrate zoology)

The common name for members of the family Ichneumonidae.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Ichneumon

(Herpestes ichneumon), also African mongoose, a predatory mammal of the genus Herpestes of the family Viverridae. The body length measures up to 65 cm, and the tail length up to 50 cm. The fur is brownish gray. The tail is covered with long hairs.

The ichneumon is distributed in North Africa, Asia Minor, and southwestern Europe (Iberian Peninsula); it has become acclimatized in Yugoslavia, in Italy, and on the island of Madagascar. It lives in thickets, sometimes near human habitation. A nocturnal animal, it feeds on small rodents, birds, snakes, and insects. It is beneficial for its extermination of snakes, but, contrary to popular belief, it is susceptible to their venom. The ichneumon sometimes destroys poultry.

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References in periodicals archive

The ichneumon slides her long ovipositor into the hole and lays eggs inside the horntail larvae.

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Government employees' unions living parasitically on Detroit have been less aware than ichneumon larvae.

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Despite his significant contributions on the systematics of ichneumons, he was an unassuming person.

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Para este indice, no existieron diferencias significativas entre las especies mas pequenas del ensamble, el meloncillo y la gineta (Herpestes ichneumon y Genetta genetta), aunque el tamano del trigonido en relacion a las dimensiones del craneo fue mayor para Herpestes.

Morphoguilds identification as an approach to the study of resource partitioning in assemblages of terrestrial carnivores/Identificacion de morfogremios como aproximacion al estudio de reparto de recursos en ensambles de carnivoros terrestres

The ticks were collected from different animals including Egyptian mongoose (Herpestes ichneumon), sheep (Ovis aries), cow (Bos tauros), dog (Canis familiaris), and vegetation (Tables 1 and 2).

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QUESTION 14 - for 14 points: What type of creature is an ichneumon?

The Accumulator Quiz; Each question has four possible answers and is worth from one to 15 points. Circle your chosen answers and keep a record of your points total. Maximum total points 120

The horntail wasp (Tremex columba (L.), Siricidae) has larvae that bore into the trunks of many deciduous trees, and they are eaten in turn by the parasitoid ichneumon wasp (Megarhyssa lunator (Fabr.), Ichneumonidae).

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A wasp of the species Ichneumon eumerus, known only from four European meadows, needs to find one of these caterpillars to serve as a depository for a wasp egg and to nourish the wasp larva that hatches.

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Now, it is usual in Sanskrit studies to speak of the mongoose as an 'ichneumon' (or, in German, 'Ichneumon'), a learned word borrowed from Greek ([LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'weasel, mongoose [vel sim.]', literally 'tracker'): Mayrhofer 1992: 2, who confidently renders nakula- as 'Ichneumon, Viverra ichneumon [sic]', may be taken as representative.

How the mole and mongoose got their names: Sanskrit akhu- and nakula-