Stripe-Necked and Crab-Eating

Stripe-Necked Mongoose

Today we look at two very similar mongooses, the stripe-necked mongoose (Herpestes vitticollis) and the crab-eating mongoose (Herpestes urva).  These two closely-related species are both quite large (around 3 feet long) with short legs and a short tail. They both also have a stripe on their necks, although the stripe-necked mongoose has a black stripe, while the crab-eating has a white one.

They also qualify as somewhat badass for killing and eating deer. Now that’s not quite true. They kill and eat ‘mouse deer‘, deer-like creatures which are themselves only around 3 feet long. So that’s not hugely impressive. I retract the badass comment.

The crab-eating mongoose, as one might imagine, is the most aquatic species, swimming confidently and often eating, um, crabs. It inhabits various wet and foresty areas across all of south-east Asia, northern India, southern China, and western Indonesia. The stripe-necked mongoose, on the other hand, is confined to Sri Lanka and the southern tip of India.

We are nearing the end of this year’s Mongoose Month. Over the next two days we will round off with ruddy long-nosed mongooses.

What Are Border Controls For?

I haven’t posted any much in the past on the subject of migration. So to rectify that, this is a post to explain why any sensible person should support international freedom of movement, i.e. ‘open borders’. This discussion will focus on immigration to developed countries – immigration to developing countries has a whole different set of issues involved.

Let’s start by explaining why I put that phrase in quote marks. It carries with it a picture: the picture of borders between nations as more or less permeable, and us asking ourselves, hypothetically, how many people we should allow through them. One position would be to let through anyone who wishes, as currently happens within the European Union or within countries (at least those that follow the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, unlike, say, Israel or China). The opposite, the ‘closed borders’ position, would be to not let anyone through.

Now this is I think a somewhat misleading picture, for the basic reason that countries have very limited ability to control who crosses their borders. Even if we ‘closed’ all of our national borders (this is a non-specific ‘us’) if people were trying to get in, a lot of them still would. What different immigration policies change is not so much how many people enter the country, but how they are treated when they are inside.