Somalian slender mongoose

The Somalian slender mongoose, Herpestes ochraceus, is a small mongoose with a slender body and long tail found in Somalia, Ethiopia and north-eastern Kenya in Eastern Africa, where it inhabits dry areas and has been recorded up to 600 meters in Ethiopia. John Edward Gray described it in 1848 from a specimen collected in Somalia, and it was formerly treated as a subspecies of the common slender mongoose, from which it differs by lacking the black tail tip. Males average about 0.6 kilograms, and the fur ranges from pale gray to dark brown and red. It is diurnal and is classified as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.