Excerpted from The Creature’s Guide to Caring: How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care by Elizabeth Preston. Published by Viking. Copyright © 2026. All rights reserved.

One of the world’s most cooperative mammals is also one of its most warlike. I’m not talking about us.

The banded mongoose lives in sub-Saharan Africa. It has a long, bulky body and a pointed face, kind of like a ferret on steroids. There are many species of mongoose, but this one has dark stripes across its lower back and haunches.

The other distinctive trait of banded mongooses (not “mon-geese,” sadly) is their groups. In western Uganda, where University of Exeter evolutionary biologist Michael Cant studies them, the banded mongooses live in extended families of 10 to 20 adults, plus their children.…