One of the most widely distributed African mongooses, ranging from Senegal in the west to the Red Sea coast in Sudan in the east and south to the Northern Cape in South Africa (Hoffmann and Taylor in press). Stuart (1981) mentions a museum record of this species from Mountain Zebra N.P., but this specimen is not mentioned in the studies of Watson and Dippenaar (1987) and Watson (1990), and their most southerly distribution limit is probably the far eastern part of the Eastern Cape in South Africa (Hoffmann and Taylor in press). Also occurs on Zanzibar (Stuart and Stuart 1998, Goldman and Winther-Hansen 2003). Ranges to 2,700 m asl in the Ethiopian Highlands (Yalden et al. 1996)