Latin name: Herpestes nyula
A precocious little weasel-like carnivore that has subspecies in Asia, Africa, and Southern Europe. The most famous variety is the Indian mongoose, which is renowned for its ability to kill cobras, and immortalized in the Rudyard Kipling story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. This fame has also made it the mascot of companies, schools, and clubs, which makes it more difficult than it should be to find information on the creature itself from a search engine.
The mongoose looks pretty much like a weasel, but it has a long, bushy tail. When it's not eating snakes, it's eating mice, lizards, eggs, and other insects. It has an infamous history of being brought into areas to control the rat population, but of eating the snakes instead, which causes the rat problem to get worse. This is why it is forbidden in the United States and Canada. One species was considered a sacred animal in ancient Egypt, but, come to think of it, so was pretty much every other animal.
The mongoose strategy for killing cobras is based on reflex and endurance: Mongoose and snake will square off against each other. The cobra will strike at the mongoose, but the mongoose will jump out of the snakes' reach. When the cobra does land a hit, often as not it will just get a mouthfull of the mongoose's bristly hair. When the snake starts to tire, the mongoose will go on the offensive, and approach the cobra. As the snake lowers its head to strike once more, the mongoose will quickly grab the cobra's head in its mouth and bite down hard enough to crush the snake's skull.
Thanks to www.nwf.org/rrick/1998/jan98/mongoo.html for the blow-by-blow fight information, and to www.nature.ca/notebooks/english/mongoose.htm for information about the animal itself.