Life in the Fast Lane

One of the most fascinating in wildlife is the strange social life of one of Africa’s most beloved creatures — the meerkat. Their weird and intricate social structure cannot easily be told on camera.

Photo Ambergris

The meerkat is a highly intelligent small mammal, and member of the mongoose family. They have a long banded body with short legs, a slender black-tipped tail, pointed face and black patches around both eyes. Meerkat is a South African Dutch word which means ‘lake cat,’ duly named as they’re often found near stretches of water.

Photo MDSoren

Mob Behavior
Most meerkats live in underground burrows in groups of 3 to 30 individuals at a time called a gang, clan or a mob, but some super families have had 50 or more. The mob is made up of several family groups, with one dominant female and one dominant male who produce up to 80% of the offspring. Meerkats have an average life span of 12 to14 years.

Meerkat mobs spend a lot of their time grooming and playing together to strengthen the family social bonds. The alpha pair often scent-mark subordinates of the group to express their authority, which is usually followed by the subordinates grooming the alphas and licking their faces. This behavior is also usually practiced when group members are reunited after a short time apart. Most meerkats in a group are all siblings or offspring of the alpha pair.

Photo Fleitcher

Meerkats stand upright in the early morning sun to warm up, sniffing the air to test their surroundings. Each member of the mob has a specific charge. Adults take turns on sentry duty while others forage for food. The sentry climbs to the highest rock they can find, stands upright on two legs, and announces the beginning of guard duty with a specific call. A low, constant peeping — called the watchman’s song — is sounded when all is well. If danger is detected, the sentry sounds a warning bark or whistle — one of their more than 50 alarm calls — and all meerkats flee to the safety of their burrows. There are different calls for land predators and for those coming from the air.

When the alarm is raised, the meerkats will run for the nearest ‘bolt’ hole — special tunnels with wider openings designed to hold a crowd of meerkats at once. Meerkats memorize the locations of thousands of bolt holes within their territory and are able to run to the closest one at a moment’s notice as if they had built-in GPS. A meerkat mob will sometimes stir up dust to create a cover, or they may stand together to look larger than they are, acting fierce in a display of strength to scare the predator away.

The sentry meerkat is the first to reappear from the burrow and search for predators, constantly barking to keep the others underground. If there is no threat, the sentry meerkat stops signaling or sounds the watchman’s song, and the rest feel safe to re-emerge.

While sentries keep watch, other meerkats take care of the very young and supervise the older members of the playgroup. Those that aren’t on duty will nap in the shade, or rest in a cool underground burrow. Meerkats have been known to engage in social activities, including what appear to be wrestling matches and foot races.

Photo RVo

Photo RMCalahan

The Babysitter’s Club
In addition to taking turns acting as guard, meerkats also share the duty of raising and babysitting the pups. While the alpha mother forages for food in order to supply her pups with milk, other females and males will stay behind to care for and protect the young. Females that have never produced offspring of their own often lactate to feed the alpha pair’s young. On warning of danger, the babysitter takes the young underground to safety and is prepared to defend them if the danger follows. If retreating underground isn’t possible she collects all young together and lies on top of them.

The mob may occasionally move to a different burrow, and the babysitters help transport the pups, carrying them by the scruff of their neck. The pups spend most of their time playing, and both pups and adults are very vocal. They make a peeping sound when playing, rising to a louder twitter when they’re excited, and purr while they’re content.

Despite this altruistic behavior, meerkats sometimes kill young members of their group. Subordinate meerkats may kill the offspring of more senior members in order to advance their own offspring’s’ positions.

Photo 1115

Photo Christel Sinsen

Teaching the Young
Meerkats are the first non-human mammal species seen actively teaching their young, whereas young of most species learn solely by observing their adults. Meerkat adults teach their pups how to eat a venomous scorpion — one of their favorite foods — they will remove the stinger and help the pup learn how to handle the creature. Its large pincers can still do plenty of damage, and the pups have to learn to deal carefully with this dangerous prey.

University of Cambridge scientists have discovered that older meerkats teach pups how to obtain food by incrementally introducing dead, injured and then live prey. Pups are initially incapable of finding their own prey and therefore rely on provisions from other members of the group by responding to their begging calls for food. Meerkats typically feed on a range of unwieldy and often dangerous prey.

To teach the pups how to handle food without putting them in harm’s way, the older meerkats kill or disable the prey before giving it to the pups. The helpers then modify the frequency with which they kill or disable the prey based on the pups’ age, gradually introducing pups to live prey as they become older.

The helpers also monitor the pup after providing food. If the pup is reluctant to handle the prey, they nudge the food towards them to encourage it. If the prey wanders off the helper retrieves the food and returns it to the pup, sometimes further disabling it before returning it to the young meerkat.

Diet and Foraging
Meerkats forage in a group with one “sentry” on guard watching for predators. Sentry duty is usually approximately an hour long. Pups don’t begin to forage for food until about 1 month old, and do so by following an older member of the group who acts as the pup’s tutor.

Meerkats are extremely industrious and in a single morning may dig several hundred holes in search of food, moving about 50 times their own bulk in sand. They can close their black ears when digging to keep the sand out.

No prey is safe from a meerkat — they’ll eat nearly anything. Their exceptional sense of smell enables them to find their food hiding beneath ground. Meerkats can dig very quickly to find insects — the largest part of their diet — spiders, snails, spiders, centipedes, eggs, lizards, scorpions, even snakes, rodents, plants, small mammals, and birds. Meerkats have even been seen standing on each another’s shoulders to gather honey from nearby trees.

They’re partially immune to certain venoms, including the very strong venom of the scorpions in the Kalahari, unlike humans. They have no excess body fat stores. Meerkats will lose up to 5% of their body weight overnight, so foraging for food is a daily requirement.

They have a home territory of about 4 square miles (6 sq. kilometers) or more and hunt in a different section each day, returning to the first area after a week. Each meerkat must find its own food, but they may share the task of capturing and eating a large lizard or other large food item.

Photo Davifelis

Photo DPFunsun

Anatomy
In general, adult females are slightly larger than the males. Meerkats weigh an average of 1.61 to 2 pounds (730 to 910 grams). Their long slender body is an average of 12 inches (30 centimeters) long with an added tail length of 7 to 10 inches (17 to 25 centimeters). Its tail is not bushy like a mongoose, but long and thin, tapering to a black or reddish colored pointed tip.

The meerkat uses its tail to balance while standing upright. Its face tapers, coming to a point at its brown nose. The eyes bear black patches around them, which help deflect the sun’s glare. Their small ears are black crescent-shaped which can close while digging. Meerkats have a very keen binocular vision, with a large peripheral range and depth perception.

At the end of each of a meerkat’s “fingers” is a non-retractable, strong .8 inch (2 centimeter) long, needle-like curved claw used for digging underground burrows and prey like a machine. Claws are also used with muscular hind legs to help climb the occasional tree. They have four toes on each foot and long slender limbs.

The coat is usually fawn-colored peppered with gray, tan, or brown with a silver tint. They have short parallel stripes across their backs, extending from the base of the tail to the shoulders. The patterns of stripes are unique to each meerkat. The underside of the meerkat has no markings, but the belly has a patch which is only sparsely covered with hair, revealing the black skin beneath. The meerkat uses this area to absorb heat while standing on its rear legs, usually early in the morning after cold desert nights.

A keeper who left his camera in an enclosure at a safari park returned to
find some resident meerkats had been playing with it. Daily Mail

Reproduction
Meerkats are sexually mature by 1 year of age. They may have up to 4 litters per year, but usually have pups during times when there is plenty of food, generally during the rainy season. They will birth 1 to 5 pups in a litter, with 3 pups being the most common.

The male ritually grooms the female until she submits to him and copulation begins, the male generally adopting a seated position during the act. Gestation lasts approximately 11 weeks and the helpless young are born within the underground burrow.

Pups are born with eyes and ears shut and are mostly hairless at birth. Their ears open at about 15 days of age, and their eyes at 10 to14 days, and begin eating food other than milk at 3 weeks.

Once 4 weeks old, the pups will take their first venture outside of their den. The entire clan of meerkats will stand around the burrow to watch. Some adolescents may try to show off to gain more attention than the pups. They stay with babysitters near the burrow and are weaned by 9 weeks old.

Usually, the alpha pair reserves the right to mate and normally kills any young not its own to ensure that its offspring has the best chance of survival. The dominant couple may also evict, or kick out the mothers of the offending offspring.

New meerkat groups are often formed by evicted females pairing with roving males.

Scorpion versus Meerkat

National Geographic — Meerkat Hunting
In Africa’s Kalahari Desert where researchers studying a band of
young meerkats find they rarely face danger alone.

Meerkat Mob Rule
Meerkats take on a dangerous puff adder that encroaches on their territory.

Meerkat Manor

Sources: San Diego Zoo, BBC, University of Cambridge, Daily Mail, and Wikipedia

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