Kalahari’s Meerkats Show Their Social Ways
“Television stardom hasn’t spoiled the long-tailed, foot-tall creatures,” she wrote. “The meerkats’ sunning on the highest point of their burrow mound continues for almost an hour.”
Baker said research teams are working with six groups of wild meerkats, a mongoose species, that have been habituated to humans for studies led by Cambridge’s Timothy Clutton-Brock.
While the sun climbs and the meerkats warm up, one of the university’s researchers weighs group members to note how much weight they lost overnight, reports Baker.
“Soon, the sunbathers begin to move out,” she states. “Within 15 minutes, the radio-collared dominant female gives a lead call and the entire group high-tails in the same general direction.”
It’s quiet, according to research.
As foraging begins, the adults tend to eat the first few prey they find, but after a few bites, they run to a noisy begging pup and provide it with breakfast: a fat larva, crunchy beetle or scorpion, according to reports.
“Part of our job as volunteers is to follow one meerkat at a time for 15 minutes, determining how much time it spends foraging, how often it stands up on alert, if it climbs a high point to serve as sentry for the group, and how far it travels during the time,” said Baker in a recent interview. “This isn’t as easy as it sounds.”
Baker journaled that they also help the research by taking GPS readings every 15 minutes to determine how far the group travels.
Sometimes the animals seem very nervous, she explains.
Although the meerkats are undeniably cute, they can play dirty, according to Baker.
The dominant male guards his mate and doesn’t appreciate other males approaching her, states Baker.
In the end-of-day trip to the burrows, the meerkats show their personalities as documented in a video.
“We take the evening weights,” Baker states. “Some prop themselves against bushes to conserve energy.”
Baker said she knows the animals are entwining themselves in a cozy knot below ground.
