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General Facts
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Family Life
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Evicted Females & Roving Males
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Mob Wars
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- Meerkats eat mainly insects and small reptiles, though they won’t pass up an egg if they find it (a rare delicacy!). Meerkats will resort to eating ants in the dry season, when there is less food, but a diet of ants will not sustain a meerkat for long.
- Meerkats are taught from a young age to bite the tails off scorpions. They have a natural immunity to the toxin, but it still makes it easier to eat.
- In the Meerkat society, females are the dominant force. They are the primary leaders of the mobs and have final say. Males are typically submissive, even the lead male. However, the lead male will happily put all other males in their place but they do not tend to punish females in the mob - they leave that to their partner.
- While females are the more dominant sex, the females residing in a mob will receive almost all of the bullying and aggression from the lead female while males are typically safe from these aggressive outbursts with the only exception being over food - females will happily beat up a male for their food, even if they are not the dominant one.
- Meerkats are shortsighted. Their vision is made for scanning the horizon for danger (they have horizontal pupils!) , and they generally use their other senses (like smell) to find things up close.
- Meerkats have a wide variety of calls and a surprisingly complex language.
- Because of their strong reliance on scent, meerkats regularly scent mark one another to reaffirm familiar bonds and dominance. This is both male and females. Typically, the leading pair will be the most to scent mark.
- Meerkats are so small and their bodies don’t retain heat. Being wet and cold can very readily be a death sentence for a meerkat. Equally, they sun-bathe right away after coming out of their burrows after a cold night to start to get their blood flowing and heat brought to their limbs.
- Meerkats have long, sharp claws on their front paws used primarily for digging - not fighting.
- Meerkats don’t require regular water sources as they get most of their water intake through their diet of insects, but they rarely pass up a chance to drink from a watering hole or a trough found in their travels.
- Their morning ritual after heating up includes digging around their burrow entrance to keep it neat and tidy.
- Meerkats live in groups called Mobs.
- Mobs are on average 5 - 30 individuals, though the Whiskers’ mob once numbered over 40 (and beat their resources into the ground before splitting up).
- Mobs are led by the dominant female (matriarch). She is the oldest, strongest, and heaviest meerkat who takes initiative to become the leader. She constantly reaffirms her spot as the lead female and they are often times fairly snappy with the other females in the mob.
- Beside the dominant female is the dominant male. His responsibilities are scent marking the territory, protecting the mob, and giving the clan lots of pups. He keeps the males at bay, but is submissive to the lead female. She is the boss in this society.
- Only the dominant male and female generally breed. If resources are plentiful enough, the dominant female may allow another female to have a litter. If the resources are not enough for two litters, the dominant female will generally kill (and eat) the other litter to protect her own.
- While pregnant, dominant females are known to evict other females of breeding age, even if they haven’t been at risk of breeding or caused trouble in the past.
- Despite the tight laws of meerkat families, young females do sometimes try to sneak away to breed with roving males. It's a natural need for them to want to breed and they can easily be persuaded to run off with a roving male for a short time, but will almost always come back to their mob after they have done their deed.
- When meerkats go out to eat, one or more meerkats will take it upon themselves to volunteer to keep watch. This is called a sentry position. They alert the rest of the group of danger. This position is shared among all the members so everyone can get equal chances to eat.
- When the group heads out to look for food, 1 - 2 babysitters are left behind with any pups at the burrow. Even females who haven’t had a litter can produce milk for pups.
Evicted Females
- Meerkats are social creatures. When a female is evicted from the group she will generally stay within the area, but out of the direct group itself. If it becomes clear that she won’t be allowed back into the group, she may choose to leave and try to find a new group or fend for herself.
- Evicted females will sometimes team up with a group of other evicted females to form a new mob. During this awkward phase in a new groups formation, there will be a lot of scuffling between the females to decide who ultimately becomes the lead of the group.
- If an evicted female cannot find a new mob or rejoin her own, she will likely die from the stress, starvation, or exposure. With no one to provide sentry duty, she cannot find enough food to survive.
- Sometimes (not always) when a male meerkat comes of age they will leave the mob temporarily in search of unrelated females. They may stay on the border of other mobs to try to entice non-dominant females away to mate.
- Occasionally, a roving male will stay with the female meerkat he’s found and form a new mob, though this isn’t always the goal and they often times return to their original mob or continue roving for more females.
- Roving males are generally welcomed back into the mob when they return home and there is generally little punishment, if any.
- Roving males are chased, fought, and sometimes killed by enemy mobs when caught. It is a very risky lifestyle but it's a very natural feeling for males to want to rove.
- Rival neighbor mobs will regularly go to war with one another. This can be due to territory take-overs or simply having two mobs at the same border at the same time. There is rarely any peace amongst groups unless they are considering joining forces or have family members within the group. Even then, the dominant pair will be aggressive towards the group and their members may follow lead.
- When going to war, meerkats have a “war dance” they will do to intimidate the rival group. This involves them jumping into the air with their tail high to make them appear larger and stronger than their enemy. This display may be impressive enough for a smaller group to flee back into their own territory and may even convince them to relocate for safety.
- Meerkats are not in any terms meek. They will fight to the death, gore one another, and even seek out and kill/eat an enemy’s pups. Fleeing is most common when a group is aware it is outnumbered or if they are licking their wounds from a previous encounter. Additionally, groups will defend their pups but if they feel the fight may not be worth it, they will leave their burrow with the pups inside to protect the group as a whole.