Meerkats are the Coolest Animals Ever

Look at this lone meerkat.

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Indeed, the typical person who first glanced at this animal’s face might say “It’s almost like a racoon’s.” Meerkats are normally one foot in height but some have grown to a foot and a half. The pups are unimaginably only 2-5 inches. This animal can both move with four legs AND stand on two feet. Where can you find this animal, you ask? Well they can only be found in South Africa, specifically in the Kalahari Desert. Meerkats can see in the dark very well, and also live in burrows that can possibly be 50 feet underground. But what’s amazing is that there are more than 200 of these bizarre burrows, as well as more than 100 bolt holes (this entire sentence a prediction). Meerkats are not afraid of humans, and don’t bite, even if not domesticated.

Burrows and Foraging

Meerkats, as I told you, live in burrows. But a mob (Mob means a family of meerkats) can move to a different burrow over 30 times in one year! Few reasons are that, snakes are a common danger to meerkats, and can sometimes wander into a mob’s burrow. As their burrows have more than one entrance, this is likely. Second, the mob may move if there are too many meerkats in the mob. This can also be solved if the mob leader kicks out a member of the mob, even if they are related.

Meerkats feed by foraging. They travel in foraging parties, not with the whole group. It goes like this: three-fourths of the mob go out foraging, while the last third babysits pups and/or guards the burrow from other mobs and snakes (explained later). Then the foraging party returns. The next day, the meerkats that stayed at the burrow the day before goes with the foraging party. Some meerkats who foraged the day before stay and guard the burrow.

The foraging party can only venture within their mob territory. They set their territories by scenting ((?) I forgot the word) throughout their territory. It’s basically the scent of each mob’s urine. If the urine doesn’t smell familiar, then they are in another mob’s territory. Mobs can steal territories by urinating over the old urine.

Meerkats eat scorpions, any kind of bugs, even big bugs! The grown-up meerkats have strong teeth, so they can also eat turtle eggs, lizards, snake eggs, and bird corpses.