Mammals
Meerkat
Suricata suricatta · also called suricate
The meerkat is a small desert mongoose that survives by never being alone. Everything it does — foraging, sleeping, raising young, watching for danger — is a team effort, and the team is family.
Overview
Meerkats live in the arid open country of southern Africa, where the ground is soft enough to dig and there is little cover. They shelter in large multi-entrance burrow systems, often shared with ground squirrels and yellow mongooses, moving between several burrows within their territory as food and safety dictate. A mob spends the night underground in a warm huddle and emerges after sunrise to sunbathe, standing upright with bellies to the sun, before the day’s foraging.
The mob
A meerkat mob is a cooperative breeding society. A single dominant female produces most of the litters — up to four a year — and suppresses breeding in her subordinate daughters, sometimes killing their pups. In return, every adult in the mob contributes to raising the dominant pair’s young: standing guard, carrying pups to safety, and, crucially, provisioning and teaching them.
Roles rotate. On any given foraging trip:
- Sentries take turns on raised lookouts, scanning for eagles, hawks, jackals, and snakes and calling a running commentary — a soft note for “all clear,” escalating alarm calls for specific threats.
- Babysitters stay at the burrow with pups too young to travel, going without food for the day.
- Teachers bring pups prey of increasing difficulty, from dead insects up to live scorpions with the sting bitten off, calibrated to what each pup can handle.
If a predator appears, the mob may bunch together, arch their backs, hiss and jump forward as one, making themselves look like a single large hostile animal.
Diet
Meerkats are insectivores that dig for most of their food, using their long claws and an acute sense of smell to unearth beetle larvae, grubs, spiders, and scorpions from the sand. They also take small lizards, snakes, birds’ eggs, and the occasional root or fruit. They get nearly all their water from prey and rarely drink.
Reproduction and life cycle
After an 11-week pregnancy the dominant female gives birth underground to two to five pups. Blind and helpless at first, they emerge from the burrow at about three weeks and start following the mob at around a month, shadowing adults and begging for food with a constant contact call. Young meerkats that survive to adulthood usually stay in their birth mob for years, helping, before dispersing to found or join another.
Threats and conservation
The meerkat is Least Concern and stable. Predation is intense — most meerkats die young to birds of prey and snakes — but the mob system compensates, and the species readily recolonises. Localised threats include drought, which crashes insect numbers, and outbreaks of tuberculosis and rabies that can wipe out whole mobs. Long-running field studies, especially the Kalahari Meerkat Project, have made the meerkat one of the best-understood wild mammals in the world.
Meerkat: common questions
What is a group of meerkats called?
A mob, gang, or clan. A mob is an extended family of 3 to 50 animals centred on a single dominant female and male, who produce most of the pups. The other adults are their grown offspring and relatives, who help raise each new litter instead of breeding themselves.
Why does one meerkat always stand up straight while the others dig?
It is on sentry duty. Foraging meerkats keep their heads down in the dirt, so one member climbs to a high spot, stands on its hind legs and tail, and scans the sky and horizon. It gives a soft "watchman's song" to say all is clear, and specific alarm calls — different ones for a hawk overhead versus a jackal on the ground — that tell the mob exactly how to react.
How do meerkats eat scorpions without being stung?
They have a degree of natural immunity to scorpion venom, and they handle the prey carefully — biting or rubbing off the stinger before eating. Adults teach this skill to pups in stages, first bringing them a dead scorpion, then a live one with the sting removed, then a fully intact one, adjusting the lesson to the pup's age.
Are meerkats endangered?
No. The meerkat is listed as Least Concern and is common across its range. Its main challenges are drought, disease outbreaks such as tuberculosis, and heavy predation — but mob life, with its sentries and burrows, keeps populations resilient.