Meerkat (Suricata suricatta): Facts, Mobs and Habitat

What kind of animal is a meerkat?

Despite its name, a meerkat is neither a cat nor a rodent. It belongs to the mongoose family, Herpestidae, in the order Carnivora, which places it closer to hyenas, civets and cats than to squirrels or rats. It is the only species in its genus, Suricata, and three subspecies are usually recognized. The details of that classification are covered in Is a meerkat a rodent?.

The name “meerkat” comes from Afrikaans, borrowed from Dutch. Its exact origin is unclear, and in Afrikaans the word has also been used for other small burrowing mongooses, such as the yellow mongoose.

Appearance

Meerkats are slender, with a broad, rounded head, a short pointed snout, long legs and a thin, tapering tail with a black tip. The soft coat is light gray to tan or yellowish brown, with faint darker bands across the back. The face is pale, with dark patches around the large eyes, which are thought to cut down glare from the bright desert sun, and small, black, crescent-shaped ears that can close when the animal digs.

Each foot has four toes. The front claws are long, strong and curved, about 1.5 cm (0.6 in) on average, and make the meerkat a superb digger. The belly has only sparse fur, so the dark skin shows through; meerkats expose it to the morning sun to warm up.

How big is a meerkat?

The meerkat is one of the smallest mongooses. Its head and body measure about 24–35 cm (9.5–14 in), with a tail of 17–25 cm (7–10 in). Adults typically weigh about 0.6–1 kg (1.3–2.2 lb), a little heavier than an eastern gray squirrel. Males and females are similar in size, although dominant females are often the heaviest members of a group.

Where do meerkats live?

Meerkats live only in southern Africa: in southwestern Botswana, western and southern Namibia, northern and western South Africa and a small part of southwestern Angola. They are typical of the Kalahari and the Karoo, two dry regions where annual rainfall is usually below about 600 mm (24 in) and often much lower.

They prefer open, arid country with short grass, low shrubs and scattered trees such as camelthorn acacias, and firm or stony soil that holds burrows well. They avoid true sand-sea deserts, mountains and forests. Meerkats are active by day and spend the night underground.

A mob lives in a home range of about 5 km² (2 sq mi) on average, sometimes up to around 15 km² (6 sq mi), containing many burrows. A typical burrow system is about 5 m (16 ft) across, with around 15 entrances and tunnels on two or three levels reaching up to about 1.5 m (5 ft) deep. Underground temperatures stay far steadier than at the surface, which protects meerkats from both scorching afternoons and freezing winter nights. Meerkats often take over or share burrows dug by Cape ground squirrels and yellow mongooses.

What do meerkats eat?

Meerkats are mainly insectivores. They feed heavily on beetles and their larvae, moth and butterfly larvae, termites and other insects, plus spiders, millipedes, centipedes and scorpions. They also take lizards, small snakes, birds’ eggs, the occasional small bird or rodent, and some plant food such as wild melons, roots and tubers, which also supply water. Meerkats rarely need to drink.

Most food is found by smell and dug out of the ground. A foraging mob spreads out, each animal digging its own holes, and members keep in contact with soft calls. Meerkats can spend five to eight hours a day foraging. Their tolerance of scorpion venom and the way adults teach pups to handle scorpions are described in What do meerkats eat?.

Meerkat behavior: mobs, sentinels and alarm calls

Meerkats live in mobs of usually 3 to 30 animals, made up of a dominant breeding pair and their grown offspring, plus some immigrant males. The other adults, called helpers, rarely breed but share the work of the group: babysitting pups, bringing them food, digging burrows and keeping watch.

While the mob forages with heads down, one or more adults often climb onto a termite mound, rock or bush and stand guard as sentinels. A sentinel gives a quiet, repeated call that tells foragers all is well, and a sharp alarm call when danger appears. Research by Marta Manser and colleagues showed that meerkats use different alarm calls for aerial predators such as eagles, ground predators such as jackals, and snakes, and that the calls also signal how urgent the threat is. The reasons behind the upright stance are explained in Why do meerkats stand up?.

When a snake approaches, meerkats often mob it: the group bunches together, raises its tails and fur, and advances with growls and lunges until the snake retreats. Groups also defend their territory against other mobs, and these clashes can be violent. A 2016 study in Nature estimated that around one in five meerkat deaths is caused by other meerkats, among the highest rates known in mammals.

Meerkats huddle together to sleep and spend time each morning sunbathing at the burrow entrance before setting out to forage. They mark their territory with scent from glands under the tail and use shared latrines.

Reproduction and life cycle

In a typical mob, the dominant female produces most of the pups. She suppresses breeding by subordinate females, may evict them from the group late in her pregnancy and sometimes kills their litters. Subordinate females occasionally kill the dominant female’s pups too.

Meerkats can breed at any time of year, but most pups are born in the warm, rainy months; in the southern Kalahari the peak is roughly December to March. Pregnancy lasts about 60–70 days, and litters usually contain three to seven pups, on average about four. A dominant female can raise up to four litters in a good year.

Pups are born blind and helpless and stay underground for about the first three weeks, guarded by babysitters while the rest of the mob forages. After they emerge, helpers carry food to them, and older animals teach them to handle difficult prey. In a famous 2006 study published in Science, Alex Thornton and Katherine McAuliffe showed that meerkat helpers give young pups dead or disabled scorpions and older pups live ones, one of the clearest examples of teaching in a wild animal. Pups forage independently at about three months.

How long do meerkats live?

Life is short for most wild meerkats. Many pups die from predators, cold, hunger or disease in their first months, and adults face predators, violent encounters with other mobs and drought. Animal Diversity Web gives a wild lifespan range of about 5–15 years for meerkats that survive to adulthood. In zoos, meerkats live about 12 years on average, and the longest recorded lifespan is about 20.6 years.

Predators and threats

Birds of prey are the main threat. Martial eagles, tawny eagles, pale chanting goshawks and lanner falcons hunt meerkats, especially pups and young animals. On the ground, black-backed jackals, Cape foxes and honey badgers are predators, and Cape cobras and other snakes take pups from burrows. The honey badger is a notable burrow raider in meerkat country.

The IUCN Red List classes the meerkat as Least Concern, with a stable population, and the species occurs in large protected areas such as the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. The biggest natural threat is drought: low rainfall reduces insect prey and can wipe out whole groups. Studies in the Kalahari also link rising temperatures to lower pup survival and growth, so climate change is a concern for the future.

Myths and facts

• Myth: meerkats are rodents, like prairie dogs. Fact: meerkats are mongooses in the order Carnivora. Prairie dogs, which also stand upright at their burrows, are North American ground squirrels, and the resemblance is only skin deep.
• Myth: the sentinel risks its life for the group. Fact: a 1999 study in Science led by Tim Clutton-Brock found that sentinels usually go on guard after they have eaten their fill and are often the first to reach a burrow when danger appears. Guarding seems to benefit the guard as well as the mob.
• Myth: meerkats are immune to all venom. Fact: meerkats tolerate scorpion stings better than many animals, but they are not known to be fully immune, and they usually bite off or disable the sting before eating a scorpion. Snakebites can kill them.
• Myth: meerkats live in the Sahara. Fact: wild meerkats occur only in southern Africa, mainly in the Kalahari and Karoo regions.

Meerkats and people

Meerkats are among the best-studied wild mammals. The Kalahari Meerkat Project, founded by Tim Clutton-Brock and based since 1993 at the Kuruman River Reserve in South Africa, has followed habituated mobs for decades. Its work on cooperation, sentinels, teaching and dominance has made meerkats a model species in behavioral ecology, and the project’s animals became famous through the television series Meerkat Manor.

Meerkats are also familiar from films and advertising, most famously as Timon in The Lion King. Their cute image hides a tough, sometimes fierce animal: wild meerkats bite hard, have strong musky scent glands and do not make suitable pets. They are best enjoyed in the wild or in well-run zoos, where their sentinel behavior is easy to watch.