What Do Meerkats Eat? Scorpions, Insects and More

The meerkat diet in detail

The meerkat is classed as an insectivore, although it is a member of the Carnivora and will eat almost any small animal it can overpower. Studies of wild meerkats in the southern Kalahari found that invertebrates, especially beetle larvae and other insect larvae living in the soil, make up the bulk of what they eat.

Meerkats are opportunists. What they eat on a given day depends on the season, recent rain and what is under the soil where the mob happens to be foraging.

How meerkats find food

Meerkats find nearly all their prey by smell and by digging. A foraging meerkat walks slowly with its nose to the ground, sniffing for prey buried in the sand or hiding under stones and roots. When it detects something, it digs rapidly with its long, curved front claws, which average about 1.5 cm (0.6 in) long. Its small ears can close to keep sand out.

The whole mob forages together. Animals spread out across a patch, each digging its own holes, while keeping in touch with soft, repeated contact calls. One or more adults often stand guard as sentinels while the rest feed; that system is explained in Why do meerkats stand up?. Meerkats typically spend about five to eight hours a day foraging, mostly in the morning and late afternoon, and rest in shade or underground in the heat of the day.

Mobs move around their home range and tend not to return to the same patch for about a week, which gives prey time to recover. Meerkats rarely chase prey, though they will sprint a few meters after a fleeing lizard or gecko. Food is scarcer in the cold, dry winter, and meerkats lose weight in lean times.

Do meerkats eat scorpions?

Yes. Scorpions are a regular part of the diet in the Kalahari, which is home to several large species, including thick-tailed scorpions of the genus Parabuthus, some of the most venomous scorpions in southern Africa. Meerkats dig them out of burrows and grab them from under stones.

A meerkat handles a scorpion with speed and care. It usually bites at the tail first and removes or crushes the sting, then eats the rest. Scorpions glow under ultraviolet light, a curious feature explained in Why do scorpions glow under UV light?, though meerkats find them mainly by scent.

Are meerkats immune to scorpion venom?

Not completely, as far as researchers know. Meerkats do seem to be less badly affected by scorpion stings than many other mammals of their size: they are sometimes stung while foraging and usually recover. Some popular accounts describe them as “immune”, but that goes further than the evidence. Their main protection is technique, not chemistry, and venomous snakes remain a real danger to them.

How meerkats teach pups to eat scorpions

Meerkat pups begin following the mob at about three to four weeks old and cannot find enough food on their own for weeks. Adult helpers carry prey to them, and the way they do it is famous among biologists.

In a study published in Science in 2006, Alex Thornton and Katherine McAuliffe of the University of Cambridge showed that helpers adjust the prey they give pups as the pups grow. Young pups mostly receive dead scorpions or scorpions with the sting removed. As the pups get older, helpers increasingly hand over live, intact scorpions, and they watch, nudge the prey back and retrieve it if it escapes. Pups given this practice became better at handling scorpions. Because the helpers pay a cost and change their behavior to help pups learn, the study is regarded as one of the clearest examples of teaching in a wild animal.

Pups become independent foragers at about three months old, by which time they can deal with most prey, including scorpions.

Water and plant food

The Kalahari has little surface water for much of the year, yet meerkats rarely drink. They get most of the water they need from the bodies of their prey and from moist plant foods. They eat wild melons, such as the tsamma or citron melon, and dig up roots and tubers for their water content. They have also been seen eating desert truffles, underground fungi that appear after rain.

Meerkats also save water with a low metabolic rate for a carnivore of their size and by resting underground in the hottest part of the day.

Meerkats compared with other small carnivores

The meerkat’s diet overlaps with other insect-eating carnivores of southern Africa. The yellow mongoose, which often shares meerkat burrows, eats similar prey but is less selective, so the two compete little. The larger honey badger digs for scorpions, rodents and snakes as well; see What do honey badgers eat?. Despite their size, meerkats are not rodents and do not gnaw seeds or nuts; their sharp teeth are those of a small predator, as explained in Is a meerkat a rodent?.