Meerkat

The word derives from the Afrikaans language. The origin of the name is uncertain, giving rise to a number of theories, including: • The provincial Dutch / colloquial Afrikaans word meaning 'ant' and , which means 'cat', hence an 'ant cat' referring to the meerkat's preying on ants and termites. • A Dutch name for a kind of monkey, proposed to come from the Old High German and to be related to the similar Hindi term (, 'monkey'), deriving from Sanskrit. The Germanic origin of the word though long predates any known connections to India. The name was used for small mammals in South Africa from 1801 onward, possibly because the Dutch colonialists used the name in reference to many burrowing animals. The name for the meerkat is suricate, possibly deriving from the French 'surikate'. • A combination of ('lake') and ('cat'), even though meerkats are dry-land creatures. In Afrikaans, the meerkat is called or ; the term or can refer to both the meerkat and the yellow mongoose (). ==Taxonomy==

(1777) In 1776, Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber described a meerkat from the Cape of Good Hope, giving it the scientific name Viverra suricatta. The generic name Suricata was proposed by Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest in 1804, who also described a zoological specimen from the Cape of Good Hope. The present scientific name Suricata suricatta was first used by Oldfield Thomas and Harold Schwann in 1905 when they described a specimen collected at Wakkerstroom. They suggested there were four local meerkat races in the Cape and Deelfontein, Grahamstown, Orange River Colony and southern Transvaal, and Klipfontein respectively. Several zoological specimens were described between the late 18th and 20th centuries, of which three are recognised as valid subspecies: • S. s. iona occurs in southwestern Angola. ==Phylogeny and evolution==

Meerkat fossils dating back to have been excavated in various locations in South Africa. A 2009 phylogenetic study of the family Herpestidae suggests it split into two lineages around the Early Miocene (25.4–18.2 mya)—eusocial and solitary mongooses. The meerkat belongs to the monophyletic eusocial mongoose clade along with several other African mongooses: Crossarchus (kusimanse), Helogale (dwarf mongoose), Liberiictis (Liberian mongoose) and Mungos (banded mongoose). The solitary mongoose lineage comprises two clades including species such as Meller's mongoose (Rhynchogale melleri) and the yellow mongoose (Cynictis penicillata). The meerkat genetically diverged from the rest of the clade 22.6–15.6 mya. The phylogenetic relationships of the meerkat are depicted as follows: }} ==Characteristics==

The meerkat is a small mongoose of slim build characterised by a broad head, large eyes, a pointed snout, long legs, a thin tapering tail and a brindled coat pattern. It is smaller than most other mongooses except the dwarf mongooses (genus Helogale) and possibly Galerella species. These hairs are typically between , but measure on the flanks. Its head is mostly white and the underparts are covered sparsely with dark reddish-brown fur, with the dark skin underneath showing through. The eyes, in sockets covering over 20% of the skull length, are capable of binocular vision. The slim, yellowish tail, unlike the bushy tails of many other mongooses, measures , and is tipped with black. Females have six nipples. The black, crescent-like ears can be closed to prevent the entry of dirt and debris while digging. The tail is used to balance when standing upright. ==Ecology and behaviour==

The meerkat is a social mammal, forming packs of two to 30 individuals each comprising nearly equal numbers of either sex and multiple family units of pairs and their offspring. Members of a pack take turns at jobs such as looking after pups and keeping a lookout for predators. Packs live in rock crevices in stony areas and in large burrow systems in plains. A pack generally occupies a home range, large on average but sometimes as big as , containing many burrows apart, of which some remain unused. The area near the periphery of home ranges is scent marked using anal gland secretions mostly by the dominant individuals; there are communal latrines, large, close to the burrows. Females, often the heaviest ones, try to achieve dominance over the rest in many ways such as fierce competition or taking over from the leader of the pack. Males seeking dominance over groups tend to scent mark extensively and are not submissive; they often drive out older males in a group and take over the pack themselves. Some subordinate meerkats will even kill the pups of dominant members in order to improve their own offspring's position. It can take days for emigrants to secure entry into other packs, and they often face aversion from the members. Males typically succeed in joining existing groups; they often inspect other packs and their burrow systems in search of breeding opportunities. Many often team up in 'coalitions' for as long as two months and travel nearly a day on twisted paths. Vocalisations s (below) Short-range 'close calls' are produced while foraging and after scanning the vicinity for predators. 'Recruitment calls' can be produced to collect meerkats on sighting a snake or to investigate excrement or hair samples of predators or unfamiliar meerkats. 'Alarm calls' are given out on detecting predators. All these calls differ in their acoustic characteristics, and can evoke different responses in the 'receivers' (meerkats who hear the call); generally the greater the urgency of the scenario in which the call is given, the stronger is the response in the receivers. The complexity of calls produced by different mongooses varies by their social structure and ecology. For instance eusocial mongooses such as meerkats and banded mongooses use calls in a greater variety of contexts than do the solitary slender mongooses. Moreover, meerkats have more call types than do banded mongooses. Meerkat calls carry information to identify the signaling individual or pack, but meerkats do not appear to differentiate between calls from different sources. The calls of banded mongooses also carry a 'vocal signature' to identify the caller. Diet The meerkat is primarily an insectivore, feeding heavily on beetles and lepidopterans; it can additionally feed on eggs, amphibians, arthropods (such as scorpions, to whose venom they are immune), reptiles, small birds (such as the southern anteater-chat), plants and seeds. Captive meerkats include plenty of fruits and vegetables in their diet, and also kill small mammals by biting the backs of their skulls. Meerkats often eat citron melons and dig out roots and tubers for their water content. Infants make continuous sounds that resemble bird-like tweets, that change to a shrill contact call as they grow older. Young pups are kept securely in a den, from where they emerge after around 16 days, and start foraging with adults by 26 days. The nonbreeding members of the pack help substantially with juvenile care, for instance they feed the pups and huddle with them for warmth. Sex biases have been observed in feeding; for instance, female helpers feed female pups more than male pups unlike male helpers who feed both equally. This is possibly because the survival of female pups is more beneficial to female helpers as females are more likely to remain in their natal pack. Sometimes helpers favour their own needs over those of pups and decide not to feed them; this behaviour, known as "false-feeding", is more common when the prey is more valued by the meerkat. The father remains on guard and protects his offspring, while the mother spends a lot of time foraging to produce enough milk for her young. Mothers give out shrill, repetitive calls to ensure their pups follow them and remain close together. Like many species, meerkat pups learn by observing and mimicking adult behaviour, though adults also engage in active instruction. For example, meerkat adults teach their pups how to eat a venomous scorpion by removing the stinger and showing the pups how to handle the creature. The mother runs around with prey in her mouth, prompting her pups to catch it. Kin recognition is a useful ability that facilitates cooperation among relatives and the avoidance of inbreeding. When mating occurs between meerkat relatives it often results in negative fitness consequences (inbreeding depression), that affect a variety of traits such as pup mass at emergence from the natal burrow, hindleg length, growth until independence and juvenile survival. These negative effects are likely due to the increased homozygosity or higher genetic similarity among individuals that arise from inbreeding and the consequent expression of deleterious recessive mutations. ==Distribution and habitat==

The meerkat occurs in southwestern Botswana, western and southern Namibia, northern and western South Africa; the range barely extends into southwestern Angola. Population densities vary greatly between places, and are significantly influenced by predators and rainfall. For instance, a study in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, where predation pressure is high, recorded a lower mean meerkat density relative to a ranch with lower occurrence of predators; in response to a 10% decrease in rainfall over a year, the density fell from . ==Threats and conservation==

The meerkat is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List; the population trend appears to be stable. Increased maximum air temperature is correlated with decreased survival and body mass in pups, perhaps as a result of dehydration from water loss during evaporative cooling or decreased water content in food, or from the heavier metabolic costs of thermoregulation on hot days. ==In culture==

Meerkats are generally tame animals. In South Africa meerkats are used to kill rodents in rural households and lepidopterans in farmlands. Meerkats can transmit rabies to humans, but yellow mongooses appear to be more common vectors. It has been suggested that meerkats may even limit the spread of rabies by driving out yellow mongooses from their burrows; meerkats are generally not persecuted given their economic significance in crop protection, though they may be killed due to rabies control measures to eliminate yellow mongooses. Meerkats can also spread tick-borne diseases. Meerkat Manor (2005–2008), a television programme produced by Oxford Scientific Films that was aired on Animal Planet, focused on groups of meerkats in the Kalahari that were being studied in the Kalahari Meerkat Project. Meerkats populated an acidic floating island in the 2012 film Life of Pi. ==See also==