The Kalahari Meerkat Project

Browsing thorough links about meerkats, I came across a really cool website about a current long-term research project. It is called the Kalahari Meerkat Project and it is being conducted by a team of researchers interested in the evolution of cooperative behavior in meerkats clans. The team consists of several professors, doctoral and Ph. D. students from Cambridge University and the University of Zurich. Volunteers are also welcome to come learn about the project and help with current studies.

                                                             The KMP logo

The project is geared at uncovering both the proximate and ultimate causes of cooperative behavior in meerkats. Several of the current studies include looking into the hormonal variation of male and female meerkats and looking for links to hormones and cooperative behavior. The researchers suspect that it has something to do with their level of glucocorticoids and are in the works of preparing a study to test their hypotheses. Another study is interested in the rise of disease among social groups of animals such as meerkats and is looking into how the naturally occurring disease TB has entered the meerkat population and how it is spreading.

The researchers work with habituated meerkats living in the Kuruman River Reserve in the Kalahari Desert. They work with over 200 meerkats and observe 13 different clans for their studies. All of the meerkats being studied have identification collars on and are used to being around the researchers. Most of them can even be held by the researchers without running away or biting them.

                              A Kalahari Meerkat Project researcher observing one of the meerkat clans.

The Kalahari Research Project also allows other individual researchers to come and work with their group of habituated meerkats. Their goal is education and better understanding of the meerkat population and will allow other researchers to conduct studies if they fit in with their research goals. There have been a number of very interesting studies conducted by outside researchers associated with the Kalahari Project, ranging from pup exploitation of adult meerkats to the development of the alarm call behavior among individual meerkat clans. This project and its funding allow researchers to learn more about this amazing animal and will hopefully lead to a better understanding and more public awareness of meerkats and the amazing social network that exists among their clans.

The website has a ton of information about the project and continually updates its current studies and findings as they become available. There are volunteer opportunities and ways for individuals to get involved if they would like to do so. You can also access pictures and information about the specific meerkats the Project studies. Check it out and learn more about this awesome project! :)

Website/Resources: http://www.kalahari-meerkats.com/index.php?id=home
http://friends.kalahari-meerkats.com/

Meerkats as TV stars---a look into Animal Planet's Meerkat Manor

Besides Lion King, meerkats had little to no time in the Hollywood spotlight until the introduction of Meerkat Manor--a British TV program brought to the United States in 2005. This series drew fans instantly--with over 4 million viewers--and ran for 4 seasons until it was canceled indefinitely from Animal Planet's show line-up in 2008.

Meerkat Manor followed a meerkat family the documentary crew named Whiskers, one of many family clans in the Kalahari Desert. The show fictionalized the lives of meerkats and portrayed them as a royal family, making them and their actions seem very humanlike through the use of narrators and comical one-liners about the animal's behaviors. Although somewhat unrealistic, the show gave viewers an insider first-look at how meerkats live their daily lives. Constant filming--including night vision, underground cameras--gave very real depictions of how meerkats interact with one another and their environment on a daily basis.

Critics complained that the show was too unrealistic, making animal behavior seem too human-like and that a meerkat's daily life was portrayed in a way that would be favorable to viewers instead of how it occurs in nature. For instance, many mating scenes were cut out to make the show PG viewable. There was also a lot of editing done to make the show "less boring" and cut out a lot of daily foraging and grooming behavior done by the meerkat clan being followed.

All in all, Meerkat Manor was a huge success. It gave meerkats their "15 minutes of fame" and gave the public more insight into how they live. Some say the success of the show will be beneficial should meerkats ever become a threatened or endangered species. This unusual documentary series put a spin on typical educational films and made it viewable to a wide range of audiences. The Whisker family is now a household name across the world--with viewings not only in the US, the UK and Australia. Watch out Angelina, Flower might be the first meerkat with a star on Hollywood Blvd! :)

                                    Sophie, one of the Whiskers family babysitters looking curiously into the camera

Watch a video about how the researchers made this documentary without hurting the meerkat clan or it's home. Also meet several of the stars of the show! http://animal.discovery.com/videos/meerkat-manor-behind-the-burrow/

Resources:
http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/meerkat/meerkat.html
http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/meerkat/about/about.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meerkat_Manor

Meerkats Spotted at the San Diego Zoo!

Here is a picture I took last week when I visited the San Diego Zoo. The meerkats were sitting, sun bathing and waiting to be fed by the zoo assistants who were cleaning out the back of the their habitat. A new pup was supposed to be in the habitat but he was in the hospital for some testing and health treatments. The meerkats weren't very social---but I think it was because they were hungry & focused! :)

Are Meerkats a Threatened Species?

Meerkats are considered to be in the lower risk status when it comes to conservation. This means they don't necessarily qualify as an endangered or vulnerable group, but could likely be that way in the near future if efforts are not taken to stop their slow decline in the wild. According to the IUCN--the International Union for Conservation of Nature--meerkats are in the least concern category, meaning they are not threatened, near threatened, or conservation dependent. In order to qualify for this category, the IUCN must be able to accurately evaluate their population status in nature and make an accurate assessment of their risk of extinction. The risk must be low or close to non-existent in the present for them to get this status.

The scale the IUCN uses to assess animals conservation status.

                                                       
The only real threat meerkats face in terms of extinction risk is from humans. In places where meerkats live within close distances of humans or have many daily interactions with them, they are often hunted or gassed because of they carry rabies. Although this has not severely hurt the meerkats' population numbers so far, it is a serious concern for their future. Many animal activist and protection groups have tried to sponsor conservation efforts in the areas with the most concern for hunting and gassing of meerkats and have started to bring about awareness of their potential vulnerable status in the near future if such killings keep happening at a quicker rate than the meerkats reproduce. Efforts to move these meerkats to safer locations and efforts to keep human interaction to a minimum in the wild has helped them keep their low concern status to this day.

Meerkats play a crucial part in the wild-life circle in their habitats and their threat or extinction would severely effect many other species. Meerkats provide prey for jackals and eagles and keep the pest infestation to a minimum by making many pest-like insects the staple of their diet. Keeping meerkats at the least concern status they currently hold is beneficial to their entire habitat and ecosystem.

Resources:
http://www.animalfactguide.com/animalfacts/meerkat/
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-meerkat.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Meerkat

Does Nutritional Status Effect Play in Meerkats?

I read a journal article from Animal Behaviour titled: Experimental Provisioning Increases Play in Free-Range Meerkats? by L.L. Sharpe et. al. In this study, the experimenters wanted to see if the long-term nutrition status of a meerkat affected its rate of play. They conducted this study with free-range meerkats living in the Kalahari Desert. They examined both the rate of play--defined as any mutual bodily contact between two or more animals--and the weight of each pup in 7 different litters.

                                               Meerkat pups engaging in play behavior. 
There were 3 groups in the study: the non-experimental, or control, group, the long-term provisioning group and the short-term provisioning group. The control group was given nothing and was not disturbed from their normal foraging routine, but was simply observed for play interactions and weighed daily. Play interactions were documented on a one/zero score, meaning that every 20 seconds each pup was observed as either playing (one) or not playing (zero). Their weight was measured in the morning as soon as they emerged from the den and at night before they retreated to their den in order to get a daily weight gain total for each pup. The long-term provisional group was observed in a similar way, but pups from each litter were randomly assigned experimental status. These pups received 12 grams of hard-boiled egg twice a day for 4 weeks. All pups were weighed morning and night and their play was observed on a one/zero score every 20 seconds both in the morning before the group left for foraging and at night when they returned to their den. The short-term provisioning group was treated exactly the same as the long-term group, except that they only received provisions of hard-boiled egg for 4 days. They were weighed and observed just like the other groups.

The results supported their hypothesis that nutritional status is positively correlated with the rate of play in meerkats. Although there was no significant correlation between an individual pup's weight and its rate of play, weight gain over the long-term provisioning experiment was positively correlated with rate of play. Weight gain explained 31% of the variation in rates of play between litter mates in this experimental group. Provisioned pups spent significantly more time playing and less time begging or foraging than the unfed control group. The short-term group displayed very interesting results. During the first hour after receiving their provisions, fed pups played significantly more than the control group, however this effect wore off after the first hour and their was no significant change in rate of play from short-term to control group pups.

These results do confirm that variation in food consumption does have an effect on the rate of play in meerkats. The experimenters believe this is because play requires a significant amount of energy and unfed or hungrier meerkats are going to spend more time and energy foraging or begging for food than engaging in a behavior such as play, which does not directly contribute to their survival. Well-fed meerkats who are not worried about starvation will engage in play more often and interact more socially with their group overall.

This study is especially interesting in relation to meerkats because they are considered to be very social, interactive animals. It is important to understand under what conditions being social facilitates their survival and when it is cut out in order to focus on more important tasks that will help them survive. The experimenters in this study hope to do more studies in the future to better understand this correlation and to try and understand more clearly the function of play in not only meerkats, but animals in general, as this is a somewhat understudied area of animal behavior.

References:

L.L. Sharpe, T.H. Clutton-Brock, P.N.M. Brotherton, E.Z. Cameron, M.I. Cherry, Experimental provisioning increases play in free-ranging meerkats, Animal Behaviour, Volume 64, Issue 1, July 2002, Pages 113-121, ISSN 0003-3472, 10.1006/anbe.2002.3031.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347202930319)