Despite rapidly ageing, dominant animals live longer because their underlings are driven out of the group – becoming easy targets for predators. The secret of a long meerkat life is to be “ruler of your community… cracking down on would-be rivals,” say scientists.
Latest research shows subordinate meerkat siblings grow competitively, boosting their chance of becoming a dominant breeder when a vacancy opens up by making sure that younger siblings don’t outgrow them.
Reporting back from her time spent in the Kalahari Desert, PhD student Kirsty MacLeod describes the fascinating life of a gang of meerkats that includes an audacious boy called Bruce and a good-natured girl called Ru.
Mothers who lose their pups to infanticide by the dominant female in a meerkat group often then provide the dominant female with a wet-nurse service, say researchers who have carried out the most comprehensive study of wet-nursing in a single species to date.
Meerkats are more likely to scan for predators from high vantage points or guard on their hind legs when young pups are present in the group.
Just as afternoon tea is traditional in England but not in France, different groups of meerkats have different ways of doing things, Cambridge zoologists have found.
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