the.com/meerkat
a tiny mongoose that posts armed sentries while everyone else digs for breakfast.
means A small, slender, social mongoose of southern Africa that lives in cooperative burrow colonies, famous for standing upright on its hind legs to keep watch.
from From Afrikaans 'meerkat,' which looks like it should mean 'lake cat' (Dutch 'meer' = lake, 'kat' = cat) — but the meerkat is neither aquatic nor feline, so that reading is folk-pleasing nonsense. The likelier path runs back through Dutch to a borrowing from an Indian language: Sanskrit 'markaṭa,' meaning 'monkey' or 'ape,' which travelled westward and was eventually slapped onto this little African burrower. So the lake-cat is, etymologically, more of a monkey.
- immune system
- survives scorpion stings that would drop a human
- living sunscreen
- black belly fur absorbs heat to warm up fast
- babysitting shifts
- non-parents guard pups while mothers forage
- built-in goggles
- dark eye patches cut desert glare like eyeliner
- democratic moves
- groups vote on travel by collective calls
kalahari meerkat mob — the kalahari desert meerkat clan studied by researchers at the kalahari meerkat project in botswana since 1990s
tswalu meerkats south africa — habituated meerkat groups at tswalu kalahari reserve in the northern cape, south africa, known for ecotourism