Meerkats - lords of the manor

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Are they the new penguins? With a successful television show and a feature-length movie in the wings, these charming creatures are riding an ever-growing wave of widespread popularity. Ann and Steve Toon head into the Kalahari to meet the stars. Will you join the march of the meerkats? It is 5.30am and we are in the middle of nowhere. Lying in wait – sprawled out in newly-sprouted sour grass – we pray for the sun to burn off the remnants of yesterday’s storm clouds. This is the nearest we’ll ever get to being paparazzi – stalking A-list celebrities and hanging about outside their homes with cameras primed. Nearby a male black korhaan lets rip his raucous, and at this distance, deafening, wake-up call. It makes us both jump and distracts our attention from the job in hand. While our eyes are off the ball, Finn McCool makes his appearance. After first popping his head out of the burrow, he emerges fully and strikes a characteristic standing upright pose. Looking around furtively, he checks us out. We know it’s him because he has a small smudge of brown hair dye, applied by researchers for ID purposes in the field, on the top of his head. He’s followed closely by Makonkie. She’s the dominant female of the group, recognisable to us because of her radio collar, and by her unmistakably matriarchal air. It’s hard to believe after our arrival in numbing heat yesterday afternoon, when a series of seemingly endless, ear-splitting Kalahari thunderstorms resulted in a no-show of our subjects, that we were going to get fine weather and quality viewing opportunities today. Now, after spending precious minutes of first-light locating this temporary burrow, we are finally just centimetres away from what surely must be some of the world’s most charismatic wild creatures and certainly among its most famous. Here, in the searing heat of this semi-desert, some 200km from the remote Kgalagadi National Park, are the homes of no less than 14 meerkat groups, including Whiskers, who are the real-life, wildlife stars of the award-winning Meerkat Manor TV series. The show charts the trials and tribulations of this endearing and endlessly fascinating mongoose species. In fact so widespread has the fame and popularity of these animals become that BBC Films, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, has produced a groundbreaking feature-length film, The Meerkats. Due out late this year or in early 2009, the film follows the meerkats’ rollercoaster struggle for survival in this unforgiving landscape. To our excitement, Finn, Makonkie, and a couple of subordinate adults, are swiftly followed out of the burrow by four five-week-old pups. We timed our visit to coincide with the summer breeding season in the hope of seeing pups, but we couldn’t be sure that we’d actually get lucky. Unbelievably comical and cute, the youngsters are each a perfect ‘mini-me’ version of their parents. Typical kids, they jostle for position among the grown-ups, grabbing at them, wobbling over and squeezing their round little heads to the front as though they’d rehearsed their positions for just such a group photo. Since yesterday’s torrential downpours kyboshed their customary late afternoon foraging sessions (meerkats hate rain as much as we do, and usually take refuge in the nearest abandoned burrow at its onset) this early sunshine is welcome. This family group seems more than content to hang around close to each other at the sandy burrow’s entrance soaking up the warm rays while we watch and photograph. From time to time Makonkie breaks from the line-up to carry out a spot of home maintenance – attempting to tidy round the abandoned ground squirrel burrow that was her family’s temporary, overnight refuge. She’s digging in that furiously hyperactive way meerkats do when conducting their daily business. It’s hard not to laugh when two of the pups get showered with sand as a result of their mother’s frenetic housekeeping. “Hum, huh, hum,” we both softly and repeatedly sing as we inch closer to the pups with wide-angle lenses. This is the special habituation call we’ve been taught to use by Vicky Ashford, the volunteer field assistant who tracked down the group for us using telemetry. It reassures the animals that our presence is not a threat. At first we feel daft, and more than a little self-conscious, but it seems to work since the animals stay calm as we approach to within just inches of their den. They carry on scanning their surroundings, and getting in each other’s way, as they would do every other morning when clumsy idiots like us aren’t thrusting cameras in their pointy snouts at every turn. The opportunity to get this close in the wild, without impacting on an animal’s behaviour to any great degree, is extremely rare and we feel very privileged. We certainly don’t want to waste a second of our time with these little stars. The reason these meerkats’ behaviour is unchanged around humans is that the animals that live here, like Finn and Makonkie, have been habituated (but not tamed) by ecologists over many years as part of a major, long-running, research study known a the Kalahari Meerkat Project (KMP). Because meerkats are active by day and live in quite open terrain in the Kalahari, it makes them good candidates to study. The habituation process has allowed researchers unprecedented access to observe meerkats in the wild and they are able to spend hours in the field each day collecting important data without affecting the animals’ day-to-day routine. Without the habituation process it would also not be possible to film their antics and adventures for a wildlife soap like Meerkat Manor (the crew was busy making series four during our visit). Begun in 1993, the KMP aims to study all aspects of meerkat behaviour. The project has a particular interest, however, in meerkats’ cooperative breeding. This type of mating involves subordinate individuals within a group of animals helping to raise young that are not their own. In the case of meerkats, a dominant pair within a group is usually the only one to breed successfully, producing on average about 80 per cent of the group’s offspring. Therefore the success in rearing young is all down to teamwork – including the support and cooperation of helpers and ‘baby-sitters’. This ‘sharing and caring’ approach to life seems a pretty selfless way to go about things, and the explanation for it has always been that related animals in the group benefit from their efforts because shared genes are passed down in the young they help to rear. But, through the project’s close study of the complexities of meerkat society, it’s now suggested there may be more immediate benefits for helpers behaving in this way: weight gain being one. It’s hoped the extensive research programme will provide a vital insight into the cooperative breeding behaviour of other mammal species too.  So far the project has generated some 60 or so scientific papers. Research is currently based here at the Kuruman River Reserve (KRR), a property jointly owned by the Kalahari Research Trust and Cambridge University. It relocated permanently to this former Northern Cape farm from South Africa’s Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in the mid-1990s. Founding father and director is Tim Clutton Brock, Professor of Animal Ecology at Cambridge, whose book about his work with these animals, Meerkat Manor – Flower of the Kalahari (Weidenfield and Nicolson) was published last year. The project’s co-director is Marta Manser of Zurich University. To subscribe or buy back issues, click here  It’s certainly meerkat central around these parts. The group we are watching is known as the Drie Doring group, and it is made up of 10 meerkats, including four cubs. All the groups’ individuals (about 300 or so meerkats) in the reserve can be recognised and all have been followed since birth. Drie doring is Afrikaans for the ‘three thorns’ bush that covers a large part of the reserve. This vegetation is often used by the meerkats as a sentry post and is certainly a favourite hangout of Finn McCool, Drie Doring group’s dominant male. Acting as a self-appointed lookout, he often climbs to the top of several of these bushes during each morning’s foraging. This is much to the frustration of one of the young pups, who (to our amusement) tries desperately, but fails repeatedly, to clamber up to join the Finn. Learning from adult helpers within the group is all part of early life for these playful pups. Over the next few weeks their survival will depend on them learning how to forage for difficult, and sometimes, potentially dangerous food items such as scorpions, as adults gradually introduce them to live prey. When project manager Rob Sutcliffe gave us a tour of the project’s setup yesterday afternoon we were surprised at the high density of meerkats on the 3500ha reserve. Bouncing about the sodden farm tracks in his battered 4WD, he pointed out to us the sleeping burrows of some of the other meerkat groups, introducing us to the homes of the Nutters, Aztecs, Commandos, Rascals and, of course, the world famous Whiskers group. Between thunder-cracks, Rob explained that there are fewer raptors here to prey on the mongoose species because of farmers putting down poison to get rid of the birds in the past. Nonetheless, all the meerkats we lay eyes on seem to be perpetually on the lookout for trouble – standing erect, supported by their tails like little tripods, their eyes permanently glued to the sky or the horizon. “It’s impossible not to anthropomorphise when you’re studying meerkats,” says Rob. “It’s all about personality with these guys. When I first saw them in the zoo, I thought they were cool, but pretty boring. Then almost as soon as I arrived here, I realised how complex and fascinating their social lives are.” He pointed out a popular meerkat lookout post and told us about a trait among some individuals he’s studied who take their role as sentry so seriously they become what he calls ‘super-guarders’, climbing to ever-higher vantage points. “I’ve seen one up as high as four metres,” he says. “It’s such a shame you’re not going see anything of them tonight in this weather,” he added as a huge crash of thunder suddenly rattled the vehicle. “I think that hit the farm’s lightening conductor. We’d better be getting back.” Later that evening when peace, and electricity (knocked out by the storm) had finally been restored, we talked to some of the 25 or so volunteers, researchers and students based at the former farm. One PhD student, Sinead, is actually doing a thesis on meerkat personality. She explained how she was looking at characteristics such as boldness in individuals and attempting to assess how such traits are acquired. Many of the volunteers at the Kuruman River Reserve are young science graduates getting valuable experience before finally deciding on a career. Volunteers spend a whole year with the project getting up before dawn each day to spend three solid hours with a meerkat group before going out again when the animals are active and foraging once more in the late afternoon. Vicky Ashford is half way through her year in the Kalahari. She graduated a couple of years ago and is hoping to pursue a career in conservation. She usually spends her time studying the Frisky group, close neighbours of Finn and Makonkie. She chats to us about how she plans to base this year’s Frisky pup names on a musical theme because of her family’s interest in music. “As volunteers we get to name the pups of the groups we study. I’ve settled on Crotchet for one of them,” she says. We agree it’s a good meerkat name, given the rather odd ones that have surfaced in the past. While it may be quite normal to have a Picasso and a Jacky Chan, we’re not so sure about Arrested Development… Vicky is now busy collecting her morning’s data as we follow the group closely with our cameras. She places a plastic sandwich box lined with a shallow layer of sand on a pair of electronic scales. Armed with some small pieces of chopped up boiled egg and a water dispenser she holds her hand out above the box with these ‘treats’. Partly because the winter here was so dry last year, and the meerkats had such a hard time of it, there’s been quite a change in the makeup of many groups recently with a number splitting up, she told us. The likelihood of each year’s pups surviving depends strongly on annual rainfall levels since this governs the amount of food available and the number of helpers that are around to help care for them. Despite the changes in the group dynamics it’s routine as usual for the Drie Doring crew today. Its clear Finn knows the drill when it comes to the plastic box. He soon stops foraging and climbs inside without showing the tiniest interest, at first, in the morsel of food Vicky is using as bait. Once in the box it seems Finn wants to use it as a sentry-post, as if it were just another thorn bush. This is how, each day, the meerkats in each study group are weighed. Each study group has its own box and scales. This helps prevent cross infection of diseases like TB. Also, if a meerkat gets a bit territorial about the box and scentmarks it, this could deter individuals from other groups using the box were equipment to be shared. Today Finn and the pups weigh a little bit less than yesterday, but then they did miss out on supper last night. As Finn is being weighed, Makonkie and her helpers scurry about looking for breakfast, while the pups get distracted and roll around on the ground play-fighting, occasionally stopping to push their noses into the earth. All too soon we spot that Vicky is carefully packing her kit away. We both sidestep the squabbling babies. “Hum huh hum,” we echo, desperately trying to get a few last pictures.  Sadly our time with these charming creatures is at an end, but tomorrow, and the day after that, the project will go on just as before. The Frisky group, the Aztecs, the Whiskers and the Commandos, will all be weighed, watched and worried over. And on the ‘Manor’, the world’s most famous meerkats will simply go about their uniquely fascinating lives as if nothing whatsoever out of the ordinary was going on around them… The fourth series of Meerkat Manor is due to be screened on Animal Planet in the US this September and will then be rolled out on Animal Planet channels worldwide. It will still focus primarily on the Whiskers group, but will also feature meerkats from the Aztecs and Commandos groups.

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