The countdown to Earth Day continues and today we will travel to the Kalahari Desert to visit a meerkat school where passing the final test is a matter of life and death.
Adult and young meerkats keep close watch on their surroundings. Wikimedia Commons.
About the size of a small cat, meerkats are highly social mammals that live in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa in groups of up to 40 individuals. They burrow their dwellings, keep watch on their surroundings by standing still on their hind legs like a guard on watch, and teach their young survival skills.
Alex Thornton studies meerkats and he told me about what could be ‘a day in the life of a meerkat pup’ story he observed during one of his trips to the Kalahari.
“A hungry meerkat pup blurted out begging calls. An adult meerkat responded by bringing the pup a dead scorpion that was bigger than the pup’s head! The pup did not hesitate. It took the scorpion in its mouth and munched on it slowly.
Suddenly, a large bird called a yellow-billed hornbill saw the pup eating the scorpion and got closer to it. The hornbill yanked the scorpion, but the pup did not let go. The bird took flight, lifting the scorpion and the meerkat with it. The hornbill lunged and plunged, but the pup held on. Finally, five feet (1.5 meters) above the ground, the pup let go of the scorpion and hit the desert floor unharmed.”
Life is not easy for a meerkat pup!
Meerkats are omnivores, they eat plants and other animals. One of their favorite foods is scorpions. Some scorpions have enough venom to kill an adult person; nevertheless, meerkats do not seem to be discouraged by the prospect that each scorpion they catch might be their last.
How do meerkats manage to feed on such a deadly feast? Thornton and his colleagues observed this intriguing meerkat behavior patiently for years and found a fascinating answer.
“Pups are initially incapable of finding their own prey,” Thornton said.
Pups make loud begging calls, but the adults do not reply by feeding the pups. They respond by ‘enrolling them’ in a two-month survival program that includes three main lessons:
Lesson #1: How to eat a dead scorpion.
This lesson provides four-week-old pups with their first encounter with a scorpion. A hungry pup raises a racket of begging calls. In response, an adult kills a scorpion and brings it to the pup. The more they practice this lesson, the better the pups get at handling and eating dead scorpions. The pups change their calls, which is a clue for adults to move on to lesson 2.
Lesson #2: How to eat a live, stingless scorpion.
In this lesson, an adult catches a scorpion, bites off the poisonous stinger and gives the live, stingless scorpion to the pup. If the scorpion tries to escape, the adult catches it and brings it back to the pup. This practice continues until pups are about 90 days old, when they seem to be ready for the final lesson.
Lesson #3: How to eat a live scorpion with a stinger.
An adult catches a scorpion and brings it alive, stinger and all, to the pup. After observing hundreds of meerkats go through survival school, Thornton and his colleagues concluded that the more the pups practice lessons 1 and 2, the better their chances will be of doing well in lesson 3.
Scientists know that some young animals learn from older animals of their own kind. What is hard to tell is whether the adult is teaching the young or the young is learning by imitating the adult. In this case, Thornton and colleagues’ work showed that meerkats do teach their young how to handle deadly scorpions. Meerkats are the first mammals, other than humans, known to teach their young. Some ants and birds called pied babblers also teach skills to their kin. More on this in a reference below that includes a video.
Thank you for reading! I am looking forward to your next visit.
Ana Maria
Ana Maria S. Rodriguez
For those interested, here is Alex Thorntons’ reference to his original work:
Thornton, A, and McAuliffe, K. Teaching in wild meerkats, 2006, Science, 113: 227.
This reference is about other animals that teach and includes a video of meerkats handling another one of their favorite foods, giant, poisonous millipedes!
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