If the meerkat spots danger, it barks loudly or whistles. The meerkat standing guard makes peeping sounds when all is well. Baby meerkats do not start foraging for food until they are about 1 month old, and do so by following an older member of the group who acts as the pup’s tutor. A meerkat can dig through a quantity of sand equal to its own weight in just seconds. Sentry duty is usually approximately an hour long. Meerkats forage in a group with one “sentry” on guard watching for predators while the others search for food. They have no excess body fat stores, so foraging for food is a daily need. Meerkats are immune to certain types of venom, including the very strong venom of the scorpions of the Kalahari Desert, unlike humans. Meerkats are primarily insectivores, but also eat lizards, snakes, scorpions, spiders, plants, eggs, small mammals, millipedes, centipedes and, more rarely, small birds. In captivity, meerkats have an average life span of 12–14 years, and about half this in the wild. A meerkat clan often contains about 20 meerkats, but some super-families have 50 or more members. Their primary diet includes insects like beetles, termites, millipedes. These animals live in savannas, grasslands, the semi-arid Sahel region, and open forests. A group of meerkats is called a “mob”, “gang” or “clan”. The Namaqua slender mongoose ( Herpestes sanguineus swalius ), also known as the Namibian slender mongoose, is a subspecies of the common slender mongoose. The banded mongoose (Mungos mungo), from the order Carnivora and the family Herpestidae, is a species of mongoose that is native to southern Africa. Meerkats live in all parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, in much of the Namib Desert in Namibia and southwestern Angola, and in South Africa. The meerkat or suricate, Suricata suricatta, is a small mammal belonging to the mongoose family.
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