Parents Help Praire Pups with Problems

Listen up, class is in session. Today the students will be about a foot and a half tall, and will have lunchboxes filled with bugs. Did you ever want to know what school was like out in the prairie? Regardless of your intrigue, the Meerkat will let you know what that experience is like. Alex Thorton and his research team from the University of Cambridge in England did a study of the majestic Meerkat and the ability of the adults to teach it’s young about hunting and handling prey to eat. Adult Meerkats care for their young in so many ways, but to teach the young how to handle their food is almost human in some respects.

Young animals will usually learn how to perform a task like capturing and eating prey by watching an adult. The adult Meerkat takes it one step further by showing young Meerkats what their prey looks like, then the adults will demonstrate how to capture the prey. If need be, the adult Meerkats will remove stingers before giving the prey to the young. You may be wondering if the adults will get a piece of the prey that it just captured. I’m sorry to say that the adult doesn’t benefit from this behavior, it’s all for the pups. Thorton wonders why Meerkats would do this if the adult doesn’t get anything in return. The answer to why they do this may never be answered because it involves getting into the Meerkats brain and finding out what it thinks. We all know the Meerkat will never sit down and tell us what it is thinking.

This research is just the tip of the iceberg. Thorton believes that this behavior could be true for other animals like lions, tigers, mongooses, and birds of prey. The research has not been done for any of these animals, but Thorton is sure his study will fuel other researchers to study the relationship between a parent and its offspring much more in depth. Learning how to handle prey is key for Meerkats because their prey is likely to fight back. They eat scorpions, lizards, and small mammals. If the young Meerkats did not know how to handle their prey they could be in serious trouble. If the young are ignorant about handling harmful prey, that could have serious negative impacts on the young's survival and survival of the group. Class dismissed.

Posted by MJP (10)