Meerkats Fight, Mate, Dig, Shoo Flies, and Keep Watch in The Living Desert
3,791 views · Published 22 November 2012 · 3:58 · Indexed 7 October 2026
Channel: Melvin Wei · 2012 · Pets & Animals
Like most people in the world, I've only known meerkats through zoos and nature documentaries on television. In this video many of their behaviors are on display. I'm not entirely sure about the shooing of flies but one meerkat standing watch on a tree stump was making the exactly same gesture we do when an annoying fly keeps trying to land on our face. The meerkat or suricate, Suricata suricatta, is a small mammal in the mongoose family. 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. A meerkat clan often contains anywhere from 20 to 50+ members. In captivity, meerkats have an average life span of 12-14 years, but average only 6-7 years in the wild.
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