Study reveals dark side of ‘cute’ meerkats as natural born killers

One captivating sight of African wildlife features dark-eyed meerkats standing side by side on their hind legs, as if posing for a group photograph. They look cuddly and endearing. But a new study reveals their dark side.

The dominant female meerkat in a group banishes the other females when they give birth - killing and even eating their offspring to ensure a plentiful food supply for the alpha couple's own pups and a labour pool of meerkat babysitters who do not have their own young to rear.

In the media, meerkats have a gentler image, inspiring a character in Disney's animated film, The Lion King, and a television documentary series, Meerkat Manor, that told the story of a meerkat family in southern Africa; it explored the meerkats' often harsh existence, but also gave names to the animals, which helped to get viewers emotionally involved.

"Flower", one such meerkat, might be better named "Cannibal" in light of the study.

The recent study by a group of British and South African universities, as well as the Kalahari Meerkat Project, in South Africa, builds on observations that dominant meerkats use violence to regulate breeding in their own group and to survive in tough, desert environments.

"Since meerkats are cute and fluffy, and have been saccharine, anthropomorphised poster children for happy family life, it comes across as more shocking," said Dr Matthew Bell, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Biological Sciences, in Scotland, the study's leader. He said that contrary to the public perception, meerkat lives were "nasty, brutish and short".