My favorite exhibit at the Lincoln Park Zoo is, and has always
been, the Meercats.
They are simply adorable. They are fat, playful, and always
interacting with each other and occasionally, you. They are one of the few
animals in the zoo that actually look happy to me. Don’t get me wrong, I like
zoo’s but so often the animals look kind of sad. Like they are bored, would
rather be elsewhere. This is not the case with the meerkats. They are bright
eyes and bushy tailed. Fat and happy. Or at least that’s how they appear.
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| Wild Meerkat |
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| Lincoln Park Zoo Meerkats |
In the wild, meerkats live in family groups. They form close
knit societies of up to fifty members. They have a very cooperative system. One
example of this is the ‘sentinal role’. This is a fancy phrase for ‘lookout’.
The sentinel meerkat is a non-breeder, a member of the colony not directly
related to reproduction. This meerkat has the job of ‘looking out’ for
potential predators. The sentinal meerkat will usually sit on an elevated
object in the ‘raised guarding position’, keeping an eye out for any potential
threats to other meerkats foraging away from the burrow. Upon sighting such a
threat, the sentinel will sound an alarm with a distinct bark.
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| 'Raised Guard Position' of the sentinel Meerkat |
This behavior has been used many times to illustrate
altruism among animals, specifically in the case of theories on kin selection
and reciprocal altruism. I’m not going to get into that though. What interested
me was that every time I have been to the Lincoln Park zoo, I have noticed a
meerkat diligently on lookout. There he will stand, proud and tall at the top
of the fake ceramic log, looking out over his domain, ready to sound the alarm.
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| Meerkat on lookout at the Lincoln Park Zoo |
I thought this was interesting. These animals are in an
enclosed space. Instead of hawks circling above, there is a ceiling. Instead of
snakes slithering through the grass, there are people with camera phones oohing
and aweing over the cuteness. What are they looking out for? The only way I
could interpret this was a show of instinct. These animals don’t have any
predators to look out for, but they still do the natural actions of group
living that would help them survive in the wild. This is not unique to Lincoln Park
Zoo either. One study even reports that captive born meerkats still “use the
same alarm call repertoire and respond correctly to predatory cues.”
These little guys may look fat and lazy, but they are always ready.
-Isabella Rotman
http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/zoostaff/larg/pages/Micothesis.pdf
nice post!
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