One of the most exciting parts about my recent trip to the Makgadikgadi Pans was a morning spent with a family of meerkats. The Jacks Camp / Camp Kalahari private concession is home to three families that are habituated to humans, a relationship that continues to be maintained by the camp operators and one which stems from research done over the last decade by scientists from the University of Cape Town. This is not the family that featured in the program 'Meerkat Manor' but another of the distinct family groups that live in the region. Perhaps one of Africa's most well known mammals, meerkats are only located within the southwest region of the continent, essentially those areas considered part of the Kalahari Desert, comprising South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Angola. They are therefore desert dwellers, able to survive long dry periods without water: during these times, all their water intake can be sourced from their diet of scorpions, lizards and insects.
We visited a 19-member family including 7 young, all born within the last month. They were therefore a little more hesitant towards humans, that is to say they were not going as far as climbing on our shoulders to get a better vantage point, however that did certainly not take away from the experience. Their cuteness speaks for itself!
