I keep hearing that he died!

According to the monthly "LH Reports",
Mitch (VWM074) was listed as "roving" in Sept 2007 & "Absent at the end of the Month".

Mitch was again listed as "Absent at the end of the Month", for Oct 2007.

Mitch was listed as "Last Seen", in Nov 2007.

Mitch appears to be last seen. It was mentioned that he was roving, and left the research area. If he cannot be monitored, his fate cannot be known. Anything is possible.

zettak,

I was hoping that you would be one of the ones to answer this question. With maybe only the exception being Pronker, I recognize you as one of the most knowledgeable & accurate commenters when it comes to meerkat information!

The question about Mitch dying has come about due to him being listed as DEAD in a Family Tree seen on this site. September 13, 2007 being his supposed date of death.

why is it that when a meerkat dissapears people all say 'dead'?? wild immigrant meerkats often join kmp meerkat groups ie withnail in zappa. also entire groups like 'nutters' have just appeared on the kmp. boabob and van helsing and hoax all started with wild males too. would it really be so ridiculous to assume that if wild meerkats go to kmp, kmp meerkats can move out, successfully of kmp? yes obviously some meerkats that dissapear probably are dead but i think to confind them all to that category is silly.. mitch is quite possibly in a group outside kmp, along with many others. i read on kmp that one group (cant remember which) started with wild males and 2 lazuli females that had dissapeared for the best part of a year.. they must have been somewhere for that amount of time!!

If the researchers of the KMP knew that a meerkat was dead they would include the information in the LH report. A meerkat that died in a burrow system, or was assumed predated without any remains left, or just disappeared (even roved outside the research area) goes under the category of last seen, like Mitch. Mitch was not a dominant (it was not him on MM, it was Machu Pichu), he was not wearing a collar, so he couldn't be tracked. A male meerkat has to be absent from his group for at least a month to be last seen. Mitch was roving in September (that was the last time that he was observed), he was absent for a couple of months, and he was declared last seen in November 2007.

The group with the two Lazuli females (Diana, and Papillion), Sid Vicious Hoax, and the two wild males is the JaXX. The two females "disappeared" for some months, but they gave birth, and they had their pups with them. Additionally, Tonic Lazuli, I believe, appeared by the Zappa territory months after he "disappeared", a male that used to belong to one of the old groups reappeared (Bruce), and the evicted Jemima Commandos reappeared in the Geckos. The kats could be living alone, or with wild meerkats. They are wild groups among the habituated ones in the KMP.

zaphod-vvm032,

I personally never consider a meerkat "DEAD" unless the info comes from the Monthly LH reports, an Earthwatcher, or someone like Pronker.

What makes Mitch's case more believable to some is that the info about his death came from this forum.

Spoiler Content - Meerkat Manor Topic: "Meerkat Family Tree updated".
It even has Mitch's exact day of death, September 13, 2007.

from looking at the current group map, the entire study area is about 10km squared. it is obvious meerkats have left and continue to leave the reserve. "last seen" means just that. there can be a number of reasons and outcomes. meerkats do disappear and then reappear, it has happened in the past. the sept. 13th date was either when mitch's 2 months was up (to be last seen in his group), or more likely when he was last observed by a researcher. on most of the name lists, the date of death or the date of "last seen" are in the same column. i haven't heard anything about mitch being confirmed dead, only last seen.

To NazarethDodo & everyone else,

Here's the link to Flowers family tree that Suricate_VVM032 is talking about.

http://cid-01256bcfadde8122.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Meerkat%20Family%20Tree

Mitch is definately listed as "DEAD", not last seen or anything else.

suricate, didnt want to sound like i was correcting you, sorry, just read so many posts and everythings always 'missing.. ah must be dead then' just annoys me. anyway ive looked at the tree and i wouldnt take it as gospel, there are dates for many 'missing' meerkats that quite honestly, nobody would know because thats just it.. 'missing' and mitch is just one of many.
I reckon hes around somewhere

i've seen the family tree, and the creator of said family tree would be the first to admit that some of it is speculation and guesswork. now, she did a great job, and it had to be a very time consuming and worthwhile project on her part. also, if you review the family tree, i believe that the "death date" is often the date an individual was last seen, not the date he/she was found dead. many meerkats just disappear. some are said to be "assumed dead" based on their condition such as age, injury, or symptoms of advanced disease. a young healthy male like mitch doesn't fall into that category. doesn't anyone realize that meerkats have absolutely no facination with "being on tv"!!!??? i know this is thinking a little outside the box, but i bet i'm right.

The dates of death in the Family Tree are the last seen dates. We know that a lot of these meerkats are dead. But there is a possibility that a few are not; they probably just moved outside the research area.

Yo folks

The meerkats sometimes even surprise the researchers.

Vivian, the founding female of that group and the mother of Zaphod, Yossarian, Basil (Big Si) and many others, raised her first litter of pups all by herself. The researchers were amazed at her resourcefulness, especially since she was a tame pet left at the project and she knew nothing of survival in the wild. They moved her out towards Drie territory, she mated with some males, moved back closer to the farmhouse, had her pups and raised 3 of them on her own. A year later another Drie male joined her and the Vivian are on their way to become a super group. Silks her first male pup went on to be Dom-m at Elveera and Asphodel, her first daughter founded the Rascals group.

What I am saying is that meerkats can and do survive on their own, even if they aren't visually seen in the area.

Mitch was never declared "dead". If he had been then it would mean some remains that were identifiable were found. They weren't. That means there is a very good chance that he survived and has a family somewhere; the same goes for Shakespeare. Yossarian was older and was wounded badly by the Lazuli, so with that in mind, I would assume he passed on as he did not return to the Whiskers as Zarathustra did.

Grumpy and Sleepy Lazuli disappeared for 11 months and then returned to the area with a family and two Drie males, Burgan and Cassia, so again, this is proof that they do survive after leaving and sometimes return. BTW Grumpy is a mommy again, so the Moomins continue...

My money is on Mitch as a surviver.

Pronker

tyvm for your input, pronker. i had that grumpy/sleepy example on the tip of my toungue but didn't want to say anything i shouldn't. that's why i just said "it has happened before" that a "last seen" kat has returned.

I would like to clarify Mitch's "death" date that appears in my Meerkat Family Tree. The "death" dates aren't necessarily death dates, they can also be "disappeared" dates. The family tree software I use is for recording information on humans, not animals. So, there isn't a place to record a last seen or disappeared date. In the earlier versions of the Meerkat Family Tree, I included notes page that stated this. However, I now use a different family tree program, and I can no longer produce the family tree in a "book" format.

When I have the time, I will post a "readme" to the family tree download site to indicate what the "death" date actually means. I hope in the meantime this clears things up. I'm sorry for the confusion.

pronker,

Thank you very much for clarifying Mitchs' status!

In regards to Shakespeare,
In *Flower's obituary on AP's site the last paragraph reads as follows:

Flower might have lived to see future generations of Whiskers if her life wasn't cut tragically short when she came face-to-masked-face with the snake that tragically dealt her final and fatal blow. Sadly, the Whiskers have felt the stinging bite of tragedy before, having lost Shakespeare, the heroic and valiant son of Flower, last winter.

In this context cosidering the subject matter at hand one would interpret that Shakes died.

*LINK:

http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/meerkat/flower/obituary.html

pronker,

Thanks also for the Vivian example!
I knew of her story, but not to that extent.

geniebelle,

Thank you for clarifying the family tree data!

Pronker, thanks as always. I am always rooting for Mitch. This week, it will be 1 year since he was last seen. I bet he found a mate, has been fathering pups and now DM of a group out there. It would be awesome if and his gang came back into the research area. Now wouldnt that confuse the MM folks (who portrayed him as still in Whiskers all this year)?

Thanks for clearing that up Pronker!

Suricate_VVM032, Thanks for the link to Flower's obituary.

Like you said "In this context cosidering the subject matter at hand one would interpret that Shakes died".

That seems to be what they were relating, that Shakes died the winter before Flower's tragic death!

Meerkats are visible when they belong to a group, and they are inside the research area. But they can survive alone, and outside the area.

It was Gin Lazuli that "reappeared".