Greetings from out west!
Great photos Cheryl! I was delighted to read about the excellent time you had at last Sunday’s meerkat-meetup in the east, along with Gene, Runs and her DM. While there’s obviously no shortage of our mob on this forum, it seems the reality is that many of us are just too far apart to have sizable turnouts. In my case, there didn’t appear to be anyone else from here in So. Cal. on Sunday, as the friends I brought to the San Diego zoo were the only ones representing the west coast meetup. We had a lot of fun though, and knew that the east coasters, pronker, and freespirit5 were all joined in our multi-zoo-kat excitement, and meerkat1212 should be visiting some kats in a few hours from now. Big ideas start small, and I was proud to participate in what was probably the first nationally-based, multi-party “Visit Your Local Meerkats Day" across 4 zoos on Sunday.
In San Diego, it started by heading straight to the
main meerkat exhibit; an impressive area with enough space to make it a bit hard to estimate the size. It’s full of grass, bolt holes, stumps, trees, and of course,
meerkats! I’d estimate 6 or so, but they kept going in & out of the ground, so I can’t say for sure. We waited around for potential meetup-folks while watching the playful kats jump on each other, and
making piles. Eventually, a tour bus pulled up behind where we were standing, and the announcer started talking to the riders about the meerkats. He mentioned that there was a new litter of pups in the other meerkat exhibit. Umm… we bolted!!!
30 seconds later, we were at the other exhibit. Sure enough,
Babies!!! 4 that we saw.
They were so cute! Someone standing there, presumably an annual zoo member, said the pups first emerged when he last visited 2 weeks ago. I estimate this makes them 5 weeks old by his account. They were playing at the top of a mound, next to their mother, with lots of energy. We watched them play & frolic. Then I saw one pup do something I’ve never seen before in a meerkat pup; it displayed extreme dominance. While the DF-mother (presumably) was sitting upright next to this pup & another, this pup, who was digging, turned aggressive against its sibling and for lack of a better word, attacked him. The poor thing scurried away a little shaken, and the first pup was still for a moment before an adult came up to it, perhaps to see what had happened, and this pup then additionally went at the adult in an full-assault and actually scurried off the adult, all while the mother looked on in observation. The whole thing was pretty quick; 15 seconds perhaps before they returned to their typical behavior, and then I didn’t see any further aggression by any of them. I dread typing words like this to describe the “attack” by this cute little pup, but if I didn’t see it for myself, I would’ve never thought a small pup could be so aggressive and actually run off an adult. From here on out, all the meerkats were cute, cuddly, and adorable.
We later made it over to the Children’s Zoo area, which features 2 adult meerkats in a smaller pen with glass walls so that kids (or meerkat fans) can sit close-up to them at the glass and see them inches away. I took video from my cell of me positioning the lens to appear that
I was petting one. If only…
We also visited the
other animals (yes, zoos actually have other animals.
Here are 4 more cell-phone videos of our San Diego meerkat visit (the quality was reduced by photobucket.com – I need a better posting site). I’ll post the rest of the photos & videos later when I get a chance.
I can’t wait to see the meerkats again. Did somebody say Fellow Earthlings?
-wcm
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