thank you for your post, sharkattacksteve! im not sure what you are referring to about shakesphere, but im hoping he's alive. that episode is when i started having serious reservations about this show. animal planet and discovery channel are making a TON of money off of this show and others, and i dont understand why they can put cameras in the burrows and gps collars on the necks of the meerkats, but can't give them a shot of antibiotics or pick the little abandoned babies (len & squiggy) up and take them back to their burrow, or even give them to zoos or wild animal parks who would love to have them! if you can take our good money to "adopt a meerkat", then use some of that money to protect the animals that this channel is trying (and succeeding!) to win our hearts!!! PLEASE ANIMAL PLANET!!! LISTEN TO US! i know i am not alone in thinking this! my son and family are devasted when we get so attached to your show and you so crudely let nature take its course at our expense! how can you expect children to want to watch the deaths of these wonderful animals when we have so much harsh reality in our everyday lives all over the world?!? im sure i speak for many viewers when i say please don't show us babies being carried off by birds of prey and flower dying! im not in denial about nature and the circle of life. we get PLENTY of that on tv already! i just want to watch something that gives me a bit of joy for 30 minutes after dealing with life stressors on a daily basis! watching this episode tonight was a terrible way to end my week.

oh skeepiegirl i am sorry we all feel bad for that but they can not meddle with nature it would ruin the show completely not trying to be rude but we have to live with it because meerkats do die.

I know,It's sad at first but you get use to it.I cryed to when I saw Flower's body.

It is not an issue of a death being sad or interference ruining the show. These are wild animals, and they live wild lives. The researchers do nothing that changes the meerkat's heath; the rewards given at weighing are too small to make a difference. THe only influence from their presence is that they are less likely to be attacked by predators with people around, though it still happens.

Human interference with nature, even with the best of intentions, almost always ends in disaster. Feeding the meerkats when they are starving, or medicating them, or doing anything else unnatural to their population disturbs the whole ecosystem. In the end it would probably hurt more than help. The KMP has considered trying to save abandoned pups, but the truth is that so many die this way any effort to save them would lead to a "huge orphanage" that they could not afford to manage. It is not easy or safe to remove an animal from the wild and bring it to captivity elsewhere; meerkats carry rabies and bovine tubercolosis, among other things. Most of those in zoos or parks now have been in captivity for generations.

Flower's death is an example of how one event, allowed to occur naturally, led to unforeseen events. If they had been able to save Flower (which would have been impossible, because of some things MM lied about on the show) then many groups currently led by former Whiskers would probably not exist. flower could afford to tolerate her daughters and granddaughters, as she was far older and larger than they. But when RD and Maybelline took over they both went through the frenzy of evictions typical of a new dominant female. The expelled females started new groups, which were successful due to unusual conditions. Flower's death was terrible, but it changed the face of the kalahari in many ways. Not all of them are bad.

The only exception to the nonintervention policy is tuberculosis; this is fair and right. TB is a mortal threat to all life wild, domestic and human and not native to Africa. They do all that is currently possible to slow the spread. The other very rare exception is that they try to help meerkats struck by cars on the main road if they can, but to my knowledge the only meerkat found alive after this was so badly hurt he had to be put down.

And some people have meerkats as pets,I think there better left in tne wild tough.And zoos,Give them a lot of space!Gosh,they put them is 7 feet cages.

I think I would have saved Mozart if I could. But then again Wilson wouldn't be trying to populate the entire manor and all those DF's wouldn't have had pups.

Mozart has passed,but she was a good little Princess.She liked Kinkaju,MM said they wre enamys but they wernt.And half-sisters,yeah.Mozart is Zaphods and Kinkaju is Youssarian.There was more than 1 Willson in MM.

vwf053, couldn't agree with you more

Meerkats are very common creatures, they breed rapidly. If the researchers were to rescue every abandoned pup, the meerkat population would spiral out of control! Consider the fact that meerkats could earn themselves 'Rabbit-Repuatation', they would spread across large areas of Africa. Over time, they would move into farmland, farmers dislike their digging antics, that could easily destroy crops, so hunting could become a sport. That would be a horrible scenario!

Thankfully, meerkats control their species' population by evicting and killing pups. Abandoning the babies (although most cases are mistakenly) is a way of keeping a firm grip on the group, so its number won't become to much to contend with. If the researchers were to get involved, they'd have to continueously feed the pups and provide them daily attention. They would ruin funriture and leaves holes in the florrboards with their sharp claws.

Also, you can't just packup a wild animal and send it on a week's trip to a Zoo were they'd live alone (most meerkats, even captivated ones, won't accept unrealted rivals or pups in their territory). Even if the pups would be accpeted at a Zoo, they'd live a long life in a small enclosure, there's a good chance they'll face obecity, their diet won't be as supplamentary as in the wild and they'd have no privacy. Would you want humans pointing fingers and taking photos of you everyday for your entire miserable life? No.

Nature has been like this long before our time. Interrupting the Law of the Bush is unwise. The Kalahari Meerkat Project is there to study the meerkats, not to rescue them. Same with Meerkat Manor, they're there to show us what life is like for the meerkats, without the disturbance of the researchers.

Meerkats belong in the wild. They have a Will to Survive, for us to disturb them would corrupt their courage. Sorry, but I'm against your request.

vwf053, couldn't agree with you more

Meerkats are very common creatures, they breed rapidly. If the researchers were to rescue every abandoned pup, the meerkat population would spiral out of control! Consider the fact that meerkats could earn themselves 'Rabbit-Repuatation', they would spread across large areas of Africa. Over time, they would move into farmland, farmers dislike their digging antics, that could easily destroy crops, so hunting could become a sport. That would be a horrible scenario!

Thankfully, meerkats control their species' population by evicting and killing pups. Abandoning the babies (although most cases are mistakenly) is a way of keeping a firm grip on the group, so its number won't become to much to contend with. If the researchers were to get involved, they'd have to continueously feed the pups and provide them daily attention. They would ruin funriture and leaves holes in the florrboards with their sharp claws.

Also, you can't just packup a wild animal and send it on a week's trip to a Zoo were they'd live alone (most meerkats, even captivated ones, won't accept unrealted rivals or pups in their territory). Even if the pups would be accpeted at a Zoo, they'd live a long life in a small enclosure, there's a good chance they'll face obecity, their diet won't be as supplamentary as in the wild and they'd have no privacy. Would you want humans pointing fingers and taking photos of you everyday for your entire miserable life? No.

Nature has been like this long before our time. Interrupting the Law of the Bush is unwise. The Kalahari Meerkat Project is there to study the meerkats, not to rescue them. Same with Meerkat Manor, they're there to show us what life is like for the meerkats, without the disturbance of the researchers.

Meerkats belong in the wild. They have a Will to Survive, for us to disturb them would corrupt their courage. Sorry, but I'm against your request.