Dear MEL School’s Topic Readers,
Meerkats 'pay
rent' to dominant female to stay in group.
It’s quite amazing
to learn that the meerkat, a small mammal of the mongoose family that lives in the
deserts in Southern Africa, has very aggressive suppression by its dominant
female within a group. It was found that subordinate females wet nurse or
babysit the dominant female’s offspring in order not be evicted by the boss
meerkat.
It looks that the
dominant female doesn’t want to have competing offspring against hers. So she
kicks other pregnant female subordinates out of her group, unless they are
cooperative to her and her offspring. And it seems vital for their survival whether
to be allowed to stay in the group or evicted because being alone has higher
risk to be attacked by its predators.
Enjoy reading and
learning about this amazing behavior of this little mammal in the desert.
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