I've been to several zoos this year, Dudley, BNC, Cotswold, Blackpool and WMSP and I've noticed that they all have something in common. All of them have meerkats and all of them have more than one enclosure. Have I been incredibly lucky/unlucky or is the widespread throughout UK zoos? Is this zoos being responsible and maintaining bachelor groups, or are there too many meerkats and zoos can't find anyone to take their spares? WMSP's facility is custom built be the ones at BNC and Dudley feel like overflow. Has anyone else noticed this?
This is a well commented on and much noticed state of affairs ... I`m currently trying to get to see as many animal collections in mainland UK ( with a possible Island trip or two if I`m lucky ) within one year and so far every single collection I have visited holds meerkats ( with the noble exception of Living Coasts ) often in more than one group ... Having said which it was only 20 years ago or so when a meerkat was a relatively unusual zoo animal . Unfortunately they have taken over rather at the expense of any other type of mongoose ( though of course there are some out there if you know where to look ) . Am sure someone will give you some information re bachelor groups as I don`t really have any idea , but suspect it`s more a case of keeping the little cuties numbers up rather than anything else ... if one group of meerkats is popular then two groups must be doubly popular ( not my opinion I hasten to add ) . I was heartened to see at Paignton ( back in May ) a whole family group ( of humans that is ) including about 4 children turn their backs on the meerkats and find much more to enjoy by watching the group of Cusimanse directly opposite them ,who were behaving like absolute nutters I have to say , followed by a sudden and communal siesta in the sun . The family were enchanted and left with two of the younger children chanting "Cusimanse , Cusimanse" and with not a single backward glance at the meerkats ... Maybe their time as the must have animal ( at least in the UK ) is coming to an end ... Or maybe not
Flamingo Land has two Meerkat exhibits and one of those is a double (on the site of the 1960s cat cages) so it could be argued it has three. Bridlington Birds of Prey and Animal Park has just opened a second exhibit. Much more pleasingly Sewerby Zoo does not have Meerkats and has absolutely no plans to get them (visitors who ask about them are directed to Bridlington Birds of Prey and Animal Park which is about four miles away). Filey Bird Garden and Animal Park does not have them either. The Meerkat mania certainly shows how times have changed; in 1981 on the occasion of my first visit to Cotswold Wildlife Park I was excited about seeing such a rarely exhibited animal, but now............
Even Regents Park has 2 groups, in Animal Adventure (the children's zoo) and in Happy Families (between the otters and the Clore). Alan
Dudley zoo had 3 Meerkat displays in 2012 first was in the Old reptilian enclosure (still there current home) second was in Monkey Tails (still there I think) the third one was in the Mongoose Enclosure as they shared it with Meerkat in the morning and Mongoose in the afternoon (I think this was while they were trying to rehome the 3 Meerkats)
Meerkats occupy far too much cage space that their endangered relatives need, I just don't understand why EAZA does not adopt a policy of keeping and breeding small carnivores that need to be saved. In March I comntacted the organiser of an ewxotic animal show, asking what animals would be available to see. The reply was it depends on what members bring, but meerkats are guaranteed.
I think that this is a classic case of lazy zoo curators doing as they're advised by their marketing people. As Andrew says, thirty years ago they were quite uncommon in the UK. Then came "Meerkats United" and their role as the carnivore answer to Ant and Dec began. I really do have nothing against the species, but IMHO this is a worked example of how zoos sometimes don't help their own case to be treated as serious cultural institutions.
When you watch families going round a zoo in the UK, you will see that the children expect to see meerkats; they are now as familiar as lions, tigers, chimps and elephants if not more so. They also have the advantage of being more predictably active than those other species, even if it's only the sentry standing watch; moreover they are much cheaper and easier to house and to feed. In these circumstances a group of meerkats is essential for a zoo. A second group is perhaps an insurance policy. But I agree that a third group is an extravagance. There are other mongooses which make almost equally good exhibits, I particularly like Chester's dwarf mongooses and Paignton's cusimanses (as featured by Potamogale). On the whole I find banded mongooses slightly less active, although still good value. I wonder if there are any other mongoose species which are social enough to be displayed in a similar way. Or perhaps TLD could persuade the BBC and an imaginative insurance company how cute fishers or caracals or marsupial mice really are. Alan
I don't think that will be happening too often now that this little real-life Baby Oleg is around (born in May):
WMSP has three groups, but they are all together in one place. It's quite a nice set up, it looks like one huge exhibit. I'm wondering why zoo nerds don't seem to like meerkats very much. I know I didn't spend much time watching them before I came here, so it's not just me following the crowd. They are ubiquitous, and familiarity breeds contempt, but so are mara and ring-tailed lemurs and they don't get the same degree of...indifference. I don't think anyone actually hates them. Is it because in our mind's eye they are so easily replaced with rarer animals? Would we really be happy if we got them? "Great, more bloody bilbies and fanaloka. WHAT! Another pangolin exhibit? Back in the good old days they used to have meerkats there."
The main reason I don't like them is not their fault at all - I am sure that until they started appearing on television programmes and worse still, advertisements (and as Ian says it was "Meerkats United" that started it all), the vast majority of people in the UK had never heard of the species. Now millions of people rave about them - I may be a Victor Meldrew clone, but it just annoys me!
It seems that the general opinion of posters is that zoos exhibit multiple groups of meerkats on the understanding that visitors want to see the species around every corner. No one seems to have considered that forming new groups/exhibits is the only realistic alternative to culling - a very taboo practice at the moment. While maintaining the health and breeding of meerkats has been well and truly cracked, it is actually very tricky to maintain the status quo within groups. As a breeding group expands, individuals are ejected and if not removed from the enclosure will be killed by other members of the group. A batchelor group that has lived happily together for years might suddenly turn on an individual and kill him if he is not removed. Meerkat politics is ever in a state of flux within any particular group. Any zoo that keeps a group for meerkats will invariably find themselves in a situation where the options available are euthanasia or providing a new exhibit. Suprlus specimens are virtually impossible to place because every collection is in exactly the same situation. The surplus lists are crammed full of meerkats. And rather than face the negative PR, a collection would rather shove them into a new exhibit. I would be interested to find out who amongst the above posters complaining about too many meerkat exhibits are also opposed to culling surplus stock...
Thanks for clearing that up, I assumed the secondary and tertiary exhibits were surplus animals, but it's nice to know for sure. I don't think anyone here is really complaining, they are a space efficient crowd pleaser. It's just good natured moan. I know we need them (and they need spillover space) just like I know we can't keep elephants in urban zoos anymore, but I can't help wonder at the possibilities.
Well said, I was just about to say a similar thing, of the groups I know they have been almost set up by a mixture of accident and necessity due to incompatibility issues within the main original grouping. As a species they are notoriously awkward to keep in a contented single group.
In my opinion, the Compare the Meerkat adverts are a work of genius, especially since the introduction of Baby Oleg. The wit, characterisation and 'acting' on the sponsorship idents for Coronation Street far surpass anything the soap has to offer. As a result, I can now often be found watching Paignton's meerkats and I even attended one of the Talks (hopefully not grounds for expulsion from Zoochat ) They don't yet have an over-population problem, maybe due to inexpert parents. They lost a litter earlier this year and the current Baby Oleg is the only survivor from May's litter of, I think, 4.
I'll second that, the adverts are brilliant. I also believe the adverts have also created an interest for an animal that can be seen in many small collections, which may usually get overlooked. At the end of the day, is the exposure of any animal in a positive way, bad?
