Some new Meerkat research,and developments! 

Good day to all our meerkat friends out there.

As you have read, Liefie the dominant female had babies on the 29 August. We do not know how many babies where born. Now there is a lot of confusion and sadness. A couple of days ago a lot of strange things came to light. The whole family splited up for a day. The next day back to normal. After a while watching the meerkats on a tour, Liefie came out of the burrows. But right away we note that she looked a bit sick. There was a dead stare in her eyes, blood around her mouth. When we finally got a good sighting of her, we saw that there was some of the babies that died inside of her, and that she started to pull the rotten babies out of her. She has to get rid of them, it can kill her.
Well she and some other members left the burrows for the day, but we where scared that she might not come back.
But: She did come back to the burrows that afternoon.
She was there for another 2 days. On Friday some of the young mature males broke away from the rest of the family. Liefie Never came back that afternoon.

Did she in her week state, followed the bachelor group and died?
We do not know.!!

There is some thing going on still down bellow in the burrow. In the mornings on the tour, when the meerkats come out of the burrows and warm-up in the sun. There is constantly one of them going down for a while and then come back out again.
What is going on down bellow?
Is Liefie- down bellow and they are taking care of her, nursing her.?
What happened to the babies? Are they still alive?
At this stage, in the family it is only Liefie that is the appropriate age and capable of suckling the babies. No other mature females that would help suckling the young.
And another question is: What about the family scent?

For those of you that know; Liefie scent marks every family member every morning, to make them recognisable as family members during the day. So when they do bump into each other during the day, they smell each other, smell mom (family scent) on each other and they know we are family.
What about that very important family scent?????
We do not know!
What we have realised is that the dominant male "Mouner" is now doing the greating in the morning, and schent marking the rest of the family members.

What will now happen? Will The dominant male, go and steel a female from another family as the new female for the family.
Or will one of the daughters in the family take Liefies role in the family????

This is what is great about Nature: RESEARCH GOES ON, ONE NEVER STOPS LEARNING ABOUT NATURE. STILL A LOT TO LEARN FROM THESE WONDERFUL GOD'S CREATIONS.

We will keep you updated.