For further Info on what is going on in the meerkat family, after the 28 August babies.
Hi to all our wonderful friends. Hope you are all well?
Not that good here on our side. Liefie is dead and so are the babies. The one morning the whole family left the burrows for the day to go and forage, then a few hundred meters away from the burrows , 4 of the young males and Liefie turn around and went the opposite direction.
She might have through her doped state got a bit lost and followed the wrong ones, or she got lost and died somewhere in the feld or came back to the burrows.
For a couple of days the rest of the family members stayed at the same burrows, and every now and then one ore two went down in to the burrows. Why? Have they gone down to nurse Liefie, or where thy looking after the babies??????
At this stage, there is no females in the family that is the appropriate age to lactate and feed the babies.
So the babies died, and the rest left the burrows and went somewhere els.
We have contested that the dominant male Mouner took over in Liefies role to scent mark every member of the family.
But now what about the mating and the rest of the happenings in the family???? We are still not sure.
Will Mouner now go and find another female from another family and bring her back, or will one of the older daughters take over.
The oldest daughter is only one year old on the 23 Oct, will this hasten the proses of maturing or what??
For this: you must have to wait a bit longer for the answer,like us.
But we will keep you up to date.
