The meerkat or suricateSuricata suricatta is a small mammal and a member of the mongoose family. It inhabits all parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, South Africa. A group of meerkats is called a "mob", "gang", or "clan".
Name
"Meerkat" is an English loan word from Afrikaans. The name came from Dutch but by misidentification. Dutch meerkat and German Meerkatze mean "guenon", a monkey of the Cercopithecus genus. The word "meerkat" looks like Dutch for "lake cat", but neither suricatas nor guenons are attracted to lakes; the word possibly started as a Dutch adaptation of a derivative of Sanskrit marka?a ????? = "monkey", perhaps in Africa via an Indian sailor onboard a Dutch East India Company ship. The traders of the Dutch East India Company were likely familiar with monkeys, but the Dutch settlers attached the name to the wrong animal at the Cape. The suricata is called stokstaartje = "little stick-tail" in Dutch and Erdmännchen = "little earth-man" in German.
According to African popular belief (mainly in the Zambian/Zimbabwean region), the meerkat is also known as the sun angel, as it protects villages from the moon devil or the werewolf which is believed to attack stray cattle or lone tribesmen.
Heck, I just think they're cute as the dickens. However, the Lincoln Park Zoo frowned on my idea of taking one or two of these critters back home to Texas with me, so I had to settle for a few photos........ Zilla
