Meerkat Mayhem

For my blog this week, I thought I’d treat you and give you a little update on one of the park’s most popular species. As well as helping you to try and identify our individuals on your next visit.

Currently we have a whopping 15 meerkats on the mammal section which consists of 9 females and 6 males. This includes three not so little youngsters that we welcomed to the mob on 3^rd May 2024. If you have visited recently, you would have noticed that we actually now have two meerkat enclosures. Even though meerkats can live in groups of up to 50 individuals in the wild, in captivity we need to cater for the space that we have. The group was growing rapidly and with our repeat success of annual babies it made sense to split the group. The two groups are doing extremely well at the moment and have settled in nicely.

As the enclosures are next door to each other, a lot of people seem to think we have a secret underground tunnel connecting the two groups. As cool as this is, I can assure you that it isn’t the case and they’re completely separate. Our original enclosure opposite the red pandas holds our bigger group which contains three males and six females. In this mob, we have our dominant meerkats Ken and Kiara. These are the only two that will breed in the group. We then have Koska and Bo-Katan who we nickname Bo who are sisters. Followed by Zuri, Bubbles and our three newest arrivals that still need names.

The other enclosure is located next to the otters alongside the reptile house. This consists of three males and three females, including our dominant female Pinky and our dominant male Sadiki. Followed by our two other boys, Ajani and Bakari. Then last but not least, Blossom and Buttercup. As you can see, we have a lot of random names between our two meerkat groups. Pinky, Ken and Kiara all got named before they came to us from Sandwich Wildlife Park. Pinky has quite a large pink patch under her chin, hence her name. Unsure what the theme was for the others. Bo and Koska were born on May the 4^th which is Star Wars Day, so these girls and their belated brother Axe were named after some characters from the Mandalorian series. Ajani, Bakari, Sadiki and Zuri are all African names, which we thought were quite fitting due to Meerkats coming from Africa. Zuri means beautiful in Swahili for example. And finally, there’s our three girls, Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles, which I’m sure you may recognize as the power puff girls.

All of the above excluding the original three, Pinky, Ken and Kiara were born at the park. We have been extremely lucky to welcome multiple babies each year for many years. Meerkats have anything between 1 and 4 pups at a time, but it has been recorded for some to have as many as 8. They are born with their eyes completely shut and furless. They look like little naked aliens and don’t start getting pretty until a couple of weeks. By about a month, they start to venture out properly, as they are born underground in the wild. Here at Wingham, the mother gives birth in the nest boxes that are provided or if it’s good weather, the burrows that they have cleverly built themselves in our woodchip area.

Identification

Pinky’s Group

Pinky. Born 30^th March 2018. Dominant female in the group. Pink patch under her chin. Also has smudged eye markings, a little like the joker from bat man or make up running down her face. Not the prettiest bless her. One keeper even said she had quite a flat triangle face and with her always being on prowl, was nicknamed, Sharky.

Sadiki. Born 26^th May 2022. Sadiki is our new dominant male for this group. He’s very greedy and is always the first onto your lap alongside Pinky during the meerkat experiences. He’s got a very long snout, so we used to nickname him long boy when he was younger and didn’t have a name.

Ajani. Born 26^th May 2022. The prettiest boy in my opinion. Looks very much like his mum, Kiara.

Bakari. Born 26^th May 2022. The smallest of the three brothers. Also has a much darker tail.

Buttercup. Born 8^th June 2023. One of the smallest in the group. Quite a large head and darker tail compared to Blossom. Looks more similar to Ajani.

Blossom. Born 8^th June 2023. The more meerkats we have, they get harder and harder to tell apart. Blossom looks like she’s got eye bags and has quite a pointy face.

Kiara’s Group

Koska. Born 4^th May 2021. One of our friendliest and greediest meerkats. Looks like she’s wearing goggles with her eye patches.

Bo. Born 4^th May 2021. Sister to Koska. She has very dark features and chubby cheeks but the best way to tell her apart is her stubby tail, as unfortunately Bo had to have part of her tail removed in an operation this year.

Ken. Born 26^th March 2014 making him our oldest meerkat. He’s also our dominant male and has fathered many children in his time. He’s very easy to tell apart due to his teeth that stick out at the bottom, making him look like a vampire. As you can probably tell, he’s our largest meerkat too.

Kiara. Born 28^th June 2019. She’s our dominant female and has successfully reared pups over the last 3 years. Very pretty meerkat. Has been through a lot and gone from our lowest ranking female to the top dog. Very pretty eyes with a more obvious film.

Zuri. Born 26^th May 2022. Sister to Sadiki, Ajani and Bakari. Always looks like she’s smiling. Used to nickname her flame as a pup due to the shape and colours of her tail. Very good at helping to look after the little ones.

Bubbles. Born 8^th June 2023. Sister to Blossom and Buttercup. Very mischievous and playful and can be quite shy at times. We weigh our meerkats every month and Bubbles is normally one of the harder ones to do.

All of our meerkats are microchipped, just like your cats and dogs at home. Meaning if we aren’t 100%, we do have this as an option. However, the more you work with them, the more you notice that they all have very different personalities, and some are quite easy to tell apart with distinctive features. Hopefully this helps you all to tell a few apart when you next come and visit us. You can also buy meerkat food at our reception to feed to Kiara’s Group and you can even book a meerkat experience to meet our mischievous meerkats in Pinky’s group every day too.

Lastly, I just wanted to finish by asking our mammal team who their favourite meerkat is and why. I have also got Matt our head of animals involved and our vet Georgia.

Koska, because of how nice her nature is. Gets on with everybody and just find her very pretty – Meg

Zuri, because she’s beautiful, has grown in confidence and could tell her apart easily as a pup – Meghan

Sadiki, because he has a very long nose like Pinocchio. Looks like something should be hanging off the end of it – Matthew

Toby couldn’t pick one as unfortunately his favourite, Axe, passed away this year.

Pinky, because of how sassy she is and how she’s easy to tell apart with her pink patch – Molly

Ken, because he always looks angry even though he’s extremely chill – Cameron

Bo, because she always wants to say hi and seems quite cheeky – Lara

Bo, because she’s always on lookout duty and her stumpy tail is cute – Jess

Kiara, because she has a strong character, full of sass and a meerkat not to be messed with – Matt

Bo, because she was the best patient when she had to go under for her procedure – Georgia Vet

In Memory of Axe.