Strictly speaking, there is no animal called a meerkat. In Afrikaans, the entire mongoose family (and ground squirrels) are called meerkats. They are differentiated by adding "ring-tailed" or similar in front of the word meerkat.

English speaking people call mongooses and ground squirrels by their correct names, and the majority call the animals in question meerkats.

Only the initiated call them by their proper name, suricates.

If by proper name, you mean latin name. Which few care about and anyway, Meerkat sounds much cooler than Suricate Mongoose.

Macnab welcome to our UK burrow. How awesome to hear from someone who lives in South Africa, at least for me, a Meerkat Lover from the USA. For such a tiny creature many have come up with names for it which shows how much they are recognized around the world and not just from a historical or scientific viewpoint. I think this is attributed to Animal Planet's Meerkat Manor.

There are so many names beside the scientific for the meerkat. My personal favorite is `erdmannchen' ... it means `little earth people,' which is very apt because of the way they stand up.

But living in Africa you are probably quite familiar with all of these and more.

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

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 markaţa मर्कट = "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 .

Glad you took the time to join us.

I have a colleague who has 2 young meerkats as pets on their farm. Believe it or not, when they watch TV they identify with what is going on. When watching Meerkat Manor they chatter away in the Meerkat language and react to alarm calls. When watching other programs, they run and hide when they see eagles and the like!! She video'd one of them watching and reacting to a program about lions with her cellphone. It is amazing to see them take TV programs for real!!

ikati

Now you see I tell truth. And you are a monkey to repeat things written.

quote:

Originally posted by Macnab:
I have a colleague who has 2 young meerkats as pets on their farm. Believe it or not, when they watch TV they identify with what is going on. When watching Meerkat Manor they chatter away in the Meerkat language and react to alarm calls. When watching other programs, they run and hide when they see eagles and the like!! She video'd one of them watching and reacting to a program about lions with her cellphone. It is amazing to see them take TV programs for real!!

This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

ikati 2

A cute one though!