Kindred Spirits of the Kalahari

Kindred Spirits of the Kalahari
By Christy Bidstrup
It is dark, freezing cold, and I need a bathroom. Rubbing the sleep from
my eyes, I struggle to orient myself. Now I remember! I am at a research
station in the Kuruman River Reserve in South Africa’s Kalahari Desert. I
have come to assist in an ongoing study of meerkat behavior as an
Earthwatch volunteer. Bundling up for the moonlit walk from my rondoval
to the latrine, I am reminded that the word ‘desert’ does not mean hot, it
just means arid.
We Earthwatch volunteers are a motley group of six women from around
the world. Young Evi is a computer expert from Switzerland. Barbara is a
retired microbiologist from Australia, Joan is a retired grant writer from Los
Angeles and Judy is a retired high school English teacher from New York
City. Terri is a wildlife rehabilitator in California and I am a U.S.
Government employee from Fairfax, Virginia.
We are united by a profound curiosity about our natural world and a
willingness to forego the comforts of a leisure vacation for two weeks of
roughing it -- trekking for hours on end through thorny brush beneath a
blazing sun to observe the communal behavior of small furry creatures
about the size of squirrels. Meerkats are unique in that they stand up on
their back legs like people to sunbathe and perform sentinel duty. And,
aside from finding lizards, millipedes and scorpions to be thoroughly tasty
treats, meerkats act a lot like people – disobedient, playful, dutiful,
affectionate, vengeful, greedy…well, you get the picture. There is a
reason that the new documentary on Animal Planet about these very
same animals, Meerkat Manor, is called a soap opera.
After a thorough safety and first aid briefing by our Volunteer Coordinator,
Anne-Marie, wherein we learn to distinguish puff adders, whose venomous
bite precipitates a rapidly radiating necrosis of the tissue, from Cape
cobras, whose venom paralyzes the muscles within half an hour, including
the diaphragm (and the closest hospital is only 3 hours away over an
unpaved road!), we are off to meet the little critters who have no fear
whatsoever of such snakes and will mob them if necessary. Meerkats are,
after all, members of the mongoose family.
The six of us have been divided into two-person teams and are matched
up with one of the study’s research volunteers. These young people,
mostly from the U.K. and Europe, are very bright, personable and
unfailingly polite to tired, novice Earthwatch volunteers (Would you like a
spot of tea?). At any given time there may be around 20-30 people at
the main research station studying the meerkats, and sometimes yellow
mongooses and pied babblers (a raucous black and white bird).
The research volunteers are remarkably dedicated, enduring freezing
dawns in winter (you must be at the burrow when the meerkats wake up),
scorching heat in summer, formidable thorns, poisonous snakes, scorpions
(four kinds!) and wind that makes it difficult to steady the scale for
weighing. Uncooperative meerkats will obligingly hop in the weighing tray
one time and mischievously avoid it the next. And occasionally there is
the appearance of a rival meerkat band that prompts a scuffle and
chase that forces the volunteer to madly scoop up equipment,
backpack, and journal and run pell-mell after squabbling meerkats hightailing it over the next hill. These young people do this for a full year at low
pay, just room, board and expenses. Their curiosity, camaraderie and
commitment to science are truly awe-inspiring.
The Kalahari is breathtaking. The sky is a cloudless cornflower blue. The
early morning frost has long since evaporated and the heat has set in.
The sand is a bright terra cotta color and dotted with numerous varieties
of scrub, all outfitted with very impressive, we-mean-business thorns. Heidi,
our research volunteer, is wearing shorts (!) and I salute her youthful
resolve to “toughen up” her legs. Thankfully, however, I am wearing
sturdy jeans, the relentless sun notwithstanding. After some frustrating
fiddling with the well-worn radio tracking equipment, we locate the
Whiskers gang.
As we slowly approach them, it is fascinating to realize that these are
totally wild animals. Although they have been habituated to a special
call that allows us to easily walk among them (and they among us,
sometimes to the point that I must do a jig to keep from stepping on one),
if the research project packed up and left tomorrow, the meerkats would
continue on, unfazed, as they have for millennia. There is no
domestication or dependency here, only the least intrusive interaction
possible to obtain data.
The Whiskers are furiously digging, digging, digging. Digging is what
meerkats do, and they do it masterfully. In about a minute a meerkat can
dig a hole big enough to disappear into, hopefully to back out again with
a beetle or juicy larvae of some sort. But many holes are dug in vain and
much energy is expended in general foraging, darting down “bolt holes”
to evade predators and fights to defend territory. They work hard for
sustenance in this hot, hardscrabble landscape and because of this their
appetites are seemingly insatiable.
I see an adult meerkat succumb to begging and give a young pup a
small lizard almost half his size. It takes the pup about five minutes, but he
manages to eat the whole thing in one piece, head first. And then, so
stuffed he can barely walk, he resumes his insistent begging call for the
next meal.
Meerkat life revolves around the pups. Only the dominant male and
female breed (well, those are the rules anyway), and the entire group is
committed to rearing the pups successfully. As the dominant female
(Flower, in this case) leads the group foraging, babysitters stay with the
pups for their first three weeks spent in the burrow. The female babysitters
can even lactate to help feed the pups. Meerkats vigorously defend a
territory of about a square mile, although territories tend to overlap at the
margins, often precipitating war dances (big hops into the air with tails
sticking straight up), frenetic scent marking and fights to ward off intruders.
Occasionally, females get pregnant by rogue bachelors that sneak in
from other groups for quickie daytime trysts. This is a dangerous mistake.
The pregnant female may be killed by the dominant female, but is usually
just seriously roughed up and evicted from the group. But eviction is
painful for a meerkat as they are very social animals. The human
equivalent is shunning. None of the other meerkats will have anything to
do with her and she may become debilitated from stress and parasites or
be picked off by predators. Overpopulating a group with hungry pups is
irresponsible; the desert is harsh and dominant females like Flower must
consider the welfare of the group as a whole.
If a pregnant female manages to stay in the group long enough to give
birth, her pups may be killed by the dominant female. But this outcome is
not absolute. Sometimes the dominant female lets them live, but they
take a subordinate status to her pups. Sometimes she even forgives the
errant female mother if she is sufficiently sorry and obsequious. This is what
is fascinating about meerkats; they have rigid rules, but they are often
broken and, like us, they cope with the consequences as best they can,
sometimes in unpredictable ways.
The members of the seven groups of meerkats in the Cambridge University
Study led by Dr. Timothy Clutton-Brock all have names (after flowers,
writers, composers, you name it!), code numbers and can be told one
from the other by variously located spots of hair dye. I am sometimes
confused (Oh no! I have been tracking ‘left shoulder, tail base’ instead of
the assigned ‘right shoulder, tail base’ for the last ten minutes!) and must
repeatedly refer to my cheat sheets to keep them all straight. But the
young research volunteers know them all by heart after a couple months.
We track their movements with GPS readings every 15 minutes to
determine the distance traveled during foraging. They are weighed three
times a day—first thing in the morning, at noon and before bedtime -- to
determine how much weight is gained during foraging and lost overnight.
This is accomplished by luring them into the weighing tray with a sip of
water or a bit of hard-boiled egg.
Almost everything a meerkat does is either fascinating or adorable and I
want to document it all. I find that early morning sunbathing and late
afternoon grooming are great times to get photos as meerkats are fairly
stationery near the burrow and the angle of the desert sun provides
beautiful, dramatic lighting.
Not every day is consumed with tracking meerkats. Anne-Marie has us
conduct biodiversity surveys and observe other animals that interact with
meerkats. One day we document the behavior of drongos, big-headed
black birds with forked tails (indicative of their personality!) that stalk
meerkats from the branches of trees or bushes and then issue
unwarranted alarm calls. When the meerkat drops everything to dash for
a bolt hole, the drongo swoops down and steals the meerkat’s hardearned meal.
Another day we build crude “bird ladders” from scrap wood and
reclaimed nails to place in the open water cisterns dotting the reserve. It
seems that birds fly down to take a drink, cannot climb the steep cement
walls to get out and drown, fouling the water. Our ladders will provide an
escape and help keep the water clean. Installing one we find a large
black vulture that has met such an end. I am saddened as I envision his
flapping, futile struggle, but it demonstrates clearly that my blisters and
splinters will not have been suffered in vain.
One night we take a ride standing in the back of an open pick-up truck,
gripping an installed railing and dodging thorny branches (this is not the
United States with all of its safety rules!), and shine a bright light into the
brush to locate wild animals. I am delighted as gnus (wildebeest),
gemsbok, duikers, eland, springboks, spring hares, and a huge African owl
(two feet high perched!) stare back at us with red or green reflective
eyes.
Several late afternoons we climb a high, russet sand dune and gaze out
across the seemingly desolate landscape at the glorious red-orange
sunset while chatting about the day’s work and sipping sundowners. The
Kalahari is, indeed, an extraordinary place.
There are many special moments, but one stands out. I am reclining
quietly with nothing but sun-baked scrub for miles in any direction.
Meerkats are busily digging and foraging around me. Then one climbs up
on my knee to be sentinel for the group, scanning the horizon and sky for
danger. I can feel his tiny claws through my jeans as he stands tall for the
best view.
He is so close I can see the breeze ruffling his soft fur, a tiny clump of sand
stuck to his nose, a thin scar on his left ear. He turns his head to assess
danger from another direction, catches my gaze and stares me square in
the eyes. After a few moments, he turns away again to scan the horizon.
I have been deemed safe.
It is difficult to convey the impact of this brief encounter, this momentary
communion of an urban human and a wild creature of the African desert.
Yes, on one level I suppose it is meaningless and inconsequential. But on
another plane it is a moment of pure and perfect bliss – a microcosm of
harmony in the universe. For me there is nothing like it in the world.
Our final full day has arrived and it is our last few minutes with the
meerkats. In the evening they often cuddle together in large clusters,
grooming each other and making delightful, soft chirruping sounds. They
are tired and sleepy and begin to slowly drip from the cluster, one by one
or in twos, down into the burrow for the night.
Finally, the last meerkat, standing tall and outlined in brilliant, fuzzy orange
with a shadow ten feet long, takes a look in all directions and disappears
down the hole. Surprisingly, a couple of minutes later as we are leaving,
he pops his head back up and stares at us for several, long seconds
before disappearing again for good. I like to think he was saying goodbye.
The next morning, as I drag my “rolling” suitcase through the sand toward
the SUV for the long, dusty trip to the airport, I am utterly amazed at how
sad I am to be leaving. Over these two weeks I have become totally
smitten by these charming, human-like animals.
Farewell little meerkats. See you in the movies!
________________
Founded in 1971, Earthwatch Institute is an international, non-profit
organization that supports scientific research by offering volunteers the
opportunity to join research teams around the world. This project and
over 130 others provide a wide variety of learning experiences that also
make a contribution to science. There is something for everyone, young
and old, even families. Find out more about Earthwatch and the projects
they support at www.earthwatch.org or call their toll-free number, 800776-0188, to obtain a complimentary copy of the latest Expedition Guide.
The engaging Meerkat Manor series can be seen Fridays at 8:00pm on
Animal Planet.