August 9, 2014 at 4:17 pm

Picture of the Day: Meet the Meerkats

by twistedsifter

family of meerkats

Photograph by CHRISTOPHE JOBIC
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Taken in Botswana’s Mabuasehube area in the Kalahari desert, this candid capture by Christophe Jobic shows a family of curious meerkats. As Jobic explains on 500px:

The sun was setting when I drove by this active family of meerkats (suricata suricata) on a dry pan in the Mabuasehube area (Botswana). I was the only car for tens of kilometers and I’ve been lucky enough to spend almost an hour with these entertaining and very active animals. As they are always on alert, it’s been tough and long to get them all looking in the same direction though.

 

Meerkats are a small mammal belonging to the mongoose family. They live in all parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, in much of the Namib Desert in Namibia and southwestern Angola, and in South Africa. A group of meerkats is called a “mob”, “gang” or “clan”. A meerkat clan often contains about 20 meerkats, but some super-families have 50 or more members. [source]

 

 

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