Meerkat babies may be the most adorable creatures in southern Africa, but their colony mates manage to stop spoiling them after only a few months. As the wobbly little critters age, their begging loses its clout.
For a meerkat pup's first 100 days, it has the rest of the colony wrapped around its fuzzy little tail. It follows adults around throughout the day, belting out squeaky begging calls for the entire colony to hear. The adults bend to the pup's will, sacrificing their own meals to give it meaty sustenance. But by a few months of age, meerkat pups stop begging and become nutritionally independent, acquiring their food exclusively by foraging for themselves.
Zoologists at the University of Cambridge wanted to understand why a young meerkat would stop using its charm to get free food and begin working for its own food. Joah Madden and his colleagues studied groups of wild meerkats in the Kalahari Desert, and found that as the pups aged into juveniles their voices changed: Pup begging calls peaked at an average of 1231 Hz, whereas the juveniles peaked at a deeper 953 Hz.
This change in pitch might make their begs less persuasive, eliciting less food and leaving the juveniles no option but to forage on their own. To explore this option, Madden followed adult meerkats around with a loudspeaker that played younger baby meerkat begs. He found the adults started offering their own food, even to older juveniles. And the juveniles — which had been past their begging prime — eagerly ran over to grab the free meals, ceasing their own foraging. The results appeared May 17 in Animal Behaviour.
A meerkat's inevitably maturing voice may be crucial for its colony's survival. A pup may prefer to get free food rather than work, but the colony would go hungry if this continued for too long. If adults only respond to an uncheatable signal, each animal will eventually feed itself, in spite of its cuteness.
Images: Flickr/TravelJunkieoz (top), **Tambako the Jaguar__
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Citation: Joah R. Madden, Hans-Joerg P. Kunc, Sinead English, Tim H. Clutton-Brock, Why do meerkat pups stop begging?, Animal Behaviour (2009), doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.03.011____
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