Dan's Papers - October 12, 2007 - The Sheltered Islander By Sally Flynn

I'm a movie person. I don't watch many network TV shows. I've never seen "Seinfeld," "Cheers" or " Everybody Loves Raymond," but I'm nuts over Animal Planet's new series "Meerkat Manor." The star of the show is the dominant female, Flower.

Cambridge University has been studying meerkats in the African Kalahari Desert for over ten years. Meerkats are unique in that they are one of the most cooperative mammals on the planets. There is so much we can learn from them.

1) They share babysitting responsibilities, only the dominant female has pups and all the adult females in the gang (a family of meerkats is called a gang) lactate with her to share the nursing duties. Damn fine idea if you ask me. I don't know how many times I wished I could go somewhere without the baby or a breast pump.

2) Flower ran a gang of forty, all her offspring with her partner Zaphod. Like elephants, dolphins and lions, all the females in the group are related. Males are driven off when they mature. Only selected non-related males are allowed in the gang for breeding purposes. There's another fine idea from the meerkats. Once young males are mature, bite them on the tail until they leave the burrow. If you don't they'll just make trouble.

3) Every morning Flower designated an adult to babysit the kids, and then led the gang on a foraging trip for food. That's right - why take those annoying kids with you when you go food shopping? Leave them in the burrow with a sitter and get that IGA foraging done in half the time.

4) Nutritional awareness - Flower would bring the young meerkats along and teach them what to eat. Once, while six weeks pregnant with her next brood, she worked hard to catch a fat millipede and held it in place while the kids gnawed on it. What mother can't relate to that?

5) Love in the afternoon - I have to say there was a time when Flower disappointed me. She had a thing for Carlos, a renegade male from the Zappa gang. A couple of times they met for a tryst in the scrub. It's clear to me that some of her pups were his. I don't think she ever told Zaphod. And if he knew, he was too much of an upstanding meerkat to let on. I guess all females have a weakness for those bad boys in the bush.

6) Move it! - Flower moved the gang over thirty times last year, whenever the burrow was overrun with parasites and meerkat droppings. How smart is that? Why clean the house over and over? Get up, grab the babies by the scruff of the neck and move to another burrow. While you're gone, the dung beetles will clean out the home and you can come back to a tidy burrow in just a few months. I love the way meerkats think!

7) No means NO - Whenever Flower had a rebellious daughter, she booted her out of the gang. In order to get back in the group, the daughter would have to go to extreme measures to show her mother submission and obedience by bringing her fresh scorpions and grubs, or biting all the fleas and ticks off of her back. I'm telling you, Flower had it going on.

8) I'm only telling you ONCE - Flower gave the call to come or go and nipped anyone who had to be told twice. Seems harsh, but with forty children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it's a really good policy. Who has time to individually chase the stragglers? If the kids don't come when called, then get snatched up by an owl for dinner, they have no one to blame but themselves.

Sadly, last week, Flower, the mighty and daring dominant female of the Whiskers gang died after being bitten by a cobra while defending her pups. What a meerkat, what a Mom. Rest in peace Flower.