The Most Violent Animal on Earth…. is not what you’d expect

I love your videos! Quick correction: mongooses including meerkats are not eusocial, despite what their wikipedia page claims. There are two defining characteristics of eusocial creatures that meerkats do not fit. 1) in a true eusocial colony, members of casts specialize enough to lose the ability to perform tasks performed by different casts (an ant in charge of brood management cannot fight or forage). Any meerkats can, in the right circumstance, perform any role in the colony.
2) Eusociality is in part defined by a genetic strategy employed by insects and the only true eusocial mammal, naked mole rats. Essentially, eusocial queens produce offspring that are more genetically similar to each other (75% alleles shared) than the similarity between the offspring and the offsprings potential children (50% alleles shared). Basically, it is more adaptive for worker drones to not reproduce and instead take care of their mother/queen’s children because any offspring of their own would pass down fewer of their genes than their siblings. No shade being thrown, but despite what a couple of sources say the only eusocial mammal is the naked mole rat.

They're also relatively closely related to musteloids and we all know how they roll, shout out to the legend Stoffel the Honey Badger.

You'll never look at Timon from the Lion King that way ever again

Basically George R.R. Martin looked at meerkats and wrote Game of Thrones based on that

5:58 He said the thing!

Pumba at the end

This is what happens when a matriarchy runs wild

i guess this explains why timon was sticking around with pumbaa: hanging out with an omnivorous animal with zero interest in screwing with him and subsisting off of bugs was a way better deal than getting pushed around by others of his own kind.

Meerkats are related to hyenas. Suddenly the scene in Lion King 1 1/2 where Timon fakes a proposal to Shenzi as a distraction attempt makes a bit of sense

Once when I was in the zoo one unlucky sparrow landed in new meerkat open-air enclosure. Few seconds later there were one less sparrow and quite a few happy meerkats!

As one of the last remaining of the Meerkat Manor fandom, who helps run one of the last remaining meerkat rps… Thank you so much for this. I hope I can find my people again someday.

So the alpha female meerkat… Would she technically be the mob boss?

“But one on condition” 4:53

Very informative, not too judgemental, it is a harsh climate, and clearly many ways to survive. Meerkats found one, go cute brute!!

Hakuna Matata!

TIMON ???????

“No, not a mere cat – the meerkat” 😭💀

Good research and well done.

honestly theyre girlbossing it