Aardvark Joins Adorable Meerkat Family | The Secret Life of the Zoo | Nature Bites 

You talking about the Meerkats that's there before

@@jennifer294it would probably make the unification more easily if they more space

I agree with the overall premise of your comment. What I was thinking about whether all of this "storytelling" is just made up by the producers of the show and it doesn't represent what the zoo actually did and, more importantly, why. But I don't know the zoo at all so I don't know, maybe they are known for actually doing stupid things like what the video suggests for no reason. Anyway, I think your comparison to hyenas is just as dumb. Hyenas and Meerkats are predator and prey while Aardvarks definitely aren't. It was literally said in the video that their diet mostly consists of bugs.

Aardvark is Dutch for earth pig. Their closest relatives are elephants, and they are so adorable.

It’s unusual for meerkats not to breed,I’ve seen people keep them as pets and they have to constantly rehome babies,if they don’t get them fixed. If I ever get a pair,ONE maybe TWO litters at most,then they’re getting fixed!

They do live in the same area in nature so it’s not bizarre. However they don’t live together.

I agree. It’s like, so you want the meerkats to breed, why then do you add another larger species that you’ve admitted are destructive, nocturnal and likes to dig?! You don’t think that’ll throw off the mating behaviors? It’s not rocket science. Then, after the fact, they decide to construct a separate meerkat sleeping area. Why this wasn’t done before the aardvarks were brought-in, I have no idea. Also I’ve noticed, on some other videos of this zoo, some strange situations and scenarios involving other animals. Particularly surrounding breeding. There was one about sun bears I think, and they wanted them to breed… it’s well known that most bears are solitary, all year long, minus the mating season. Most male bears are a real danger to cubs, as well as females. They’ll kill either one for competition over resources. Yet on this one episode, the keepers were freaking out and hoping the bears would mate, despite them clearly not getting along and the zoo was essentially ‘forcing’ them to get along. This sort of ‘Russian Roulette’ breeding, with an already critically endangered species, is a little.. questionable I think. Lol. Either one of the bears could become so stressed out that they end up sick or even dying from stress-induced illness. The stress of sharing close quarters when a female animal is not in-heat/receptive to a male can lower their immunity, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg…Or, if the female is irritated enough, she could end up fighting him to the death. And who knows which one is going to win. Then you’re back at square one. But worse. Now you’ve got a dead endangered animal that showed clear signs of being stressed, and yet the humans involved were so adamant that they must reproduce, those stress indicators were shrugged off…

​​@@erikm8372I wouldn't rely too much on the way the zoo's thought process is relayed back to us by what is essentially a reality TV show (Edit: Just to be clear - it is evident that there are a lot of terrible zoos out there and it's more than possible that's actually the way things went - I'm just saying I don't trust a TV show that relies on a script written by the production company when telling their stories)

So why you still got a dog?

Odds1Out: "Apparently, he's supposed to be an aardvark." 🤨"Personally, I don't see it."🤷

This would happen in the wild , meerkat's are spoiled

Meerkat stew

They got sent to a bunch of different views, where they would live in groups to either breed or just all live in a group to live together happily

When the top “couple” eventually died, the other meerkats below them didn’t know what to do, as none of them were “alphas” or had ever been in a “power position”. That’s what disbanded means. The mob mentality disintegrated, so they needed to be re-assimilated somehow into another social group elsewhere, because they’re such social animals. Like with wolf packs. If, for example, hunters kill an alpha male, the pack will gradually change ranks, where a lower ranking male might move up. Meerkats I guess don’t do it like that. Wolf packs involve more nuanced positions and rankings, but eventually, they run out of wolves. Then, one by one, they die from old age, sickness, accidents, hunters, fights, etc., and eventually you’re left with a single “lone wolf” who has no purpose. There are videos about this. A lone wolf (or meerkat in this case) is soon to be a dead animal because they have no defense, no resources to find food, and no importance to other, non-related groups. A lone wolf has to somehow attract a female and start a new pack from scratch. But he also has to fight off other packs and other males who see him alone and worthless, and one more mouth to feed that’s in their way. Social creatures often have no sense of direction or reason to continue alone.

Hope the aardvarks don't eat the Meerkats.

​@@danrussell9411they wouldn't keep them together if there was any danger of that happening. Aardvarks eat ants and other tiny insects, plus occasional fruit (in their natural environment, there is actually an underground fruit they dig up called an aardvark cucumber). They don't even have teeth, except for a few back molars. No way they could eat something the size and speed of a meerkat.

Yes but she probably didn't mean it in a bad way

What’s the native feedback?

So wtf do you want them to be called? Buster? Killer? Geggagahuia?

​@@Dramn_I suppose Martha is referring to the fact that animals don't have names for each other. But she's ignoring the fact that animals can distinguish between others very precisely by using their senses in way we as humans can't comprehend. So while they don't have names, they are seen as separate individuals from their peers and us using names somewhat just reflects that.

Imagine that aardvark with brown glasses, yellow sweater, blue jeans, and sneakers.