Happy meerkats

As the weather was very fine and hot these last two days the 'kats were in an excellent mood.

At the moment their schedule features an extended afternoon katnap in the later afternoon. As soon as it got a little cooler the babies started to play.

We were very happy to see an extended play session between Sayuri and one of her littermates. She got really wild, jumping on him/her and there was a lot of jumping, lunging, biting and running. I found it remarkable that she took the initiative!

At the beginning of last week she would mostly remain passive, if one of her littermates jumped onto her or tried to engage her into play. She is trying to stand up more often, but still not very succesfully.

Yesterday one of the keepers asked our opinion on her, as his impression was not quite as favourable regarding her development. She is still smaller than her littermates (and I think she will always be) and as they grow rapidly the distance is becoming more and more obvious. He told us that they will soon discontinue her extra-treament as catching her twice daily might have a negative influence on her position within the group.

I personally think that she is developing well and her activity is prove of a rather Ok condition.

It is very sweet to watch her mother supervise the play, when all three pups are playing together. It looks like "Hey, don`t you two play too wildly! Take care of your sister!"

Another new thing this weekend was our first contact with two of the babies!

As the babies are exploring almost all of the enclosure, they will come quite close now. The enclosure is fenced off with glass panels and below these panels there is a small space for the kats to reach through.

When we put our fingers through the space, the adults will usually come in hope of food and this time the babies came too and started scratching at our fingers!

The underside of their little paws is soooo soft!

After some time of futile grabbing and scratching, one of the pups starting nipping our fingers... as this did not yield any food, the nipping became more insistent! And those little teeth are already quite sharp ;-)