Meerkats Don’t Spoil Their Babies

For a meerkat pup’s first 100 days, it follows adults around throughout the day while 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 wanted to understand why a young meerkat would stop using its charm to get free food and begin working for its own food. They found that as the pups aged into juveniles their voices changed: pup begging calls reached an average of 1231 Hz, whereas the juveniles peaked at 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, the zoologists followed adult meerkats around with a loudspeaker that played younger baby meerkat begs. They 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.

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.

Original article here.