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Animal Age

How old does a Meerkat get? (age expectancy)

What is the maximal age a Meerkat reaches?

An adult Meerkat (Suricata suricatta) usually gets as old as 12.5 years.

Meerkats are around 77 days in the womb of their mother. When born, they weight 30 grams (0.07 lbs) and measure 1.4 cm (0′ 1″). As a member of the Herpestidae family (genus: Suricata), a Meerkat caries out around 3 little ones per pregnancy, which happens around 1 times a year. Fully grown, they reach a bodylength of 28.6 cm (1′ 0″).

As a reference: Usually, humans get as old as 100 years, with the average being around 75 years. After being carried in the belly of their mother for 280 days (40 weeks), they grow to an average size of 1.65m (5′ 5″) and weight in at 62 kg (137 lbs), which is obviously highly individual.

A Meerkat gets as old as 12.5 years

The meerkat (Suricata suricatta) or suricate is a small mongoose found in southern Africa. It is characterised by a broad head, large eyes, a pointed snout, long legs, a thin tapering tail and a brindled coat pattern. The head-and-body length is around 24–35 cm (9.4–13.8 in), and the weight is typically between 0.62 and 0.97 kg (1.4 and 2.1 lb). The coat is light grey to yellowish brown with alternate, poorly defined light and dark bands on the back. Meerkats have foreclaws adapted for digging and have the ability to thermoregulate to survive in their harsh, dry habitat. Three subspecies are recognised.Meerkats are eusocial, and form packs of two to 30 individuals each that occupy home ranges around 5 km2 (1.9 sq mi) large. There is a social hierarchy—generally dominant individuals in a pack breed and produce offspring, and the nonbreeding, subordinate members provide altruistic care to the pups. They live in rock crevices in stony, often calcareous areas and in large burrow systems in plains. The burrow systems, typically 5 m (16 ft) in diameter with around 15 openings, are large underground networks consisting of two to three levels of tunnels. These tunnels are around 7.5 cm (3.0 in) high at the top and wider below, and extend up to 1.5 m (4.9 ft) into the ground. Burrows have moderated internal temperatures and provide a comfortable microclimate that protects meerkats in harsh weather and at extreme temperatures. Meerkats are active during the day, mostly in the early morning and late afternoon; they remain continually alert and retreat to burrows (or ‘boltholes’) on sensing danger. They use a broad variety of calls to communicate among one another for different purposes, for example to raise alarm on sighting a predator. Primarily insectivorous, meerkats feed heavily on beetles and lepidopterans, though they also include amphibians, arthropods, small birds, reptiles and plant material in their diet. Breeding occurs round the year, with peaks during heavy rainfall; after a gestation of 60 to 70 days a litter of three to seven pups is born.Commonly found in arid, open habitats with little woody vegetation, meerkats occur in southwestern Botswana, western and southern Namibia, northern and western South Africa; the range barely extends into southwestern Angola. With no significant threats to the populations, the meerkat is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. Meerkats are widely depicted in television, movies and other media.

Animals of the same family as a Meerkat

Not really brothers and sisters, but from the same biological family (Herpestidae):

Animals that reach the same age as Meerkat

With an average age of 12.5 years, Meerkat are in good companionship of the following animals:

Animals with the same number of babies Meerkat

The same number of babies at once (3) are born by:

Weighting as much as Meerkat

A fully grown Meerkat reaches around 730 grams (1.61 lbs). So do these animals:

Animals as big as a Meerkat

Those animals grow as big as a Meerkat: