My day as a zookeeper: M is for Meerkat

The country's most popular animal, entirely down, it seems, to the advertising genius employed by a comparison website was on my list of animals to see. What I hadn't expected was that I would be part of the exhibit...

The Suricata Sands exhibit is, naturally, one of the most visited attractions at Colchester Zoo, and I was to go and find out about what they eat, and how they are looked after.

Posing for the camera...

First, I was admitted into the enclosure to take a closer look, and to be introduced to the 'mob' and their environment. Naturally, as burrowing animals, the enclosure is, effectively, a concrete bowl filled with suitable soil, studded with rocks and logs, some hollow, for them to dig under, run through or stand on.

They all have names, naturally, and the group is led by the dominant female, who is usually pregnant. They're also incredibly inquisitive, and my presence didn't appear to bother them at all. It did, however, appear to confuse some of the visitors, who wondered what I was doing there.

We then returned to the inner sanctum, where it was time for feeding and simultaneous enrichment. My job was to pour mealworms and slices of banana into paper bags, scrunch them up into balls, and throw them into as many parts of the enclosure as possible. It seems that I'm quite good at it, although the meerkats were just as good, if not better, at finding them, shredding them and eating the contents.

And yes, they are just as cute in the flesh as they appear from television and adverts...