How to Eat Scorpions
 |
Meerkat pups go to survival school. |
Photo by Alex Thornton. |
It’s not easy being a meerkat pup. Meerkats live in the Kalahari Desert in Africa. The days are hot, and eating can be a real challenge.
It was the first day that four-week-old meerkat pups had left their burrow and gone foraging with their group of older meerkats. The hungry pups did not know how to find their own food, so they made begging calls. In response to the calls, an adult brought a huge dead scorpion to one of the pups.
Not Giving Up
The scorpion was bigger than the pup’s head, but the pup did not hesitate. It took the scorpion in its mouth and began slowly munching.
A large bird called a yellow-billed hornbill noticed what the pup was doing and tried to steal the scorpion. The bird yanked the scorpion, but the pup held on. The hornbill took flight, lifting the scorpion and meerkat pup into the air. Even when the bird lunged and plunged, the pup did not give up.
 |
|
Meerkats, some ants, and birds called pied babblers are the only animals shown so far to teach skills to others of their kind. |
|
| Photo by Alex Thornton. |
Finally, when the pup was about five feet above the ground, it let go and fell unhurt to the desert floor. Now, how would the pup get another scorpion to eat?
Deadly Prey
A meerkat pup needs to beg for food because its prey can be deadly. Each scorpion has a stinger on the tip of its tail, and some kinds of scorpions have enough venom to kill an adult human. So each meerkat has to learn a safe way to find, kill, and eat a scorpion.
To catch a scorpion, an adult meerkat searches under the sand. No one knows exactly how a meerkat locates a scorpion—by sense of smell, by feeling movements in the sand, or by some other way.
The meerkat quickly digs the scorpion out of the sand and swats the prey on the head and pincers. If the meerkat is fast enough, it can stun the scorpion without being stung. Then the meerkat grabs its prey, usually by the tail.
How Do They Learn?
How can a pup learn to catch its prey without being stung?
Alex Thornton and Katherine McAuliffe from Cambridge University in England have shown that older meerkats teach pups survival skills.
 |
|
| A 70-day-old meerkat munches on a live scorpion. | |
| Photo by Sophie Lanfear. |
That was news. Scientists know that some kinds of young animals learn from older animals. But it’s hard to tell if the older animal is teaching the young one or if the young animal learns by copying older ones.
Meerkats are social animals. They live in groups of up to 40 individuals. Those that are older than 90 days, called helpers, share the job of rearing the young ones.
“Pups are initially incapable of finding their own prey,” said Thornton.
So the pups raise a racket of begging calls. The helpers respond by teaching the pups to catch and eat their own food.
Three Easy Lessons
Lesson One could be called “How to Eat a Dead Scorpion.” A helper kills a scorpion and brings it to the pup. The helper nudges the meal toward the pup to encourage the pup to eat it.
As the pups grow, they learn to handle the food better. They change their call, and the helpers move on to Lesson Two: “How to Eat a Live Scorpion, with No Stinger.”
A helper captures a scorpion, bites off the poisonous stinger, and gives the scorpion to the pup. If the scorpion escapes, the helper brings it back to the pup.
Finally, as pups approach 90 days old, they receive Lesson Three: “How to Kill and Eat a Live Scorpion, Stinger and All.” This is the real survival test. A helper catches and brings a live, intact scorpion to the pup, stinger included.
After observing hundreds of meerkats, the researchers concluded that the more practice the pups have in handling scorpions, the higher the grade they will get in their third lesson.
Now, if you think your schoolwork is hard, just remember that at least failing a test is not fatal!
Meerkat Menu
Insects ~ Scorpions ~ Spiders ~ Lizards ~ Mice
Alex Thornton (shown here) and Katherine McAuliffe studied meerkats at a place scientists had used for many years. Meerkats living at the site are used to people. To these meerkats, a person is just another big animal, like an antelope. Because the meerkats are comfortable around people, scientists can move among them and study them. Researchers can weigh the meerkats, using bits of hard-boiled egg to lure them onto a scale. Scientists can also do experiments to understand how meerkats live together. This would be impossible if the meerkats were afraid of people. |
