Mob rule

In the well-defined strata of meerkat society, Mum’s firmly in charge – but, despite the dominance of a fierce matriarch, it takes a mob to raise a litter of hungry, playful pups.

- Paul Bloomfield

Meerkat mother Maghogho stands imperiously above her five young pups while their father (rear) and her subadult son (far right) stand sentinel. After about two weeks in the natal burrow, from early February the curious infants had begun to peek out. Soon they were joining the adults in ritual sunbathing sessions. “Each morning they’d emerge and expose their mostly hairless bellies to the rays like solar panels,” recalls Suzi, who photographed this family album in northern Botswana’s Makgadikgadi Pans, on the fringes of the Kalahari Desert.

These three pups’ intense expression is surely hunger, as they await the return of their father with a morsel of food – typically a beetle or insect larva. Maghogho is conspicuous by her absence: an alpha female leaves almost all parenting responsibilities to other members of her mob. “A beautiful thing about meerkat society is that all adults babysit and feed the pups during the day – all except Mum, who leaves them to it,” explains Suzi.

The approaching dusk prompts a dash back to the burrow, with Dad chivvying along his pups, picking up and carrying any tardy offspring who lags behind. “It’s not a stroll home – it’s a race,” says Suzi. To capture these eye-level shots, she had to get down low – very low. “I spent weeks on my belly,” she recalls. “You don’t stand with these guys. You barely even sit. But it was entrancing to enter the meerkats’ world at their own level.”