What Is Meant By A Mob Mentality?

•    Meerkats need teamwork for defense, construction, and even reproduction.

 

•    The southern African squirrel-sized mongooses known as meerkats have a variety of unique characteristics.

 

•    They rub their fragrance on plants and rocks to mark their territory using a scent bag under their tail.

 

•    Because they are resistant to toxins, they may consume poisonous snakes and scorpions.

 

•    The fact that the four-legged creatures usually rise up on their back legs gives them a human-like appearance.

 

•    However, Christine Drea, a professor of evolutionary anthropology and an expert on animal behavior, is more fascinated by another aspect of meerkats: the way the foot-long creatures cooperate, particularly when it comes to reproducing.

 

•    Drea, who is undertaking a five-year research on meerkats, adds, "I believe their cooperative behavior is really intriguing. “I’ve never collaborated with a breeder before. Why do certain animals delay or stop reproducing altogether to support the breeding of another animal?

 

•    Drea is fascinated with the matriarchal family culture of meerkats, in which women are the dominant sex. She has also researched the social behavior of hyenas and lemurs.

 

•    She argues that the meerkats in particular are intriguing since they effectively employ a mammalian system that is quite similar to that of social insects. In other words, a "queen" is in charge of most of the reproduction, and all of her other "subjects" assist her in raising her pups.

 

•    The way meerkats approach reproduction fits into a wider pattern of cooperative behavior.

 

•    The reality is that these men's lives out there in the Kalahari Desert are extremely difficult, adds Drea. "They actually need the assistance of other people if they are to succeed. 

 

•    Since they would then be interested in rearing their own litter of puppies, the only way to enlist the assistance of others is if they are not themselves reproducing. Therefore, the system functions because some creatures choose not to reproduce.

 

•    According to Drea, collaboration is present in many different facets of their daily lives. It's not limited to reproduction. It involves ensuring that you can eat securely and that you have enough people to protect your territory, your food, your burrow, and your young. Then it is working together to raise them, see to it that they are fed, weaned, gain weight, and do all of these other things.

 

•    Drea explains how meerkats collaborate in groups to construct their burrows, subterranean tunnels that let the animals escape the sweltering African heat or keep comfortable in the winter. She explains, "They reconstruct their tunnels." "They have these big chain gangs of digging meerkats that kind of excavate these tunnels," says the author.

 

•    Additionally, meerkats have a keen sense of smell that enables them to locate subterranean food, including insects and rodents. The meerkats are nonetheless vulnerable to predatory species when searching for these underground creatures, including as snakes and raptors like eagles and falcons.

 

•    Once again, the meerkats' ability to gather food is a result of their cooperative behavior. The ability to identify predators is another area where collaboration is essential for these little creatures, according to Drea. "Once in a while, while they are out foraging, someone needs to kind of stop foraging and perch on an elevated area to look up and make sure there aren't any predators around. It emits an alarm cry in the event of actual or potential predators, and everyone flees for cover.

 

•    Additionally, guards keep an eye out for additional sizable gangs or mobs of meerkats. Drea describes the creatures as "quite vicious." "Two groups coming together might cause chaos, especially if they killed a litter. Meerkats commit a lot of infanticide.

 

Drea thinks that through understanding more about meerkats, we may be able to comprehend ourselves better as a species.

•    A very remarkable characteristic of humans is that we sometimes, but not always, put our lives in danger to save others around us, says Drea. "I believe that we may learn about elements impacting the development of cooperation, because of this," she adds. "We work really well together. There isn't anything that we do that doesn't include a group of individuals cooperating to achieve a common objective. 

 

•    There are many questions concerning how cooperative behavior originated, and humans are at the extreme end of it. We may get a more broad understanding of the mechanisms that favor and promote cooperative behavior by researching cooperative animals, such as meerkats.

 

In a meerkat mob, a single male and female produces around 80% of the progeny. However, they are not only raised by their parents! The puppies' eating and defense are actively assisted by every member of the mob.

 

How someone becomes a mobs queen is one of the mysteries surrounding meerkats.

 

According to scientist Christine Drea, it seems that all of these ladies are born with equal potential. Why does one woman become queen when others do not? That's really the point of my research.

 

"Lake Cat" is the Dutch word for "meerkat." Meerkats do not reside near lakes and are not related to cats. The origin of the scientists' name is unknown.