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Dubbed "sun angels" that protect South African villages from "moon devils" known as werewolves that are believed to strike wayward cattle, and solo traveling tribesmen, meerkats are small mammals belonging to the mongoose family. Inhabiting more open and arid country than any other mongoose species, meerkats colonize in multiple tunneled underground homes, located in rigid soils of treeless plains, and in grasslands. Using their clawed shovel-like feet to dig through firm hardened soil, meerkats set up alternate routes (as many as seventy per system) to allow easy access to their underground homes, and, while at the same time, provide themselves quick emergency escape entrances and exits in case they are attacked.

Meerkats live more specifically in parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana and South Africa. When referring to a group of meerkats, they are called "gangs", "clans", or "mobs". Although some super-families have been known to comprise as many as fifty or more meerkats at one time, the average group consists of about twenty; and they live for approximately twelve to fourteen years.

Meerkats are diurnal (active during the day), usually weigh less than two pounds, and are about one to two feet long. Their tails are about seven to ten inches long. As meerkats are cat-like, they have binocular vision and thus can see throughout a large peripheral range and their depth perception is advanced. They have long curvy claws that they use to dig holes, not only for shelter, but to find food.

Meerkats are slim and possess no storage of excess body fat. Therefore, they habitually seek food on a daily basis in order to sustain their small frames. During each hunt, older meerkats forage the grounds comforting their hunger with whatever foods they're able to find as a current "best fed" "sentry" acts as watch guard to alert the group if animals predacious to meerkats appear. Sentry lookout positions last for about an hour before relieved by a successive sentry.

Due to the sparseness of food available to meerkats in plains and grasslands, they separate while feeding, distancing themselves from as little as six, and as much as one hundred fifty feet. To aid in reducing vast separation whenever possible, meerkats develop more than one underground burrow system in order to situate themselves closer to food sources.

Predominantly insectivorous, eighty two percent of meerkat diets consist of insects like crickets and grasshoppers. Meerkat also eat plant matter, fruit, ant larvae,

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