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Sun Bath
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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
A meerkat is taking Sun bath in San Diego Zoo.
The meerkat or suricate Suricata suricatta is a small mammal and a member of the mongoose family. It inhabits all parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana and South Africa. A group of meerkats is called a "mob", "gang", or "clan". A meerkat clan often contains around 20 meerkats at a time, but some superfamilies have had 50 or more. Meerkats have an average life span of 12-14 years.
"Meerkat" is a loan word from Afrikaans. The name came from Dutch but by misidentification. Dutch meerkat and German Meerkatze refer to the "guenon", a monkey of the Cercopithecus genus. The word "meerkat" is Dutch for "lake cat", but the suricata is not in the cat family, and neither suricatas nor guenons are attracted to lakes; the word possibly started as a Dutch adaptation of a derivative of Sanskrit markaţa मर्कट = "monkey", perhaps in Africa via an Indian sailor onboard a Dutch East India Company ship. The traders of the Dutch East India Company were likely familiar with monkeys, but the Dutch settlers attached the name to the wrong animal at the Cape. The suricata is called stokstaartje = "little stick-tail" in Dutch and Erdmännchen = "little earth-man" in German. The scientific name suricate comes from Swahili language and it means "rock-cat".
According to African popular belief (mainly in the Zambian/Zimbabwean region), the meerkat is also known as the sun angel, as it protects villages from the moon devil or the werewolf which is believed to attack stray cattle or lone tribesmen. |
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Updated |
| To trampas: Thanks | chakko |
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03-18 16:40 |
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well captured. nice pov and dof. the 'straw' at the bottom right is a slight distraction but nothing major. a very likeable image.
congrats. Trampas.
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