Meerkats are highly social mongooses that live in cooperative groups with complex social hierarchies. Zoos that manage meerkats well must account for their need for group cohesion, digging, foraging, and sentinel behaviour.
Meerkats in well-managed zoo settings can have good welfare outcomes because their social nature is compatible with group housing and their foraging behaviour can be effectively enriched through scatter feeding, puzzle feeders, and invertebrate provision. However, problems arise when groups are too small to form natural social structures, when substrate does not allow adequate digging, or when group composition changes abruptly without careful management. Visitor proximity and noise can disrupt sentinel behaviour and cause chronic vigilance stress in sensitive individuals. Providing deep substrates for burrowing, varied feeding opportunities, and stable social groupings are the most impactful welfare interventions for captive meerkats.