Meerkats are highly social mongooses that live in cooperative groups with complex social hierarchies. Their welfare in zoos depends critically on stable group structures, foraging opportunities, and thermal management.
Meerkat welfare is predominantly a social welfare challenge. Appropriately sized and structured groups with a functional hierarchy are prerequisites for psychological health. Inadequate group sizes prevent expression of cooperative behaviours — sentinel duty, alloparenting, communal foraging — that are central to meerkat social identity. Exhibit design should include burrow systems or equivalent underground retreat spaces, deep sandy substrate for digging enrichment, and elevated lookout structures for sentinel behaviour. Thermal management is critical: meerkats require warm basking areas and cool retreats simultaneously. Interactive feeding exhibits that allow visitor hand-contact disrupt natural behaviour and habituate animals to inappropriate proximity, reducing welfare even as they increase visitor engagement metrics.