Meerkats are subjects of extensive behavioral research due to their habituated wild populations, raising welfare questions about research protocols while their cooperative social system creates distinctive welfare dynamics.
Meerkat welfare in cooperative breeding groups involves the complex welfare dynamics of a system where subordinates sacrifice their own reproductive opportunities and bear costs of sentinel and alloparenting behavior that benefit the dominant pair. Eviction — the forced removal of subordinate females by dominant females — causes acute welfare harm to the evicted individual through the combined stressors of social isolation, unfamiliar territory, and extreme predation vulnerability. Research ethics in habituated meerkat populations require balancing the scientific value of behavioral data with the welfare costs of research procedures including regular weighing and marking. Supplementary feeding that enables habituation may alter natural behavior patterns and create welfare-relevant dependencies. The ethical framework for wildlife behavioral research increasingly requires explicit welfare assessment of procedures rather than assuming that "minimally invasive" field research is welfare-neutral.