Meerkat Ethogram

Here is the ethogram I produced for the studying of Meerkats. Because we had a reduced time scale to produce it, it isn't in as much detail as it could be.

So when recording behaviour for example, you could monitor the animals for a set time frame and then at certain intervals record all behaviour that occurs in 1 minute.

Enjoy!

Cotswold Wildlife Park

Animal Observed: Meerkats

Lumped State	Initial Encoding	Description
AL	Standing	Standing up on hind legs
	Looking (L-R)	Movement of head looking left and right
	Looking (U-D)	Movement of head looking up and down
	Cocking of head	Tilting of head to the left and right
	Sitting	Sitting down on hind legs and tail (legs not extended)
LOCO	Run	Running
	Hop	Pulls self-forwards with front legs and hind legs collect together
	Investigate	Move as a pack to check where a possible previous threat/object of interest was
FOR	Eat	Eating food straight from the floor
	Sniff	Sniffing of the ground
	Digging	Using front paws to move dirt
SOC	Play	Mock aggression, bearing of teeth, jumping on each other
	Chasing	Running after each other
	Parental reprimand	Parent reprimands child by putting paw on top of the child’s head and pushes down
HIDE	Retreat	Move into indoor enclosure/burrows
CLEAN	Genital	Cleaning of anogenital area
	Ear	Cleaning of ear with hindfoot/front paws
NOISE	Growling	Low frequency rumble, associated with play
	Warning Squeak	High frequency yip, associated with retreat when threatened

Note. AL = Alert; LOCO = Locomotion; FOR = Foraging; SOC = Social interactions; HIDE = Hiding; CLEAN = Cleaning; NOISE = Noise.

Cotwold Wildlife Park

29th October 2013

Today with 2nd year animal behaviour I went to Cotswold wildlife park to look at the behaviour of some of the animals. Our main task was to produce an ethogram. An ethogram is basically a table that categorizes different behaviours that are observed by a certain animal/group of animals. I decided to choose the meerkats. They were quite interesting to watch because dogs are allowed on site and there was a dog nearby that kept popping its head up. The meerkats would scurry to their indoor enclosure then as a park return to the last place they had seen a potential threat. It was facinsting to watch!

We then had a talk from one of the rhino keepers which was very interesting. They have 3 adult rhino that arent fully mature yet (8 years old is considered mature) and they also have a baby rhino called Astrid who was conceived naturally. This is unusual because rhino have a female dominated species and with only 1 male in the herd it doesn't normally work. I will upload the notes I took from the talk when I'm at my computer!

After looking at all the animals we didn't have time to actually fill in the ethogram and observe the meerkats for a period of time. However I would quite like to do this in my spare time as I find it so interesting and therapeutic to just sit and observe!