The Courier has teamed up with Blair Drummond Safari Park to offer readers the chance to win a family pass for two adults and two children each week - and learn a bit more about their residents at the same time.
Have you met the latest additions to the park yet?
At the beginning of April, the park welcomed two new meerkats into its mob. Biggie and Cardi B are named after rapper royalty, so the keepers are hoping they will make beautiful music together.
Meerkats are highly territorial, so introducing new meerkats to a family group can be tricky. For the time being, Biggie and Cardi B have their own wing of Meerkat Mansions and will slowly be integrated into the established mob over time.
Meerkats are highly cooperative animals within their groups and work together on almost everything they do. One of the most important jobs for any meerkat is acting as sentry; this is when they keep a lookout for any danger.
Meerkats take it in turns to be the sentry and will change over this role about once every 1-2 hours.
Sentry meerkats have different calls for different types of predators. The sound they make to alert everyone of an aerial predator (like a bird of prey), is different from the sound they make for a terrestrial predator (like a snake).
This is because the meerkats need to take different actions for different predators.
They also have a call known as a rallying cry. When they make this call everyone in the group will band together and try to deal with the threat as one.
Meerkats are actually very efficient little hunters and can work together to take down small rodents and lizards.
When out foraging, meerkats are also very careful to always keep everyone within sight or sound distance. They will constantly vocalise in order to stay in contact with the others. This high-level of cooperation is part of the reason why meerkats are so successful in the wild.
You can meet the safari park’s new meerkats now in their Meerkat Mansion or, if you’d like a private VIP experience, book one of the park’s up-close meerkat experiences?
Blair Drummond Safari Park is open seven days a week, from 10am until 5.30pm. Tickets can be booked online at blairdrummond.com.
For a chance to win a family pass, which can be used any one day during the park’s opening season this year, just answer the following question pick up this week's West Lothian Courier and fill out the coupon with the answer to: What is the name of the meerkat who is on lookout duty?
Send the coupon with your answer, name, address and contact number to: Safari Park Competition, West Lothian Courier, One Central Quay, Glasgow, G3 9DA. The deadline is Wednesday at 4pm. Only original vouchers will be accepted, no photocopies.
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