Meerkats are anything but meek — including when it comes to their mating behaviors.
Popularized by the character Timon in the animated Disney film „Lion King, “ meerkats are often viewed as meek animals constantly on the lookout for danger. But within their small groups, these creatures are anything but meek — including when it comes to their mating behaviors.
Meerkats (Suricata suricatta) live in complex, hierarchical social groups or „mobs“ consisting of two to 50 individuals. These groups are ruled by a dominant male and female, called the alpha pair, that have exclusive breeding rights. The group also contains subordinate females who are typically closely related to the dominant female; subordinate males who are usually the offspring of the alpha pair; and one or more unrelated immigrant males.
Meerkats reach sexual maturity at 1 year old, and males willingly leave their group permanently at around 2 years old to attempt to join or take over another group. Adult subordinate females, on the other hand, are often forcefully (and sometimes violently) evicted by the dominant female — they’ll sometimes remain on the group’s territory, sleeping and foraging alone or with other evicted females until the dominant female’s aggression towards them subsides. [Strange Love: 11 Animals with Truly Weird Courtship Rituals]
Some females don’t return to the group and instead form new groups, sometimes becoming the alpha female, said Tim Clutton-Brock, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. A female may alternatively become alpha by inheriting the position in her natal group upon the death of the previous alpha (by being the largest and most powerful subordinate) .
„And it’s very common that the breeding males in groups are the ones that have fought and evicted other males, “ Clutton-Brock told Live Science.
Dominant females don’t have much choice in their mate, given that the dominant male will do all he can to prevent her from mating with immigrant males in the group. And the dominant male will usually only mate with the dominant female, because the other sexually mature females in his group are his offspring.
Similar to humans, meerkats are able to breed year-round. But in their native home range in southern Africa, mating often coincides with periods of high rainfall, Clutton-Brock said, adding that „the rainfall is unpredictable but it’s lowest between April and July.“
Given that mating typically occurs underground, it’s unclear if meerkats engage in many courtship rituals. In some cases, the dominant male may fight with the dominant female and grip her by her nape until she subdues and allows him to mount her from behind.
Subordinate females may occasionally mate with the immigrant males from within the group or outside of the group. But this sneaky behavior comes at a price — dominant females routinely kill subordinate females‘ pups and evict the wrongdoers (sometimes while the subordinate female is pregnant, forcing her to abort) .
As payment for their misdeeds, subordinate females that lose their litters or return to the group after being evicted act as wet nurses for the dominant female’s pups.
The dominant female has up to four litters a year and will often remain in her position until her death. When that happens, the remaining females will fight for the ruling seat, with the biggest female often coming out ahead. The ultimate winner will experience spikes in testosterone and estrogen, as well as a rapid increase in weight and skeletal size, in the three months after taking over, Clutton-Brock said.
Interestingly, recent research shows that subordinate meerkat sisters in a group actively compete with each other through eating. In experiments, Clutton-Brock and his colleagues fed younger sisters lots of food to increase their size. Older sisters responded by eating more on their own to grow bigger, helping them keep their place in the queue for the crown and the right to breed.
Follow Joseph Castro on Twitter. Original article on Live Science.

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Check out our roundup of the best new crowdfunding projects and product announcements that hit the web this week.
At any given moment, there are approximately a zillion different crowdfunding campaigns happening on the Web. Take a stroll through Kickstarter or Indiegogo and you’ ll find no shortage of weird, useless, and downright stupid projects out there – alongside some real gems. We’ ve cut through the Pebble clones and janky iPhone cases to round up the most unusual, ambitious, and exciting new crowdfunding projects out there this week. That said, keep in mind that any crowdfunding project — even the best intentioned — can fail, so do your homework before cutting a check for the gadget of your dreams.
Ever seen that sweet typographical clock that spells out the time in full words instead of numbers? The Qlocktwo, as it’s called, hit the scene a few years ago and has since gone on to win numerous awards for its innovative and visually appealing design. A couple years after its big debut, the company behind the clock released a smaller, more wrist-friendly version called the Qlocktwo W. It’s basically a watch with the same typographic clock face, just miniaturized a bit. The only problem, however, is that both the original and wrist-borne iterations of the Qlocktwo are outrageously expensive.
But don’ t fret — there’s a fresh new project up on Kickstarter for a wristwatch that boasts a very similar design — but for a tiny fraction of the price. The blandly-named Wooden Word Watch is exactly what it sounds like: a wooden watch that bears a striking resemblance to the Qlocktwo clock, and displays time typographically instead of numerically. The best part, however, is that you can reserve one now on Kickstarter for just $219 — nearly a quarter of the price of the Qlocktwo W. If you’ re a fan of good design or a watch collector looking to add a unique piece to your collection, this thing should definitely be on your radar.
High-performance textiles have come a long way in the past couple decades, and now gear manufacturers have a veritable boatload of different materials to choose from when designing stuff. There’s super lightweight stuff like cuben fiber, waterproof stuff like GoreTex, and even super durable slash-proof fabric like Dyneema. But the material the Wolverine Pack is made from makes the aforementioned textiles seem like they’ re from the Stone Age. This compressible utility pack is made from something called FuseFabric — a new material that allegedly has self-healing abilities.
In the unfortunate event that your Wolverine Pack should get punctured, all you need to do is pinch the fabric around the hole and rub it between your fingers. Due to the material’s unique construction, this slight bit of friction and heat will cause the fibers to bond with each other and fuse together again — thereby filling the puncture. We haven’ t seen this stuff in person yet, so we’ re still a bit wary about how effective it is — but there’s a pretty convincing video in the “prototyping” section of the campaign. Check it out and see for yourself!
Lock boxes come in just about every shape, size, and configuration these days. There are ones you can unlock with your fingerprint, ones that link to your smartphone, and even ones that call the cops if tampered with. Despite all this diversity and technological sophistication, however, most lockboxes suffer from the same drawback: they’ re heavy as hell. Because safes by definition should be hardy and tough to break into, the vast majority of them are made out of metal, which is inherently rigid, heavy, and inconvenient to carry along with you. But what if there was a lightweight, flexible option that still offered the same level of protection against thieves?
That’s precisely the idea behind FlexSafe. It’s totally unlike any lockbox you’ ve ever seen. Instead of layered steel, this badboy is made from a variety of special textiles that make it slash proof, smash-proof, and otherwise impervious to thieves. On top of that, the bag’s unique locking mechanism allows you to attach it to just about anything — be it a bike frame, a telephone pole, or even your deck chair at the pool. FlexSafe also boasts a variety of high-tech features as well, including an RFID-blocking interior, a motion-triggered alarm, and an optional power bank that recharges in the sun.
If you ever plan to visit different countries in a single trip, bringing along a universal travel adapter is crucial. Depending on where you land, the outlets are likely to be completely different than what you’ re used to — which means you’ ll need an adapter to juice up your electronics. Luckily, there are tons of universal travel adapters on the market right now. You can pick one up for under $20 on Amazon right now — but the thing is, most of them aren’ t so great. The vast majority of adapters you’ ll find aren’ t equipped with fuses, and virtually all of them are bulky and inconvenient for travel. Tofu is an attempt to change that.
Unlike most universal travel adapters, this one is designed to be slim, sleek, and travel friendly. On top of that, it’s also equipped with a fuseless design. Generally speaking, fuses are a good thing — as they prevent power surges from frying your devices. But they also have to be replaced after they burn up — which is inconvenient when you’ re traveling around a foreign country and don’ t know where to find a replacement. To avoid this, Tofu employs a fuseless system that’s allegedly still capable of protecting your laptop from unexpected power surges.
Ever wished you could design custom jewelry the same way you design a custom t-shirt? Well if Chicago-based upstart Bezel succeeds with its freshly-launched Kickstarter campaign, you might soon be able to. In an effort to disrupt the jewelry industry, Bezel has developed an innovative platform that allows you to design, scale, and print jewelry from your smartphone or tablet. And we’ re not talking about cheap plastic either. Thanks to recent advances in 3D printing technology, anything you design on Bezel can be printed in real, jewelry-grade metal.
What’s more, that’s not even the coolest part. Once you’ ve uploaded your design, you can actually use the app to “wear” your creation virtually to see how it looks on you. The real innovation, however, is in Bezel’s sizing process. The app uses your smartphone’s camera (and a bundle of highly-sophisticated algorithms) to calculate the circumference of your fingers and determine your ring size. Believe it or not, Bezel’s software is so precise that it can approximate ring circumference for every digit on your hand, with millimeter accuracy. All that information is stored in the cloud and can be applied to any future designs you upload.

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After generations, salmon back in Lake Champlain tributaries
For the first time in about 150 years, landlocked Atlantic salmon are once again swimming up some Lake Champlain tributaries in Vermont and New York to spawn in gravel banks, biologists say.
It hasn’t come easy, and the process will require continued human intervention to make sure the salmon that hatch in Vermont’s Winooski River or New York’s Boquet River can make it to the lake and then return when it’s their time to reproduce.
Biologists call it a success story produced by a better understanding of the salmon, reduction in the numbers of parasitic sea lamprey in Lake Champlain, improved water conditions in the tributaries, and help the fish got to navigate around dams responsible for loss of the original salmon in the 1800s.
„Salmon are a great indicator species for looking at how well we are doing, “ said Bill Ardren, a senior fish biologist with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service who works on the Lake Champlain salmon restoration program.
„So when you start to see salmon reproducing naturally, and the juveniles surviving, that is starting to show that we are making progress in restoring that aquatic ecosystem, “ he said.
The biologists have worked with their counterparts in the Pacific Northwest to better understand the fish.
The salmon restoration program for Lake Champlain began in the 1970s when the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the wildlife agencies from Vermont and New York started stocking salmon and lake trout. In the early years, the program was hampered by the presence of invasive sea lamprey that populated the area via 19th-century canals.
A long-term sea lamprey control program began in 2002, and now sections of the lake are treated every fall to kill them.
„Initially we had no fish coming back to our rivers, but now that the wounding rates are lower, we have more fish out there surviving; the numbers of salmon returning to our streams and rivers along the lake have increased dramatically, “ said Nicholas Staats, a federal fish biologist.
In autumn 2014, for the first time in about 150 years, biologists discovered salmon redds, areas where the fish used their tails to dig holes in the gravel where eggs were laid, in the Huntington River near Richmond. In spring 2016, the biologists discovered young salmon that came from eggs laid in autumn 2015.
Now broad sections of the Winooski River, just downstream from the Huntington, are ideal salmon spawning grounds. Ardren, Staats and others hope more salmon, averaging 22 inches (56 centimeters) long and weighing up to 13 pounds (5.9 kilograms) and will return there at the end of October to continue the cycle.
To make that happen, the state and federal government have been working to carry returning salmon above three Winooski River dams to make it possible for them to reach their spawning grounds. Two years ago, a dam was removed from New York’s Boquet River, but biologists are still helping the fish upstream.
This fall’s run is expected to begin later this month.
There is still a long way to go. In Vermont, biologists stock about 30,000 young fish each year. Over the past several years, the biologists have watched returning fish increase from between 10 and 20 a year to between 100 and 200.
Biologists consider that a good number and they expect it to increase.
Last week, Staats and four fish experts from the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife spent the morning on the Huntington catching some of the salmon that were stocked last year. The fish, caught with an electrofishing system, were released after they were measured.
„This year we found 16 salmon in this stretch of the river from last fall’s stocking, which is pretty good, “ Staats said.

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