Animals, contrary to what we humans may think, are not all early risers. Even within a single species, there are groups that prefer to start their day early and others that sleep until noon. British and South African biologists studying meerkats have found out that the time the animals wake up depends on social rather than genetic factors. They have reported their findings in an article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society journal.
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© Photo : Alex Thornton, University of Cambridge
Animals, contrary to what we humans may think, are not all early risers. Even within a single species, there are groups that prefer to start their day early and others that sleep until noon. British and South African biologists studying meerkats have found out that the time the animals wake up depends on social rather than genetic factors. They have reported their findings in an article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society journal.
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© Photo : Alex Thornton, University of Cambridge
Alex Thornton from Cambridge University and several of his colleagues spent 11 years studying the behavior of meerkats (Suricata suricatta) in the Kalahari Desert in Africa.
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© Photo : Alex Thornton, University of Cambridge
While observing 15 neighboring meerkat colonies, they discovered that traditional times for waking up are colony-specific.
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© Photo : Alex Thornton, University of Cambridge
In some meerkat communities, members would come out of their burrows very early in the morning.
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© Photo : Alex Thornton, University of Cambridge
In other communities, sleeping in was the norm.
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© Photo : Alex Thornton, University of Cambridge
A statistical analysis has shown that the time meerkats come out of their burrows in the morning does not depend on which animal woke up first, where they spent the night or when they went to sleep, nor on factors like the proximity of neighbors and the accessibility of food.
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© Photo : Alex Thornton, University of Cambridge
Males who join a particular colony to find themselves a mate will quickly modify their habits according to the routine accepted in their newly adopted community, the researchers say. They note that during the 11-year observation period, 14 of the 15 colonies had their members change completely, yet the old routines persisted.
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© Photo : Alex Thornton, University of Cambridge
This led Thornton and his team to conclude that the meerkats’ daily routine depends not so much on environmental and genetic factors, but social traditions that exist within a particular community and are maintained thanks to information shared between its members. Each individual feels a need to obey the common rules, also for the sake of its own safety, and once established, traditions are sustained well beyond the lifetime of their “founding fathers.”
