Meet The Gangsters

For suricate and banded mongoose, life is one big social get-together. While snooping on clans in the Kgalagadi and Kruger, we discovered they count among Africa’s most complex mammals.

- Steve and Ann Toon

Our elbows, knees and ribs are crunched into the compacted, pockmarked and uneven earthwork that forms the ‘stoep’ of an expansive former ground squirrel burrow with its uncomfortable welcome mat of gnarled twigs and sharp stones. In our Kgalagadi rest camp, we’re lying prone with heads held up to enjoy this gang-show, a constant stabbing pain in our necks and backs. Despite this we’re laughing our socks off.

Silent laughter, of course. We don’t want to interrupt this comically choreographed chorus line before its 14-strong cast list concludes its regular evening performance. The performers range in size from a heavily pregnant alpha female to a bunch of mischievous mini-me young suricates.

Pups hug each other in playfighting bouts like wrestlers locked in hold, practising future fighting techniques as they cling to each other with their fore-limbs. Sub-adults spar energetically, rolling in the dust. Some adults sit by watchfully, others groom, fossick about digging, or engage in a spot of gentle burrow keeping, tidying around the entrance to their home. It’s one big social get-together as the gang regroups after a day’s digging for insects, before disappearing into the safety of their burrow for the night.

We can’t believe our luck. Undeterred by the heat we deliberately sought out the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in the warmer months, in the hope of a seasonal highlight such as this: tiny suricate (Suricata suricata) babies and their fascinating, and inescapably funny, social interactions with the rest of the mob. As the South African thirstland springs to life following a long dry spell, this is the prime time for suricate pregnancies and births.