jrgiii: How many hours of footage is used for one season?
Mick Kaczorowski: Hundreds and hundreds of hours.

larry: As the meerkats build additional tunneling, how are you able to install the cameras?
Mick Kaczorowski: Well, we know where the main burrow system is for the meerkat groups, so when we see them using a burrow on a regular basis we'll put a fiber-optic small camera in the burrow. Especially when they have pups. Sometimes we use something that's just called a pole cam, where we put a camera on a stick and put it into the burrow once we know that the meerkats are in the burrow as well, to capture some shots.

paje2: Will the clan mourn Flower?
Mick Kaczorowski: They mourn Flower, but really their main job is to survive in very harsh conditions of the Kalahari. So, they immediately need to look for someone else to be their leader and to keep feeding themselves, because meerkats need to replace 25 percent of their body weight every day. So, in order for them all to survive, they have to keep going on the same ritual of looking for food.

coolkids: How long do dominant males hang around a group without a dominant female?
Mick Kaczorowski: It depends, but immediately a dominant male knows that he has to find another mate, he has to start roving. Because only females will be selected and rise to the top and become the dominant, and most likely the ones that are rising to the top are one of his daughters. He can't mate with his daughters so he has to go roving and find a new partner. unrelated to him.

toodles: What benefits have come from the research on these meerkats?
Mick Kaczorowski: Really, I'm not an expert to speak on this, because I'm not a scientist in the study. But, like any study that goes on, you're learning about a particular animal, its way of life, how it raises its young, how it teaches its young. These are really important things to know in the scientific community for a greater understanding of this animal species.

Peaches: Where do the great directors and staff find the meerkat names?
Mick Kaczorowski: Well, most — or some — of the names come from the list of names that the researchers have given them. But because so many meerkats are being watched in a group, sometimes the names overlap and they're difficult to distinguish one meerkat from another. As an example, when a new group is born, they'll give them all names of spices, something in a family group, or rock 'n roll songs, or things like that. So when we get to them... We couldn't make a show where everyone was named salt and pepper, paprika, etc. We have to add different names to spice things up, but the researchers keep those (original) names. Sometimes we'll look at a show and give an appropriate name or a name to honor someone, like we did in this episode where we called Flower's last born pup Liz, in honor of Elizabeth Taylor, who's a big fan of Meerkat Manor.

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