ATLANTA — Welcome to Atlanta, Chica and Spot! Zoo Atlanta has added two 6-year-old slender-tailed meerkats to its African Savanna habitat.
The sister meerkats come to the city from the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas. A rep for Zoo Atlanta said Chica and Spot have begun exploring their new home in the Zoo’s meerkat complex.
Chica and Spot will be introduced to the male meerkats at Zoo Atlanta – Kingsley, Littlefoot, Petrie, and Spike – in hopes that the six will form a new group, known as a mob. Meerkats are highly social animals, with mobs numbering as many as 50 individuals in the wild in southern Africa, according to Zoo Atlanta.
“We also hope this will give our mob a chance to raise a new generation, which would be a wonderful experience for them and for us,” said Jennifer Mickelberg, the Vice President of Collections and Conservation, in a release.
Because much of their natural range, which extends into the Kalahari Desert, lies within protected areas, meerkats are unique among many of their other African animal counterparts in that they are not currently threatened in the wild.
A limited pet trade in meerkats has not yet made a significant impact on wild populations, but Zoo Atlanta said the exotic pet trade is a serious challenge for many other species. By perpetuating the sharing of content showing “cute” animals in unnatural or inappropriate settings, social media is playing an increasingly larger role in fueling interest in the trade.
The African Savanna wildlife community features new and expanded habitats for elephants, giraffes, zebras, ostriches and meerkats.
Chica and Spot are the third and fourth new animals to join the African Savanna in 2020.
Hamlet, a 1-year-old male warthog, began exploring his new habitat in October with female Eleanor. Mumbles, a 9-year-old southern white rhinoceros, arrived in May.