The fascinating world of meerkats

Scientists have just described how meerkats (Suricata suricatta), everyone's favorite African mammals, teach their young in a way few animals do. An older "helper" meerkat will teach a young one how to eat scorpions by bringing a scorpion to them and removing the stinger, then helping the youngster kill it. Once the pup can handle "de-stung" scorpions on its own, the helper brings the arthropods intact for the pups to disable and then destroy.