* meerkat *

* meerkat *

.
.
.

... at least one hour of waiting and sneaking up to get a few pics of these very shy - and very fast - funny little animals in the early sun! Our rangers called them meerkat
(in Deutschland werden sie Erdmännchen genannt und sind im Zoo gar nicht so scheu...)
Twee Rivieren, 12-2005; EOS 350D, 35-350mm L @350mm



taken from wikipedia:
"Meerkat" is a loanword from Afrikaans. The name has a Dutch origin but by misidentification. Dutch meerkat refers to the "guenon", a monkey of the Cercopithecus genus. The word "meerkat" is Dutch for "lake cat", but the suricata is not in the cat family, and neither suricatas nor guenons are attracted to lakes; the word possibly started as a Dutch adaptation of a derivative of Sanskrit is "monkey", perhaps in Africa via an Indian sailor onboard a Dutch East India Company ship. The traders of the Dutch East India Company were likely familiar with monkeys, but the Dutch settlers attached the name to the wrong animal at the Cape. The suricata is called stokstaartje = "little stick-tail" in Dutch.