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Sunday, November 22, 2009

Photo: Meerkat Moms Fight for Right to Have Babies, Study Shows


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Adult caretakers tend to a meerkat pup in Africa's Kalahari Desert.

A new study has revealed that female meerkats spar far more often than males because of a lucrative prize: becoming a group leader with exclusive rights to reproduce. Other females, forbidden to have children, pitch in with raising and feeding the dominant female's offspring.

Photograph by Mattias Klum/NGS