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The meerkats in this study showed preferences for certain types of food. On a group level the animal matter was the most preferred one with crickets as the top. This can be explained by the correlations with protein level in the food items. The animal matter has the highest protein levels. As a carnivore the meerkats is expected to seek proteins in their food. The results also show correlations between the individuals preference. The oldest animal has the most number of correlations of her food preference to the other individual food preferences. This can be explained by observational learning, were the younger individuals can learn about food preference from older individuals. This has earlier been seen in the wild.

There were only 8 of a possibly 28 pairs of meerkats that hade positively correlated food preferences. The mother (individual A, see procedure for relations) of the group has the most amount of correlations of here food preference to other individuals. This can be explained by the fact that meerkats can learn about food preferences by observational learning from older to younger individuals. This has earlier been seen in the wild. The other individuals correlations can also be explained by this fact though it was the oldest individuals (except individual B) that have the most correlations (table 2, results). Individual B is the oldest offspring in the group; however she differs from the group in the correlations, with no correlations of her food preference to other individuals food preferences at all. Trying to explain this I had to look closer on what differentiate her from the rest of the group. She is the heaviest individual of the group with a body weight of 1400g (twice as much as the lightest individual in the group) (Table 5), and she has the lowest correlation value (r_s) to the total group score (table 3, results). Why she differs from the group is only possible to speculate about, but the lowest correlation value (r_s) suggests that she has a different food preference compared to the rest of the group which also might have resulted in the higher body weight. The higher body weight might also come from a bigger appetite which has then resulted in a shift in food preference.

Table 5. The body weight of the individuals. The scale had a resolution of 50g.

As expected the meerkats favored the food items with a high protein content, as they are carnivores and thereby mainly feeds on protein based food, in this case mainly insects. The result that there is no significant correlation with vitamins and minerals suggests that those are not important for the meerkats during food selection and foraging. In the wild meerkats eat fruits and succulents when the weather is dry, probably to gain water. There was no significant correlation between food preference and water content. The reason for that might be that the meerkats had an ad libitum supply of water and therefore did not have to seek out food with high water content.

There was a significant positive correlation between ash and the food preference. Ash is what is left when a food item is burnt and a measure of the total amount of mineral and salt in the item. Then it is no significant correlations to any of the minerals tested for is seems like that the ash correlation comes from something else. When testing the correlation between ash and proteins it is seen that there are a strong positive correlation (r_s=0.88, p>0.01) between them. Hence, when the meerkats have chosen food with a high protein level they have also chosen food with high ash content.

In the wild meerkats mostly feeds on beetles and there larva and less on grasshoppers and crickets. However in my study they prefers the crickets. This might be explained by the fact that wild meerkats east more grasshoppers/crickets in bulks and might eat a bigger amount of them if they had the opportunity, which they had in my study. It might also be explained by the higher movement that the crickets had compared to the zhophobas larva.

In earlier studies of other species with almost the same test setup researchers have seen that food preferences are related to the animals dietary habits. This I can also see in my study.