Many predator species rely on visual prey detection or indirect visual information, such as faeces or tracks, but when prey cannot be located visually predators may rely on other senses. These can include mechanoreception, thermoreception, echolocation, hearing and olfaction. Following this, it is interesting to study whether a single sense, such as olfaction, is sufficient for an animal to succeed in finding food.

Meerkats (Suricata suricatta) are mainly insectivorous, but include also other arthropods and small vertebrates in their diet. Prey may be caught on the ground surface but is often mobile in the ground, which has led to the propensity of meerkats to dig or rake at the location of hidden food. Meerkats are mesopredators, meaning that they are both predator and prey animals at the same time. This entails a risk for them; digging deeply into the ground comes at the price of not being able to scan the environment for predators. Thus, meerkats should benefit from having a quick and precise foraging strategy, suggesting that additional sensory cues other than tactile ones may be involved in finding food hidden underground.

Meerkats have well-developed olfactory brain structures and have been shown to strongly rely on chemical communication in social contexts, such as scent marking. However, only little is known about the role of olfaction in food detection and selection by meerkats.

The aim of the present study was to assess whether meerkats are able to:

1. Detect hidden food using only their sense of smell

2. Distinguish the odour of real food from a single food odour component

3. Learn to associate the odour of real food with a novel odour