The first experiment of the present study demonstrated that the meerkats were clearly able to find the hidden food when all sensory cues except for olfactory ones were eliminated by the setup of the study. Thus, it can be fairly assumed that they did use their sense of smell when foraging. This indicates that the meerkats’ sense of smell is indeed important for foraging as well as well-developed, which is consistent with studies of their olfactory brain structures.

Results from the present study also indicate that meerkats are able to use their sense of smell in the context of developing a foraging strategy, that is, using olfactory cues to identify the location of the buried food item before starting to dig in order to save energy. This is supported by the optimal foraging theory which predicts that animals should forage in a way that maximises their net energy gain (i.e. the difference between energy gained and energy expended). Thus, it can be assumed that the meerkats in the present study adopted such a strategy in order to optimize their net energy gain.

The second experiment of the present study demonstrated that the meerkats were clearly able to distinguish between the odour of real food items and food odour components. This finding further confirms that their sense of smell is well-developed and allows them to discriminate odours perceived as food from other odours that are simultaneously present in their environment.

What is interesting is that iso-pentyl acetate, known to be the characteristic odour component of banana, was not perceived by the meerkats as food, whilst the odour of real banana was. This suggests that the complex odour mixture of the food rather than a single component may be necessary to evoke a foraging response in meerkats.

The third experiment of the present study showed that the meerkats were not able to build a solid association between the odour of real food and a novel odour, at least not within 60 trials. This can probably be explained by the fact that the given time was too short in order for them to learn the association.

Previous studies on species trained in two-odour discrimination tests with food-rewarded operant conditioning procedures show that other tested species in general needed more than 60 stimulus contacts to learn the association between odour and food reward. Considering this, it is fair to assume that meerkats would need a higher number of trials than 60 in order to learn the given association. A follow-up study might present the meerkats with more trials than were performed in the present study in order to assess whether they are able to build such an association between an odour and a food reward or not. In the case that they would succeed in building a robust association, this would allow for continuing this field of research by testing the meerkats’ discrimination ability as well as sensitivity for any kind of artificial odour using a food-rewarded odour discrimination paradigm and an operant conditioning procedure.

It can be concluded that meerkats are able to use olfactory cues when foraging and that their sense of smell seems to be well-developed, allowing them to build an efficient foraging strategy around it. Meerkats are also able to distinguish the odour of real food from food odour components, suggesting that their sense of smell is specialized for recognizing specific odours of behavioural relevance.