Jason E. Andersen

I was going to write a fact about turkeys today, but then I read an article about meerkats that surprised and impressed me.

Turkeys, you are boring and will have to wait.

Bonus Fun Fact: About 20% of meerkat deaths are due to homicide. This may shock you, as it did me. Everyone probably knows meerkats as the cute, furry lookouts for their little colonies in the south of Africa. You can’t hardly have a documentary about African wildlife without showing a meerkat standing bolt upright and looking paranoidly around. But did you ever envision a meerkat chewing the face off another one? Or pushing their friend off a cliff? No, probably not, but you should. It seems to happen quite a lot, even by monkey and lemur standards. Statistically speaking, one in 5 meerkats will die to another meerkat.

You can read the whole article on meerkat murder here.