The Kalahari Meerkat Update

Well it has been quite some time since we’ve given you an update on what’s happening out in the Kalahari, so sit back and prepare yourself for a tale of meerkats, technical complications, and heat! However, as we have a lot to catch you up on, let’s break it down and start with the nitty griity shall we?

Now, as you all know our Gosa gang have not been Live streaming since mid-year, and many many many of you have deeply expressed your thoughts and concerns regarding this. As time passed, your frustrations together with those of the crew and our technical team have been mounting and we have not been able to address this issue properly due mainly to the fact that we did not have any time frame in which the problem could be fixed. But what is that problem you ask? Well, it’s a complicated one that has two sides. The first is that the meerkats disappeared for over a month. We’re unsure of the reasons but the entire group moved out of the area and hence out of the Live coverage area of the tower. After fruitless grid searches we never found where they went, but luckily they decided to come back, albeit with a very skittish nature. The second issue concerns the actual data link of the Live stream. Again, slightly complicated but basically the signal that is sent out from our tower has been progressively ‘choking’ which means that less and less data is able to be sent due to some unknown issue on the signal link. However, as far as we can determine, this ‘choking’ may be happening on the link outside of the reserve which means that it is out of our hands and the issue needs to be dealt with by the relevant service provider. These past few months have seen numerous tests and countless hours spent trying to ascertain how we can streamline things more on our side, however we have not made much progress and so still await the verdict on the external data lines to try see what’s been going on. So, that’s it in a nutshell, which is why crew updates have been few and far between because we’ve had no internet at all. It’s not that we’ve forgotten about our global meerkaters out there, it’s simply that we haven’t had the means to communicate with you out here in the Kalahari.

As it stands now we are still desperately trying to rectify the Live stream issue. If it comes to the point that we are just too isolated out here to rectify it without throwing a few million dollars at the issue we will obviously let you know, but we’re trying our best to get you back into the action.

So what has been happening in the meantime? Well as most of you know, the meerkat project is a 3D documentary production that was made Live so that you, our intrepid global meerkat viewers,  could watch and listen to us as we moved through the Kalahari filming the meerkats, and true to form the crew and I have still been filming religiously every day and we have filmed some incredible events! Obviously all of this is for our Kalahari Meerkats 3D documentary and so all that footage has made its way back to HQ and we are proud to say that we are about to start editing Episode 6! It’s been 9 months since we landed here and I am proud of my crew for the amazing production we have been working on. Kalahari Meerkats Episode 1 even aired at a 3D film festival in Hollywood, with yours truly on the big screen. Who would have imagined that this smelly meerkat adventurer would have his mug showing up on the big time screen!?

But enough of technicalities and fancy film screenings! What about the Gosa Gang?

Cleo and the Gosa gang have been doing fairly well over these few weeks. The members are healthy and Cleo’s pregnancy went very well. I expect the pups to come out the burrow any day now so stay tuned for that! Jacos Dune group have had their pups and seem to be doing well, although they’re still holding on to a section of the old Gosa gang territory but should start venturing farther afield now that we’re into summer. Malaki is still together with Cleo and the two have become a formidable force. The Gosa gang are having to deal with an exceptionally hot start to the summer with temperatures already at 38 Cᴼ and no sign of rain yet. On the other hand though, Delilah was bitten by a snake (possibly a puffadder) and is in a bad way. She was sitting outside the burrow when we found her but disappeared below a few moments later. Meerkats are known to be able to survive a snakebite so hopefully she’ll be back on her feet in a few days’ time.

Again I sincerely apologise for the lack of communication, but having a team out in the Kalahari with no internet communications for so long can be very problematic when it comes to getting some up to date news.

I’ll post some recent pictures on the site soon

Warm regards

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