Month old Meerkats revealed for the first time at London Zoo

Описание: (5 Nov 2006) UK MEERKATS
LENGTH: 5:30
SOURCE : AP TELEVISION NEWS
RESTRICTIONS : KAMERA CLIENTS ONLY
SHOTLIST
1. Close of meerkats
2. Various of meerkats
3. Wide of Lucy Hawley, London Zoo meerkat keeper
SOUNDBITE (English) Lucy Hawley, Meerkat zoo keeper:
"We love them we are having such a success rate with the meerkat babies at the moment. They were born in July. There is four of them, all around my heals.They are doing really well we are really happy with their progression. They have a good weight on them. They are looking really healthy and they are getting on so well with the group as well. We have a group together now of ten meerkats which is the biggest we have had in a while so it's really good. And they look great as well, they look so happy together and it looks good for the public."
4. Close of two meerkat kits (babies) playing
5. Close of mother and child watching the meerkats
6. Close of young boy watching the meerkats
7. Wide of meerkats standing up
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Lucy Hawley, Meerkat zoo keeper:
"They're (meerkats) carnivores they are from the mongoose family and they are unique in the way that they stay together in quite large family groups. They get up to any were to about fifteen individuals and they love eating together, they love sleeping together. They will constantly be burrowing creating their own homes underground they create a network of tunnels and if they are not sunning themselves to keep themselves nice and warm. Then they are digging continually making a little city underneath the ground which they also use to keep themselves warm at night time as well."
9. Wide of meerkat under heat lamp
10. Close up of meerkats
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Yasmin, London Zoo visitor:
"A lot smaller than I imagined actually. Very alert and very aware of what's going on around them.Yes tiny in fact I thought they were going to be a lot bigger than they were."
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Michael, London Zoo visitor:
"They are quite small quite funny really."
13. SOUNDBITE (English) (no name available) London Zoo visitor:
"I think they are really cute you see the difference between the little ones and the big ones and as Casper (her son) was saying just before in Dutch he says that you could see them being alert and looking around and we really like it seeing that they are enjoying their life."
14. Close of meerkats
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Lucy Hawley, Meerkat zoo keeper:
"I think its very hard to successfully breed species in zoo's. It's a good way really of telling that you have successfully reproduced the right kind of conditions for them that they would be used too in the wild. Which is why we are so pleased with I mean this enclosure is about three years old now so it's a fairly new enclosure and we have been learning as much as we can about the species from books from talking to other zoos. Its always good to interact with other zoos that may be have a better success rate with breeding other species sort of compare notes and reproduce these situations for them."
16. Close of meerkats emerging from the enclosures tunnel
17. Various meerkats
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Lucy Hawley, Meerkat zoo keeper:
"This is one of the youngsters. It is getting hard to tell the difference at the moment because they are growing up so fast soon its going to be impossible too tell the difference between these and the last youngsters. This is one of our males definitely one of our breeding males which breeds with our females."
19. Close of meekats looking into the camera lens
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STORYLINE :
Meerkats are sexually mature after about a year.

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