Wild meerkats actively teach their young

London -- Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered that older meerkats teach their pups how to handle prey.

The British scientists claim that meerkats teach their young how to obtain food by incrementally introducing dead, injured and then live prey. They say claim their findings should resolve the question of whether wild mammals teach their young or not.

Older meerkats, not necessarily the parents, will watch youngsters to see how they are doing. If the pup fails to do the job before the prey can crawl away, the older meerkats nudge it back towards them to encourage it.

Also, if the prey wandered off, the helper would retrieve the item and return it to the pup, sometimes further disabling it before returning it to the young meerkat.

They will bite the stinger off a live scorpion and give it to a youngster to kill and eat.

Meerkats are a type of mongoose and live in groups of three to 40 in dry regions of southern Africa.

Each group includes a dominant male and female, who produce 80 per cent of the pups, and older animals that help to watch over and rear the young.

These findings have been published in this week’s edition of the journal Science.

The findings reveal that teaching may not require human beings' complicated consciousness, as many species can be good teachers with just basic mechanisms, according to the researchers.

"Viewed from a functional perspective, teaching can be based on simple mechanisms without the need for intentionality and the attribution of mental states," they researchers said.

"By differentially responding to the calls of pups of different ages, helpers may accelerate pups' learning of handling skills without the need for complex cognitive processes."