Three escaped meerkats on the loose in Zuid-Holland town
Three escaped meerkats are on the loose in the Zuid-Holland town of ‘s-Gravenzande. The animals escaped from their enclosure in owner Jan Knoppert’s backyard about two weeks ago and have been on the run ever since, Omroep West reports.
Knoppert has the animal ambulance, police, neighbors, and other animal lovers on the lookout for the meerkats. They’re spotted quite often. But “whenever we arrive where the meerkats have been seen, they’re already gone,” the Westland horticulturist told the broadcaster. “We recently spent a full day chasing the three again, but they are so fast.”
Meerkats are known escape artists, and Knoppert took extra care to ensure their enclosure was locked up tight. “And damn, I came back from the auction one morning, and there they were, the three of them, in front of my garage.”
It is unclear whether the three meerkats are still adventuring together or have wandered off on their own. How long they’ll be able to survive on the loose in the town depends on the circumstances, biologist Eva Schippers of the AAP Foundation said to Omroep West. “In principle, these animals cannot survive in Dutch nature. Their native habitats are Botswana, Zimbabwe, Southern Africa. And that’s the thing because it is obviously not very warm here now.”
They may also struggle to get food. “They are small predators. In the wild, they mainly eat insects and small mammals like mice and bird eggs. So at the moment, there’s not much of that to find, I think,” Schippers said. And that’s if they can hunt. “Because animals raised in captivity, which have never learned to hunt, are used to being presented with their food.”
Knoppert has confidence that his meerkats have enough to eat, at least. “The people I speak to, neighbors and friends from the area, wherever the meerkats appear, everyone gives them leftover food. And everyone knows me here. The whole town actually takes care of them.” He hopes they’ll be able to catch the critters and return them to their now even more secure enclosure before they move into the dunes.
Keeping meerkats as pets in the Netherlands is legal, but that will change on 1 January 2024. Then, the country will introduce a “positive list” stating which animals can be kept as pets instead of listing which are banned. The list does not include popular exotics like meerkats, servals, and sloths. People who already have these animals as a pet can keep them until they die but are not allowed to breed with them or sell or trade them.
