Meerkat Manor - The Death of Flower
OK. I confess. I really like watching Meerkat Manor. I don't think I have missed a single episode. So I was saddened like everyone else was when Flower died.
Out of curiosity and just for the heck of it, I visited a message board on the Animal Planet website to see what had been posted. Boy, was I in for a shock!
People were in tears, people were angry, people were all over the map emotionally. I think some of them actually thought the researchers should have endangered their own lives to keep the cobra (COBRA for crying out loud!) from the meerkat burrow. Or dug down deeper than even the cameras had gone and messed up everything family-dynamics just to see "if" - even though there is no antivenom.
Researchers are there to record what happens in real life. The goal is to make the subjects (in this case meerkats) so comfortable around the researchers that the subjects behave as if the researchers were not there. Then the researchers watch and record and learn. They are not supposed to interfere, no matter what.
Apparently they did interfere in the past and "removed" a meerkat with TB to keep it from spreading all over the manor and even possibly to the researchers themselves. And yes that really messed up the dynamics of that meerkat family - as if everyone catching and dying from TB would not have. Some forum posters thought that once the "do not interfere" rule was broken, the researchers should have interfered on behalf of Flower.
Personally, I think it was a judgement call. Once Flower was bitten, there was no hope for her. There was no way the researchers should have endangered themselves by getting anywhere near the cobra. People sitting in their homes in the USA should not be telling scientific researchers half a world away what to do and how to do it.
Thank them for doing their jobs and for letting us learn about meerkats and life as it really is for them in their harsh environment.
Actually I kind of wonder about the safety of the researchers anyway. I see lion and hyena prey - that means there must be lions and hyenas.
Lions and hyenas and snakes! Oh my.
Out of curiosity and just for the heck of it, I visited a message board on the Animal Planet website to see what had been posted. Boy, was I in for a shock!
People were in tears, people were angry, people were all over the map emotionally. I think some of them actually thought the researchers should have endangered their own lives to keep the cobra (COBRA for crying out loud!) from the meerkat burrow. Or dug down deeper than even the cameras had gone and messed up everything family-dynamics just to see "if" - even though there is no antivenom.
Researchers are there to record what happens in real life. The goal is to make the subjects (in this case meerkats) so comfortable around the researchers that the subjects behave as if the researchers were not there. Then the researchers watch and record and learn. They are not supposed to interfere, no matter what.
Apparently they did interfere in the past and "removed" a meerkat with TB to keep it from spreading all over the manor and even possibly to the researchers themselves. And yes that really messed up the dynamics of that meerkat family - as if everyone catching and dying from TB would not have. Some forum posters thought that once the "do not interfere" rule was broken, the researchers should have interfered on behalf of Flower.
Personally, I think it was a judgement call. Once Flower was bitten, there was no hope for her. There was no way the researchers should have endangered themselves by getting anywhere near the cobra. People sitting in their homes in the USA should not be telling scientific researchers half a world away what to do and how to do it.
Thank them for doing their jobs and for letting us learn about meerkats and life as it really is for them in their harsh environment.
Actually I kind of wonder about the safety of the researchers anyway. I see lion and hyena prey - that means there must be lions and hyenas.
Lions and hyenas and snakes! Oh my.
posted by Sandi @ 2:04 PM
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