Suricates are a highly sociable species living in troops of up to fifty individuals. They live in burrows which they excavate themselves. They hunt on busy excursions around their territories.
Their diet mostly consists of insects, which they sniff out using their enhanced sense of smell. They also eat small rodents, fruit, birds, eggs, lizards, and even poisonous scorpions. They can catch a scorpion and pull off its deadly stinger in the blink of an eye. Because they have very little fat to store energy, meerkats forage and hunt every day.
There will always be individuals on watch whilst the troop is feeding or on the move as they are susceptible to attack from predators such as Jackal and birds of prey.