Swingkat the meerkat: a tough fighter survives...

Times have been tough recently for Swingkat, a male in the Mundenhof meerkat mob who is about six and a half years old. Last October he developed a serious tooth infection that attacked the bone, and he ended up losing most of his teeth in the lower jaw. This spring he developed pneumonia that also spread to the heart. He fought for four weeks and has finally survived. During much of this time the entire mob was kept inside. This was a difficult decision as sometimes when a kat is separated from the rest of the group for a longer period of time, it will not be possible to reintagrate him, and the "stranger" may be harrassed to death by the rest of the group. On the other hand it was very stressful for the group to be kept inside.

In this video Swingkat is back to his usual playful antics and curiosity, always trying to catch the lens lid of the camera and sticking his nose right at the lens.

You can see an area on his right side behind the front paw where he was shaved, in order to insert a catheter for an endoscopic investigation. This looks pretty weird on a meerkat...

let's hope that Swingkat stays healthy from now on. It's possble that the recent infection was a result of his earlier disease, as that may have spead throught the bloodstream and been dormant for a while.

Part of the video is slowed down a bit so don't wonder about the strange voices :)

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• meerkat
• erdmännchen
• suricate
• swingkat
• schaukelmännchen
• freiburg
• mundenhof
• sick
• krank
• tierklinik
• tierpark
• animal
• park
• germany