A meerkat mob can have 20 or 30 animals living together. They share a network of burrows underground - long tunnels with many entrances - which they dig and look after as a team. When there's danger, the whole mob can dive into a tunnel within seconds.
While the rest of the mob looks for food, one meerkat stands tall on a high spot - a rock, a log, an anthill - and scans the sky and ground. This 'sentry' lets out different barks for different kinds of danger: one bark for an eagle in the sky, another for a snake on the ground. The mob knows exactly what to do for each one.
Meerkats take turns at being the sentry. Nobody is the boss of the lookout job - it just rotates through the mob, so everyone gets a turn to eat and everyone gets a turn to watch. Scientists who study meerkats say the system is fair to the whole group.
Babies are born tiny and helpless. The whole mob looks after them - feeding them, washing them, even teaching them to hunt. Older meerkats bring scorpions to the babies with the stinger carefully bitten off, so the babies can practise hunting safely.