Meerkat Overdose

This is a bit much of meerkat life, I admit. Apparently it's a TV show with episodes. Very cute, very informative. But I am bothered by the outrageous anthropomorphizing of this: "Flower knows that family can be relied on...," "gentle persuasion" of a younger sibling, "takes his responsibilities seriously." I credit this attitude, this pretending that animals have something other than instincts, as one of the driving forces behind the insaner parts of environmentalism. A sentimentalism unsupported by realism.

Hell, even human beings are often instinctive rather than reasonable. Maybe most of the time. It's bad enough that we pretend our own actions are fully reason-based when they are only partly so. It's ludicrous to extend that to species where it is 0% so.

Still, they're meerkats, and fun to look at. And perhaps traffic-attracting.