These sweet little faces belong to meerkat pups that were recently born at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo – the first baby meerkats at the zoo in seven years.
They’ve just emerged from their nest to explore the new Sydney home they share with proud parents Nairobi and Maputo.
The pups’ sex and names are yet to be confirmed, although keepers are quite sure that mum and dad have been graced with one boy and one girl!
Zoo keeper Courtney Mahony says that although they may be young they are already showing signs of developing their own little personalities.
“Our male is the bigger of the two and he’s more adventurous and inquisitive, while the female is quieter and prefers to stay close to mum,” says Courtney.
At just one month old, these sweet little pups have already started impressing their parents by practising for sentry duty.
Meerkats are known for foraging in groups with one ‘sentry’ on guard watching for predators while the others search for food. Sentry duty is usually around an hour long, so they sure have a long way to go!
Father Maputo was welcomed by Taronga Zoo in 2014 in order to form a new breeding group with resident female meerkat Nairobi, who was the last meerkat born at the zoo seven years ago.
If you’d like to see them up close the meerkats will be slowly introduced to the outside world, appearing for short periods throughout the day.
Meanwhile, you can watch these gorgeous little pups in action in this cute video below…
