Meerkat

The meerkat or suricate (Suricata suricatta) is a small carnivoran belonging to the mongoose family (Herpestidae). It is the only member of the genus Suricata. Meerkats live in all parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, in much of the Namib Desert in Namibia and southwestern Angola, and in South Africa. A group of meerkats is called a "mob", "gang" or "clan". A meerkat clan often contains about 20 meerkats, but some super-families have 50 or more members. In captivity, meerkats have an average life span of 12–14 years, and about half this in the wild.

Etymology

"Meerkat" is a loanword from Afrikaans (pronounced [ˈmeərkɐt]). The name has a Dutch origin, but by misidentification. In Dutch, meerkat means the guenon, a monkey of the Cercopithecus genus. The word meerkat is Dutch for "sea cat", but although the suricata is a feliform, it is not of the cat family; the word possibly started as a Dutch adaptation of a derivative of Sanskrit markaṭa मर्कट = "ape", perhaps in Africa via an Indian sailor on board a Dutch East India Company ship.

Meerkat (app)

Meerkat is a mobile app that enables users to broadcast live video streaming through their mobile device. Once signed up, Meerkat users have the option of connecting their Facebook and Twitter accounts, and stream directly to their followers as soon as they go live. The app is available for both iOS and Android.

The app was released in February 2015, then quickly found popularity after its debut on the website Product Hunt, as well as widespread use during the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, both in March 2015.

Development

Meerkat is developed by Life On Air, Inc., a team headed by founder and CEO Ben Rubin. The back-end powering the app was developed over the course of two years for a previous video product of theirs.

The company raised $12 million in venture capital funding from Greylock Partners in March 2015.

Twitter reaction

In March 2015, weeks after the release of Meerkat, Twitter cut off Meerkat's access to its social graph, then announced the acquisition of the competing app Periscope. Twitter publicly launched Periscope on March 26, 2015. Apart from providing the similar functionality of live-streaming to users' Twitter followers, Periscope also gives users an option to let anyone play the stream back.

Meerkat (vehicle)

The Meerkat is the lead vehicle in the Interim Vehicle Mounted Mine Detector IVMMD system, which evolved from a system known as Chubby.

The system is manufactured by the Rolling Stock Division (RSD) of DCD-Dorbyl, a mechanical engineering conglomerate in South Africa.

The Meerkat resembles a cross between a dune buggy and a grader, with a pair of horizontally mounted rectangular panels, one each side, where the grader's blade would be.

The Meerkat is intended only to detect land mines - the related Husky and its trailers are intended to dispose of detected mines.

With its tire pressures lowered, the Meerkat produces a relatively low pressure on the ground below the tires, enabling it to pass over pressure-sensitive mines designed to destroy heavy vehicles. Even if it detonates a mine, the floor of the driver's cabin is armored and the structural components are designed to be quickly replaced.

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