Just finished reading an article on meerkats [type of mongoose].

I'd like to know more about the etymology of the name. I searched Onelook.com and came away with just a little:

meer from the sea, and even though meerkats have nothing to do with the sea, apparently meer is somehow synonymous with monkeys that came from the sea--don't ask me how. And then kat from catte meaning cat.

So I suppose meerkat means either 'sea cat' or 'monkey cat.' Monkey cat makes more sense based on what I read about meerkats.

wwh: Meerkats have to be fodient--they dig like crazy looking for their scorpions!

Bolt-hole: Another word from the article that was new to me, but maybe not to the cross-ponders since the def. was chiefly British: a burrow or hole into which an animal flees for safety. It was stated in the article that the meerkat on sentinal duty can make a certain cry and the meerkat gang (and, yes, they're called either gangs or mobs) will all bolt into the same bolt-hole. The photographer who was reporting what he had seen said it was amazing and funny to him how they would all head toward the same bolt-hole when so many could have been chosen.

Pretty cool animals to read about. There's some kind of zoo/preserve for old and orphaned meerkats in California, wwh. Meerkats, according to the information I found on that site, make terrible pets, but they readily accept human company in the wild once they learn to trust the humans, even climbing up on the humans' heads to perform their sentinel duties.

Anyway, I'd like to know more about how their name came to be meerkat and if it means 'monkey cat' or 'sea cat,' which makes no sense at all. It must be monkey cat.