Baby meerkat as sweet as teacake (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Baby meerkat as sweet as teacake

2:45pm Thursday 3rd May 2012 in National News © Press Association 2013

Meerkat pup Tunnock is small enough to fit in a teacup and weighs just 96g: the same as four of his namesake teacakes.

He is one of four new additions, along with a set of triplets, to the meerkat enclosure at Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling.

Three-week-old Tunnock, named after his keeper's favourite teatime treat, and the triplets, who have not yet been given names, were born at the park over the Easter weekend.

Tunnock's keeper Anna Keen said he is "a bit on the small side" at the moment but he is being fed a milk formula twice a day to boost his weight.

Ms Keen used the teacakes to balance the scales during his check-up.

All four of the meerkat pups weighed 30g at birth and are being cared for by Tunnock's mother Sadie and the other adults in the group. The pups can already been seen exploring the enclosure and will soon learn to dig and forage in the sand for grubs.

Other new additions to the safari park this spring are a baby antelope, a donkey, a lion cub and a white rhino calf, as well as marmosets and wallabies.