The meerkat (Suricata suricatta) name could be from the Dutch meaning lake cat. Or, in colloquial Afrikaans, mier means termite, and kat means cat – so the name come from its frequent association with termite mounds. A small carnivoran in the mongoose family, it lives in all parts of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, in much of the Namib Desert in Namibia and southwestern Angola, as well as in South Africa. It is also known as suricate.