When the sun illuminates the desert, the meerkats wake up one after another, burrowing out of the labyrinthine underground caverns and standing side by side facing the sunrise.

There is a large temperature difference between day and night, and the late spring morning in the Southern Hemisphere is still a little warm and cold, so facing the sun and bare your belly can quickly warm them up before they can start their daily foraging routine.

This small animal living in the desert area is not picky meat eaters, usually eat whatever it catches, the staple food is a variety of insects and spiders, scorpions, centipedes, if you encounter lizards, snakes, birds and mice, will not refuse to consume these high-quality protein.

This small animal has a cooperative social structure, and when the family members are busy searching for prey, there will always be a few meerkats running outside, climbing branches or standing on high ground, acting as sentinels for the whole family, watching for the approach of falcons, jackals and poisonous snakes.

The meerkat has a very distinctive standing posture, with its legs spread out, its long tail supporting the ground, its body straight, its upper limbs hanging down to protect its chest, its eyes wide open and looking straight ahead, and its flexible neck turning back and forth to patrol its surroundings. Standing high and looking far away, their dark eyes are not afraid of direct sunlight, allowing them to respond to threats from the heavens and the earth in time.

With round ears, big dark circles, and interesting standing postures, these have made meerkats famous among humans, and a meerkat named "Timon" has reached the pinnacle of joining Disney, starring in "The Lion King", and becoming famous all over the world. Although it has been 22 years since the release of this movie, the classic has never been erased, and Ding Man is still the image spokesperson of the meerkat family.

Suddenly, the meerkat sentry in the north moved his ears and turned his head to look northeast.

There, a hardtop SUV was dragging smoke and dust along with a large RV, a pickup truck, and two SUVs behind it.

Meerkats can spot threats up to 150 meters away, human eyesight is not bad, and the passengers also spot these meerkat sentries wearing brown-gray "desert camouflage", and the caravan compartment suddenly resounded with the excited shouts of children: "Timon, Timman, King Julian!"

King Julian is a character from the animated film Madagascar, based on the ring-tailed lemur, a Malagasy endemic animal with a fox-like pointed beak, large ears and striking dark circles, and a penchant for standing on two feet in the sun. However, as a monkey, the latter is more flexible, can walk and sit on both legs, and can turn their tails around their bodies, and they also wear gray-brown "mountain camouflage" when they live in bare rock areas, with orange eyes instead of black, and the difference is quite large.

However, the children in the car are not yet three years old, and their cognition of the two animals is only from cartoons, and there is a misunderstanding to understand.

It's just that this is a bitter thing for the audience inside and outside the car, Zhizhi and they kept shouting "Ding Man", bent on overwhelming each other with their voices, and the supporter of "King Julian" Little Biscuit was not to be outdone, and also hit back at his brothers and sisters with a loud voice.

The screams reached outside the car, and the meerkats were so startled that they threw down the half-eaten grasshoppers and scorpions and hurriedly hid in their holes.

Seeing "Timon / King Julian" running away, the little ones finally got down and turned to their parents next to them to look for supporters.

When the two of them settled this small dispute, the meerkat family over there also found that this group of "big iron bulls" did not seem to be a threat, and they drilled out of the hole one after another, they should eat and play, but the surrounding sentinels changed to another batch.

Then they saw that the "Great Iron Ox" had completely stopped, and the "two-legged beasts" of various colors had come out of the belly of the ox, and they were still carrying strange branches in their hands. However, Atletico Madrid found that the children were interested in meerkats, so they simply asked the team to stop for a while to take a closer look, and they were holding folding chairs and tripods prepared in advance.

Meerkats have two litters a year, several litters per litter, and their fur and meat are not very distinctive, and although they live in the arid and desolate deserts of southern Africa, they do not have any existential crises, and they are naturally less alert to humans and large animals. Seeing Atletico and the others approaching, the new sentinel just calmly called a few times to inform the group, and then ignored it, and the other meerkats did not hear the siren, and still looked down for food as if no one was around.

"Poof!" tripods and folding chairs were opened and propped up on the sand, lined up in a line in the direction of the meerkats group.

Holding her youngest son in her arms, Tang Jiayi stepped out of the car and sat on one of the chairs, next to her were Ma Jing, who was holding her daughter in her arms, and two female assistants. The family sat upright on a chair like this, surrounded by photographers, bodyguards and other staff, observing the meerkat family opposite from a distance of more than ten meters.

This is a new form of wildlife tourism in South Africa, and it is especially suitable for meerkats, which have a gentle and lively temperament and do not harm each other. If it is a lion, an elephant and a rhinoceros, it is better to sit obediently in the reinforced sightseeing car and watch through the window. In this way, we can better protect those large animals, after all, the right to life and health of people is always higher than the right to life of animals, if those animals do not hold back their curiosity or can't help teasing, they will be shot by the staff by the staff if they hand their claws and teeth to accompany them, and lose a small life in vain.

As for the legendary "security guards will give people a shot to help you get out", in fact, it is just a straight hook fishing post on the Internet, and people with normal IQ and knowledge will not believe it. Straight-hook fishing catches not fish but people, and the tools used are rumors with obvious loopholes, such as that "French fries are rich in sodium chloride and potentially toxic", and many big fish have been caught.

Being stared at like this, of course, this group of wild meerkats would not be indifferent, and soon gathered here under the leadership of the male leader, standing in a dense formation and staring at the onlookers. Intrigued by their reaction, the little biscuit stretched out his hands to get closer to the ground.

"Good!" Tang Jiayi patted him with her right hand, but the arms she was holding did not mean to let go. While it looked fun for the meerkats to stand together and swing back and forth, she knew it was their defensive act of intimidation, and she wanted to use their collective strength to deter their targets. Now that she could be safe from a distance, if she let her son go down to the ground, the meerkats would either be so frightened that they would go back to the hole again, or they would be so frightened that they would attack the upper paws, and neither result would be what she wanted.

Sensing that the group of "two-legged beasts" were not behaving in any other way, the meerkat leader called out and disbanded the group. The desert is a big place, and they spend most of their day looking for food, so they don't have any time to waste on these idle things.

After the disbandment of the large army, the meerkat cubs who were still lactating did not leave, some were playing in place, and some crawled towards Atletico and others. Seeing the fluffy mongoose child crawling over and standing up and looking up at himself, the little ones in everyone's arms became even more excited, and they stretched out their little hands to touch it.

Although it was not finally encountered, this scene was captured by the accompanying photographer, and it became a memorable moment of the trip.

Eventually, the cubs could not resist the call of the mother beast and turned and ran back to the herd. Atletico stood up and beckoned to everyone: "Okay, time is limited, we have to go!"

Time is indeed not too abundant, and he does not have much free time to run around with his wife and children. And the pristine and wild African wilderness is not suitable for a long stay, after all, even drinking water and internet access are not fully guaranteed here.

"Goodbye! Timman!" the little ones leaned on the side of the window, shouting goodbye outside.

The car started, the meerkat group gradually disappeared into the brown and yellow background of the desert, Ma Xiaohuan got down from the car window, turned around and threw herself into Ma Jing's arms, and said sweetly: "Dad, I will come to see Ding Man in the future, is it okay?"

"No problem, I will definitely come back when I have the chance, and I will definitely come next spring. ”

Just yesterday, Andy Green broke his own 19-year-old record with the new Bloodhound, improving the top speed record for a manned vehicle by 5 miles. The whole process went smoothly, with the turbofan engine starting to drive the slender car to a rapid speed, then the rocket engine ignition, the spiky nose piercing the sound barrier to break the record, and then the parachute slowed down to celebrate the victory.

Of course, this is only the first stage of the actual vehicle test, and the small goal they set is to exceed 770 miles of speed and collect movement data in the supersonic state. Although the car has the engines of an airplane and a rocket, and the body looks like a wingless fighter jet and a rocket on wheels with an elongated and sharp body, the movement patterns of the airplane rocket and the car are too different after all, and copying their mature data will definitely go wrong.

The car has now been sent to Johannesburg for public photos, but the R&D team has returned to the UK with the data they have collected, where they will model and analyze the data to try to find ways to further improve the Hound before they can officially challenge the ultimate goal of 1,000 mph. But that's next year, because it's going to rain on the desert track, and it's going to be too late this year.

The seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres are opposite, this time is the late spring and early summer in South Africa, when the Northern Cape is dry and rainless for desert racing, the last month is still the spring of the prairie with brilliant flowers, and the next month will officially enter the rainy prairie summer.

This is also where Tang Jiayi resents the most, if you come in September, you can enjoy the beautiful sea of flowers in the Namaqualand grassland.

Namaqualand is a huge semi-desert grassland, mostly in Namibia and a small part in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The name is derived from the Namaqua people, a branch of the Khoisan people, with brown skin and a short physique, who live in pursuit of water and grass, and are the "grassland herders" of Africa.

In August and September, when the warm and humid air currents of the ocean penetrate deep into the interior to bring rare spring rains, the Asteraceae and succulents on Namaquaran will grow and bloom rapidly, creating a human dream of "desert turning into a sea of flowers" in a short period of time.

Daisies of various colors are spread out like money, which is also mixed with the iris of the sword leaf blue flower, the lily of the golden flower Tingting, and the pine leaf chrysanthemum of the fine leaf color flower, all kinds of wild flowers compete with each other, with bright colors and floral fragrance to attract the attention of bees, butterflies and other pollinators, and strive to complete the life process of pollination in half a month, and then quickly wither and wither, and survive the next hot summer and winter with low-power standby mode.

This period is also the happiest time for the Nama herdsmen, watching the white and black-headed Dubo sheep wandering in the sea of flowers, enjoying the flowers and grass all over the ground, it is difficult to be happy. Unfortunately, this period is too short, and when the flowers and leaves fall, they have to migrate again, take the sheep to a place where the water and grass are more abundant, and then look forward to returning next year.

With only half a month of the year, it's no wonder that some Japanese photographers weep for it, calling it a "lost paradise".

However, Atletico Madrid obviously didn't see it that way, and in the face of Tang Jiayi's complaining eyes, he said indifferently: "What's the matter a month late, without the interference of those daisies and weeds, isn't it just convenient for you to appreciate the wild meat here?"

As he said, when the convoy arrived in the Namaquaran area, the flowers had withered, the grass had turned withered, and the herders and sheep were gradually leaving, leaving only large and small succulents.

Succulents, also known as succulent plants and succulent flowers, are a general term for a variety of plants with hypertrophic stems and leaves, and the most typical and common succulents are cacti, cactus, and aloe vera. In addition, there are Euphorbiaceae, Apricot family and many other subject plants can be classified into this category, most of them grow in arid and semi-arid areas, in order to combat the lack of water environment have evolved the water storage structure, can accumulate water and nutrients in the leaves, stems, roots and other vegetative organs, at the same time, there is usually a layer of, waxy, and silty on the leaves to reflect light and resist the sun to inhibit evaporation.

In recent years, succulents have become popular rapidly, relying on their small size, regular and cute appearance, and drought-tolerant characteristics without much care, they quickly beat the cactus and become the new favorite of the desktop of the majority of white-collar workers, and are nicknamed "meat" by enthusiasts.

Among the succulents, there are also Carnegie giant cacti, which can reach up to 20 meters high, but the most endearing are the small and cute varieties. For example, rosette-type succulents from high-altitude areas, the leaves of the regular arrangement like flowers are very beautiful, and if the "brocade" changes color (in fact, it is the lack of cell mutant chlorophyll), it is even more sought-after and sold at a high price of tens of thousands, so that many people have to lament the "succulent poor three generations"!

Noticing the general trend of succulent popularity, Tang Jiayi's Tanghua flower shop has already taken action and built a succulent greenhouse for professional planting as early as possible, and is a well-known "succulent queen" in China.

Different from other flower farmers, Mr. Tang, who is backed by the Department of Biology of Luda University, has a group of experts in tissue culture and induced mutation, and is also one of the first merchants to apply these technologies to breed succulent flowers. This kind of flower is small for the beauty, the color for the market taste is simply tailored for these two technologies, not irradiated tissue culture is simply sorry for her professionalism.

However, she is still not satisfied, and the induced mutation is a bit dependent on the sky, so it depends on luck. This time I went to the field to visit the place of origin, and there was also the idea of finding a solution.