After six years of waiting for the pitter-patter of tiny meerkat feet, a well-known medicated vapour rub has helped to make Spring come early at Paultons Park, the family theme park in Hampshire. Meerkat babies – Ant and Dec – have just made their first outdoor appearance after four weeks of being inside with their mum. Their arrival is the result of a tip from a vet which, until this point, had only been used with guinea pigs.

In a bid to make love blossom, keepers wanted to introduce another male and female meerkat to the group, but – due to the animals’ territorial nature – the team at Paultons were puzzled at how best to do this.

However, by using the vet’s tip of putting vapour rub on the animals’ noses and tails and at key points around their enclosure to make everything smell the same, nature eventually took its course. Eleven weeks later the baby meerkats were born, just in time for Easter visitors to catch a glimpse. But, despite being named after television’s cheeky twosome, keepers at Paultons Park don’t yet know whether the new additions are boys, girls or a combination of the two as any human contact with the babies at this stage would upset the mother-baby bond.

Keeper Jamie Summers says: “We have been hoping for six years that the meerkats might breed, but it wasn’t until we introduced some new blood, with the help of a little vapour rub of course, that things really got going. The arrivals couldn’t have come at a better time as the park is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. So all of a sudden it’s birthdays all round.”