The show is "Meerkat Manor," where the cast members drop like flies because it's, you know, real life and the life expectancy of a meerkat is even shorter than the average career span of a supermodel. On this show alone, meerkat stars whose television careers got cut short include Flower, Mozart, Carlos, Tosca, Big Si, Shakespeare, Cazanna, Kinkajou and the latest fatality.

SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS* IF YOU ARE A MEERKAT-ANATIC AND DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHICH MEERKAT HAS DIED.

*We will let you know when to pick up again. If you are able to read this alert, you are old enough to make this decision for yourself and if you read the following paragraphs, you cannot claim to be a victim of The TV Column. Those are the rules.

SPOILER UN-ALERT: Okay to start reading again.

The six-inch TV star was killed in what is being described as a hit-and-run while crossing a road in the Kalahari Desert, where she and her community are being studied by Cambridge University researchers while starring in their own series. That information is from an Animal Planet publicist who spoke to The TV Column.

The show's fourth season had finished shooting on Feb. 28, so for you ghoulish types out there, you will not view the death this coming season.

Word of the death getting out is kind of a bummer for the network and show producers who had given this season the tag line "More Sex, Less Death."

We're guessing this marketing campaign has something to do with trying to boost the show's numbers. In its third season, the average audience for each episode's premiere telecast was 797,000 viewers; the last original telecast, in November, premiered with 762,000 tuned in. But watching all that meerkat mortality is not for the faint of heart.

"Last year was tragic and we lost a lot of our major characters," the show's senior executive producer, Mick Kaczorowski, told The TV Column.