Prairie dogs are unique herbivorous burrowing rodents found in the grasslands of North America.
There are five species of prairie dogs: black-tailed, Gunnison’s, white-tailed, Utah, and Mexican.
These animals are a type of ground squirrel native to North America.
In Mexico, you can find prairie dogs primarily in the northern states, which are at the southern extreme of the Great Plains: North and northeastern Chihuahua, northeastern Sonora, north of Nuevo León, north of Tamaulipas, and northern Coahuila.
In the United States, prairie dogs range primarily to the west side of the Mississippi River, though they also have been introduced to a few eastern locales.
These rodents can also be found in the Canadian Prairies. Regardless of the name, they are not canines.
Scientific Classification
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Chordata
- Class: Mammalia
- Order: Rodentia
- Family: Sciuridae
- Tribe: Marmotini
- Genus: Cynomys
Species
- Cynomys gunnisoni
- Cynomys leucurus
- Cynomys ludovicianus
- Cynomys mexicanus
- Cynomys parvidens
Description
On average, prairie dogs will grow between 30 and 40 cm (12 and 16 in) in length, including a short tail, and may weigh between 0.5 and 1.5 kilograms (1 and 3 lb).
Prairie dogs have sexual dimorphism in body mass, varying from 105 to 136% between the sexes. There are five species; among them, the black-tailed prairie dogs are the least sexually dimorphic, while the white-tailed prairie dogs are the most sexually dimorphic.
The sexual dimorphism of these rodents peaks during weaning, when the females shed some weight, and the males begin to eat more and reach their lowest when the females get pregnant and the males get tired from breeding.
Diet
Prairie dogs are mainly herbivorous rodents, though sometimes they eat some insects. Just like rabbits, they feed primarily on grasses and small seeds.
In the fall season, they feed on broadleaf forbs, while in winter, lactating and pregnant female prairie dogs supplement their diets with snow to get their water requirement. They also feed on fruits, roots, seeds, and buds. Prairie dogs also eat grasses of various species.
The black-tailed prairie dogs in South Dakota primarily eat western bluegrass, buffalo grass, blue grama, six weeks fescue, and tumble grass.
Gunnison’s prairie dogs, on the other hand, eat rabbitbrush, dandelions, tumbleweeds, saltbush, cacti, buffalo grass, and blue grama.
An exciting thing that has been noticed about White-tailed prairie dogs is that they kill ground squirrels, a competing herbivore.
Habitat and Burrowing
Prairie dogs are known to live primarily at altitudes from between 2,000 to 10,000 ft above sea level.
The places where they live can get as hot as 38 °C (100 °F) in the summertime and can get as cold as −37 °C (−35 °F) in winter. Because prairie dogs live in places prone to environmental threats such as blizzards, hailstorms, floods, drought, and even prairie fires, burrows offer them essential protection.
Prairie dogs can control their body temperature with burrows (Thermoregulation) as they are within temperatures of 5–10 °C during winter and 15–25 °C in summer.
The tunnel systems of Prairie dogs can channel rainwater into the water table, which prevents runoff and erosion, which can also alter the soil composition in an area by reversing soil compaction that can result from cattle grazing.
Prairie dog burrows are usually between 5–10 m (16–33 ft) in length and 2–3 m (6.6–9.8 ft) under the ground. The entrance to their burrows is usually 10–30 cm (3.9–11.8 in) in diameter.
One feature of most Prairie dog burrows is that they have up to six entrances. At times, the entrances to tunnels are flat holes in the ground, while at other times, the entries have mounds of soil that are either left as piles or hard-packed.
Mounds are known as dome craters; those molds can be as high as 20–30 cm (7.9–11.8 in). There are also mounds known as rim craters, which can be as high as 1 m.
The dome and rim craters are used as observation posts by prairie dogs to watch for predators. These types of entrances also protect their burrows from flooding.
These holes also provide ventilation sometimes as the air passes through the dome crater and goes out through the rim crater, causing an easy breeze through the burrow.
All Prairie dog burrows have chambers to offer certain functions. They have separate nursery chambers for their babies, chambers for night activities, and chambers for winter.
Prairie dogs also have air chambers that may protect the burrow from flooding and work as a listening post for predators.
When these rodents hide from predators, they use less deep chambers that are mostly no more than a meter below the surface.
Nursery chambers may be more in-depth, about two to three meters below the surface.
Social Organization and Spacing
Highly social rodents, prairie dogs resident in large towns or colonies, and massive collections of prairie dog families sometimes span hundreds of acres.
The prairie dog family groups are the primary units of its society. Members of a family group living in the same territory.
Family groups of Mexican prairie dogs and black-tailed dogs are called “coteries,” while groups of Gunnison’s, white-tailed, and Utah prairie dogs are called clans.
Even though both family groups are similar in many ways, coteries tend to be more closely knit than clans.
As a show of unity and love amongst members of a family group, they interact through oral contact, which can also be called “kissing,” and they groom one another. They never perform such behaviors with prairie dogs from outside their family groups.
A single prairie dog town may have as many as 15–26 family groups. Towns may also feature subgroups, known as “wards,” set apart by a physical barrier. Family groups exist within these wards.
Most prairie dog family groups consist of at least one adult breeding male, two or three adult females, and one to two female offspring with one to two male offspring.
Females do not leave their natal groups for life, which makes them the source of stability in the groups.
Males leave their natal groups when they come of age to find another family group they can defend and breed.
Some family groups have more breeding females than a single male can control; such family groups have more than one adult male for breeding.
Some family groups with multiple male members may have friendly relationships; however, most have males who are mostly antagonistic toward each other.
In the former, the males can relate in a friendly manner because they tend to be related, while in the latter, they are usually not related.
A group of two to three females may be controlled by a single male prairie dog. However, there are no friendly relations among the female groups.
The prairie dog territory, on average, takes up about 0.05–1.01 hectares. Prairie dog territories have well-established borders that must coincide with physical barriers like rocks and trees.
The resident male protects every prairie dog territory, and there will be antagonistic behavior between two males of different families when necessary to defend their territories.
These aggressive interactions may occur as many as 20 times per day and last for five minutes.
When two male prairie dogs encounter each other at the boundaries of their territories, they will begin to star, flare their tails, make bluff charges, chatter their teeth, and even go as far as sniffing each other’s perianal scent glands.
Prairie dogs kick, bite, and ram each other during a fight. If the competitor is about their size or smaller, it becomes a gang fight as females will join in the fighting.
Otherwise, wherever a competitor is sighted, the only thing the females do is signal to the resident male.
Reproduction and Parenting
The prairie dog is secretive with copulation activities as it mostly occurs in the burrows, and the good thing about this hidden act is a reduction in the risk of getting interrupted by a competing male.
They stand a lesser chance of predation. Behaviors that show that a female prairie dog is in estrus include self-licking of genitals, dust-bathing, underground consorting, and late entrances into the burrow at night.
While the licking of genitals may seem like masturbation, it indeed is a way to protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases and genital infections, while dust-bathing is a means of protecting themselves against fleas and other parasites.
There is also a mating call used by prairie dogs consisting of 2 to 25 barks with a pause of between 3 and 15 seconds between each bark. Females may attempt to increase the success of their reproduction by mating with males outside their family groups.
Once copulation ends, the male prairie dog is no longer interested in getting sexual with the female but will prevent other males from getting sexually involved with her by inserting copulatory plugs.
For black-tailed prairie dogs, if there is a single resident male of a family group, it automatically fathers all the young. Both Utah and Gunnison’s prairie dogs share multiple paternity in the litter.
Mother prairie dogs are dedicated to caring for their young. In addition to nursing the baby prairie dogs, the mother prairie dog defends the nursery chamber and gathers grass for the nest.
Male prairie dogs do their part by supporting the territories and burrows. The young prairie dogs spend their first six weeks in the hole being nursed by the female.
The young are then weaned and start to surface from the burrow. By the time they get to five months, the young prairie dogs are fully grown.
There is also the subject of cooperative breeding in prairie dogs, which has been debated among biologists for a long time.
Some biologists have argued that prairie dogs will feed and defend young that are not theirs, and it seems that young prairie dogs will sleep in a nursery chamber with other adult females; since most of the nursing of this species occurs at night, this may be a situation of communal nursing.
In the latter’s case, others have suggested that communal nursing happens only when mothers mistake young belongings for another female for their own. Infanticide is also known to occur amongst prairie dogs.
New males who take over a family group are likely to kill the offspring of the former male. This will make the mother go into estrus sooner. However, most cases of infanticide are perpetrated by close relatives.
Lactating females are known to kill the offspring of a related female to decrease competition for that female’s offspring and to increase the foraging area as a result of the decrease in territorial defense by the weaker mother.
Biologists who support the theory of prairie dogs being communal breeders have stated that another reason for such cases of infanticide is so that the female prairie dogs can get a helper.
With their offspring killed, the victimized mother may assist in raising the young of other females.
Anti-predator Calls
The prairie dog knows a predator because they are well adapted to predators.
With its dichromatic color vision, a prairie dog can detect predators from a distance; it then goes ahead to alert other prairie dogs of danger with a special, high-pitched call.
Constantine Slobodchikoff and others have asserted that prairie dogs have a sophisticated vocal communication system to describe specific predators.
According to them, every prairie dog call contains particular information about what kind of predator they are dealing with, how big the predator is, and how fast it is approaching. These calls have been described as a type of grammar.
According to Constantine, these prairie dog calls, coupled with their individuality in response to a particular predator, mean that they have well-developed cognitive abilities.
He also noted that prairie dogs have special calls for things they do not see as predators. This proves that the rodents have descriptive language and unique calls for any potential threat.
Alarm response behavior among prairie dogs varies according to the type of predator approaching them.
If the alarm signifies a hawk diving toward the colony, all the prairie dogs in the hawk’s flight path dive into their holes, while those outside the flight path will be seen standing to watch.
If the alarm is for an approaching human, all colony members rush inside the burrows immediately.
For coyotes, all the prairie dogs will move to the entrance of a burrow, where they will stand and observe the coyote, while the prairie dogs inside the tunnels will run out to join the ones already standing to watch as well.
For domestic dogs, the response from prairie dogs is to observe while standing in the same place where they were before the alarm was sounded, with the underground prairie dogs also coming out to watch.
There is an ongoing debate over whether the alarm calling the behavior of prairie dogs is selfish or selfless. These rodents may alert others to the presence of a threat so they can protect themselves.
However, there is also a chance that the prairie dog calls are meant to cause panic and confusion in the groups and cause the other rodents to be more conspicuous to the predator than the caller.
Studies of the black-tailed prairie dogs also suggest that alarm-calling is a method of kin selection, as it has been noticed that a prairie dog’s call often alerts both offspring and non-descended kin, like cousins, nieces, and nephews.
Prairie dogs who had kin close by called out more often than their counterparts who did not have. Also, the caller may try to make himself more visible to the predator.
However, predators find determining which prairie dog makes the call challenging because of its “ventriloquistic” nature.
We may agree that the most striking of all the prairie dog’s modes of communication is the territorial call or the “jump-yip” display of the black-tailed prairie dog.
The black-tailed prairie dog will throw forefeet into the air while stretching the length of its body vertically and making a call. When one prairie dog makes a jump, it also causes others nearby to create one.
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