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Prairie dogs

By Susan Tweit

Last updated on Wednesday, January 01, 2003

Prairie Dog Photo courtesy Byron Wright New Mexico Cooperative Extension Service.

Have you ever explored a cave? No matter what the conditions above ground, inside a cave the air remains a constant temperature - never too hot, never too cold, never too dry. No wonder then, that so many animals in the Southwest - from ants to black bears, spadefoot toads to rattlesnakes - spend part of their lives underground.

Prairie dogs, however, may be the Southwest's master burrowers. These chubby, short-tailed, foot-long relatives of ground squirrels use their muscular forelegs and stout claws to excavate networks of tunnels up to 15 feet long, as deep as 6 feet. They build a lookout post by mounding excavated earth around the burrow entrance; the donut-shaped mound also keeps water from flooding the burrow. Prairie dogs even ventilate their underground houses by building one entrance higher than the others to pull fresh air through the burrow like a chimney.

Prairie dogs spend their days above ground near their burrow entrances, eating grass, grooming one another, and watching for predators like badgers, hawks, eagles, coyotes, or bobcats. When one prairie dog barks a "danger" alert, all dive for their holes.

Prairie dogs are colonial critters, living in extensive colonies of hundreds to millions of individual animals. Each prairie dog colony is divided into half-acre neighborhoods called coteries, inhabited by one male, several females, and the young of the year. Coterie members greet each other by "kissing," gently touching noses and lips. 

Prairie dogs talk with sounds and body language. In fact, they have developed such a specific vocabulary that their alarm calls are precise. For instance one kind of bark might mean, "Tall human approaching!"

Like human cities, prairie dog colonies are home to multitudes of other creatures. Fleas, mites, lice, and other tiny grazers move into prairie dog burrows to feed on the occupants' droppings, skin flakes, and discarded food. Eventually, populations of these "pests" grow to the point that the prairie dogs may abandon the burrow. The temperate conditions of prairie dog tunnels also attract many kinds of larger animals. Some, like burrowing owls, take up residence after the original builders move out. Others, like rattlesnakes and black-footed ferrets, locate in active colonies, the better to hunt their hosts.

Billions of prairie dogs once lived in sprawling colonies throughout the dry grasslands from Alberta, Canada, to northern Mexico. One immense colony in Texas covered 25,000 square miles - the size of the state of West Virginia - and housed 400 million prairie dogs.

Prairie dogs are now absent from much of the West. Beginning in the early 1900s, they were poisoned by the billions in a mistaken effort to improve cattle grazing. Scientists now think that prairie dog tunneling actually enriches the soil; their grazing stimulates new grass growth. Far from being pests, these master burrowers and colony-builders are a necessary part of healthy grassland ecosystems.

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