| Location: |
South Dakota, Wind Cave National Park |
| Date: |
2009JUL09 and 2009AUG16-2009AUG18 |
| Observer: |
Peter Leitheiser |
| Summary: |
Black tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) town. |
Wind cave national park has a black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) town.
The striking thing about these squirrels is the massive areas they populate and their high level of sociability.
The park levied heavy fined for feeding the prairie dogs – mostly because some tourists had fed the prairie dogs from their vehicles (drive-thru squirrel feeding), resulting in prairie dogs begging along the road and becoming roadkill.
But this old prairie dog by a rest stop still though I might have something for her, anyway.
It's not surprising to find out prairie dogs, like nearly every other squirrel, has an alarm call – the “bark” that probably contributed to their name. What is surprising is the finding in the last few years about how much information is contained in this call.
Not only do prairie dogs have unique calls for different predators: hawks, coyotes, domestic dogs, and humans – yes, they have a unique call for humans – but they are also able to encode information about the size, shape, color, approach speed, and threat level (Slobodchikoff, 2009). So the call might encode the following information: “A thin human with a yellow shirt is approaching slowly.” Prairie dogs also generate new calls for novel stimulus, such as animals they've never seen before (Slobodchikoff, 2009).
I'm really startled by what Slobodchikoff's studies have revealed. Prairie dog communication is far more complex than I would have ever guessed, and our ignorance of the animal world is such that until recently, no one noticed .
But although they are interesting, prairie dogs aren't well liked. Classified as a pest by both government and ranchers, partly because of largely overstated estimates of competition with cattle for grass, and fear that cattle would break their legs stepping in the burrows, the US government spent tens of millions of dollars on poisoning campaigns beginning in the early 1900's (Slobodchikoff, 2009). That, combined with habitat destruction, plague epidemics, and shooting, brought the black-tailed prairie dog to the “brink of extinction by the early 1970's.” (Hoogland, 1995).
By recent estimates of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the number of hectares occupied by black-tailed prairie dogs has grown since the 1970's, at least enough to take them off the list considered for endangered or threatened status (Slobodchikoff, 2009). But prairie dogs are still seen as a pest; ranchers generally want them dead, sport hunters spend millions of dollars each year to shoot them, and the government subsidizes poisoning or shooting prairie dogs that stray from public land (Slobodchikoff, 2009). In many ways the prairie dog story seems similar to that of the buffalo – a once ubiquitous animal of the American prairie made rare by human intervention.
Works Cited:
Hoogland, J. L. (1995). The Black-Tailed Prairie Dog: Social Life of a Burrowing Mammal. University of Chicago Press.
Slobodchikoff, C. N., Perla, B. S., Verdolin, J. L. (2009). Praire Dogs: Communication and Community in an Animal Society. Harvard University Press.
Report and Photos by Peter Leitheiser