Togetherness—Prairie Dog Style
A prairie dog sounds the alarm, alerting the whole town about an impending danger, such as a coyote, a ferret, or a person. The rest take up the call, and as the danger approaches each burrow the inhabitants duck underground. The others continue to stand erect and sound the warning. By listening carefully, those underground can track the location of the enemy. When two high-pitched notes are sounded, all rush for cover, for that means a hawk is overhead or nearby and there’s no time to wait and repeat the signal. After the danger has disappeared, a dog sounds a melodic whistle, and a few others repeat the all-clear before the usual activities of grooming, breeding, eating, and burrow building are resumed. Blacktails make at least seven other calls, but they mostly concern matters of interest to the coterie, or family, instead of to the whole town.
After spending a little more than a month below ground, newborn pups warily venture into the daylight, closely watched by their mother. They soon lose their timidness, venturing farther and farther from the burrow but remaining obedient to mother’s commands. Most of the first few weeks on the surface are spent mauling, kissing, or grooming each other and their parents. As the weeks go by, the adults tolerate less play and the pups learn more and more day-to-day survival responsibilities.
A prairie dog eats a blade of grass sitting on its haunches. After falling over a few times, pups soon learn this dining posture. The dogs eat various grasses and forbs, though for different periods they tend to ignore some plants in favor of others. However, they usually clip off all vegetation around their burrows even if they don’t eat it. This habitual grass-cutting apparently is defensive, for predators can conceal themselves better in tall grasses. That is why you don’t see prairie dogs in lush grasslands where there is a bountiful rainfall. They satisfy most of their needs for water with the juices of green plants and grass roots.
Prairie dogs also eat insects that inhabit their towns and sometimes prey upon the eggs or young of animals, such as the burrowing owl, that dwell in homes deserted by prairie dogs.