What Dog Comes From the Prairie Dog Family

"Prairie-dogs are abundant...; they are in shape like little woodchucks, and are the most noisy and inquisitive animals imaginable. They are never found singly, just e'er in towns of several hundred inhabitants; and these towns are found in all kinds of places where the country is flat and treeless." Theodore Roosevelt

Black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus) in one case ranged the Great Plains from southern Saskatchewan to northern Mexico. Originally named "petits chiens," or "picayune dogs," by early on French explorers, these highly social animals are not actually dogs, but rodents. They are members of the Sciuridae or squirrel family unit, closely related to ground squirrels, chipmunks, woodchucks and marmots. There are five species of prairie dogs in North America, but only the blackness-tailed prairie canis familiaris inhabits Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Named for their bawl-like calls and blackness-tipped tail, blackness-tailed prairie dogs are small, brusk-tailed animals with eyes and minor ears gear up far back on their heads. Their light-brown fur blends well with the dirt of their mounds except when the animal has been blackened past burrowing into coal seams. Prairie dogs average 14 to 17 inches in length and weigh one to three pounds. With short, muscular legs and long-nailed toes on their front and hind feet, they are well equipped for a burrowing lifestyle.

A prairie dog colony or "town" consists of a large number of closely spaced burrows, each comprising an elaborate network of tunnels and multiple entrance holes that provide escape routes from pursuing predators. The chief prairie dog social unit of measurement is the "coterie," an acre or then of territory with 50 to sixty couch entrances that is occupied past a unmarried family unit group. A coterie typically consists of one adult male, several developed females, and their offspring. Members of a coterie are a closely knit group, recognizing each other by an identifying kiss or sniff. Their cohesiveness is maintained by the cooperative activities of raising young, constructing burrows, grooming, playing, and defending the coterie territory. The ascendant male is typically the most active in the defense of the coterie, patrolling its invisible borders and challenging all comers. Prairie dogs warn of territorial trespassers from adjacent coteries or approaching danger past emitting a serial of "barks," which audio more like high-pitched squeaks. Specific threats are associated with distinctive vox patterns that serve to alarm all residents of a town to the common threat.

Prairie dogs feed primarily on plants, selecting forbs and grasses high in moisture content and nutritive value to supply their needs for water and free energy. Grasses, far less resistant to foraging pressure than forbs, quickly disappear from the boondocks, which takes on a barren and overgrazed appearance. The open, closely-cropped terrain promotes easier social contacts and enables the commonage "thousand optics" of the residents to improve spot approaching danger. With reduced competition from grass species, forbs begin to increase in abundance, and shortly are joined by invading "weedy" plants like thistle and sage. Pronghorn and bison are attracted to feed in this modified customs, their trampling and wallowing further compacting the soil to maintain forb growth. Varying its diet so as not to feed on one species of plant exclusively, the prairie domestic dog practices its own brand of crop rotation. Fodder pressure on preferred plants is kept at tolerable levels and the customs thrives. This remainder may be upset by climatic changes that, if persistent, could forcefulness prairie dogs to abandon a boondocks. Recolonization may recur after when a more than favorable environs has allowed the erstwhile plant community to recover.

Prairie dogs build up big stores of body fatty to carry them through the fall and winter months. Dissimilar almost other members of their family, black-tailed prairie dogs do not hibernate. They may remain hush-hush for several days during periods of harsh conditions, but milder wintertime conditions let for towns bustling with activeness.

Mating occurs from March to early on Apr. Afterwards a month-long gestation period, the female bears a litter of one to half-dozen immature. Built-in blind and hairless, the pups stay in the couch for about six weeks while they develop fully. Emerging from the burrow, young prairie dogs are initially protected by their mothers. Weaning occurs presently thereafter, when the pups have begun to forage for themselves. Most animals spend their brief five- to seven-yr beingness within the coteries of a single town.

Prairie dogs are an important food source for many predators. Badgers, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, aureate eagles, and various hawks all take their price. Rattlesnakes and bullsnakes occasionally prey on the young. Prairie dogs rely on their splendid hearing, vision, and communication to avoid these predators. From their vantage point atop the couch mound, they tin mind and browse the sky and prairie for danger. Upon spotting an enemy and announcing its presence to the rest of the boondocks by barks and tail flicking, the prairie dog stays shut to its burrow entrance. If danger gets too close, the prairie dog dives into its burrow. Later the threat has passed, the prairie dogs emerge to requite an "all articulate" bespeak.

The number of prairie dogs a given area can support at whatever fourth dimension is based on the prevailing relations between a number of interacting environmental factors, one of which is predation. Other ecology pressures, such as climatic changes, shifts in the availability of edible plants, and outbreaks of illness all affect the size of prairie domestic dog populations. If predators fail to continue the numbers of prairie dogs in cheque, a population "smash" volition occur. The environmental balance is inevitably restored by a subsequent population "bosom," animals dying in large numbers from disease or starvation brought about by overcrowding and exhaustion of the town'south nutrient resource.

Like the bison, the prairie dog was once a major component of Peachy Plains life. Vast prairie canis familiaris towns stretched for miles beyond the open plains. In 1901, scientists surveyed a unmarried Texas "dog town" that covered an surface area of 25,000 square miles and contained an estimated 400,000,000 prairie dogs. But this town and others were already under sentences of decease. Nigh ranchers were convinced that prairie dogs were destroying rangelands and competing with cattle for food. Reluctance to acknowledge that poor livestock management practices and the wholesale elimination of prairie dog predators were at least contributing factors to the problem prompted extensive poisoning programs. These measures virtually eradicated the prairie dog and many of its predators, chief among them the black-footed ferret. Formerly the prairie dog's about dangerous enemy, ferret numbers have only recently been raised through captive breeding programs to a level where small populations are at present being released back into the wild (including Badlands National Park in South Dakota). Today, scattered populations of prairie dogs are found mainly in protected areas such as country and national parks, monuments, grasslands, and wild fauna refuges.

Warning: Delight do not feed prairie dogs. Human food is hard for prairie dogs to digest and often contains additives that tin make them ill. Recollect, too, that prairie dogs are wildlife and tin inflict a painful bite. They may also be host to fleas that can transmit bubonic plague to humans.

"Around the prairie-canis familiaris towns it is
e'er well to keep a look-out for
the smaller carnivora, especially
coyotes and badgers...and for
the larger kinds of hawks. Rattlesnakes
are quite plenty, living in the deserted
holes, and the latter are also the
homes of the little burrowing owls."

Theodore Roosevelt

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Source: https://www.nps.gov/thro/learn/nature/prairie-dogs.htm

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