the.com/prairie dog
a rodent that built democracy, dialects, and underground cities while you were doomscrolling.
means A burrowing, social ground squirrel of North American grasslands that lives in large colonies and barks a warning call.
from French explorers on the Great Plains called it chien de prairie, 'dog of the meadow,' charmed not by any resemblance to a dog but by its sharp, yapping alarm call — and 'prairie dog' is simply the English calque of that name. 'Prairie' itself comes through French from Latin pratum, 'meadow,' while the 'dog' is pure barking metaphor: it is no dog at all but a rodent in the squirrel family.
- complex language
- Calls describe predator size, color, and speed
- underground metropolis
- One colony covered 25,000 square miles, billions strong
- social kissing
- They greet by touching teeth to identify kin
- ecosystem keystone
- Over 130 species depend on their towns
- not dogs
- They are squirrels named for barking alarms
black-tailed prairie dog — largest prairie dog colonies in western plains, with janos colony in mexico spanning 1.4 million acres historically
gunnison's prairie dog — endemic to colorado, utah, arizona, new mexico; listed as threatened species since 1998
utah prairie dog — rarest prairie dog species, fewer than 5,000 individuals remaining in southwestern utah