Prairie Dogs Are The OG Sh*t Talkers.

underneath these vast grasslands of North America lives the single most important species of its ecosystem they rule the Prairie From The Underground building burrows for other species fertilizing the land and barking incessantly at documentary filmmakers this is the prairie dog [Music] hi I'm Danielle dufo and you're watching animal logic right now I'm standing in the middle of a gigantic prairie dog colony in grasslands National Park Saskatchewan this park is home to a species called the black-tailed prairie dog which can be found from the Prairies of Canada down to the Chihuahua Desert of northern Mexico you got to be careful when you're checking out a prairie dog's hole that sounds gross wow foreign [Music] despite their name prairie dogs are not in fact dogs which becomes immediately clear as soon as you see one they are in fact members of the Sierra Day family and are closely related to the chunky marmots the adorable Chipmunks and the tree rats that destroy my bird feeder every year but unlike your adorable and slightly terrifying neighborhood squirrels these cuties live in the ground it can get pretty hot where they live so they've evolved a pretty neat trick become a pancake this behavior is known as splooting they'll find a cold patch of ground and spread out their body to radiate their heat into it it's this Summer's coolest trend there's one right in front of me a prairie dog okay he just squeaked and sounded the alarm to let his other prairie dog friends know that somebody's here who shouldn't be hi of course I mean no harm all around me I can hear the calls of the prairie dogs as I walk through their colony which is actually called a dog town or as I like to call it squeakopolis these calls are part of a highly complex and nuanced language prairie dog vocabulary is more advanced than any other animal language that scientists have been able to decode but right now I think they're just telling me to scram they are literally on every single side of me and it's interesting because as soon as one raises the alarm that alarm spreads from one Dent to the next you see one pop up from the hole start screaming and then other ones start popping up and screaming in tandem with them and that kind of like travels down like a shock wave of sorts it's very interesting alert calls are a big part of their vocabulary and while to an untrained ear it all sounds like a dog's chew toy they can actually get very descriptive oh my gosh this colony is just making a racket they're communicating among each other to let each other know what they're seeing and all of those squeaks and chirps have very specific meanings there are a lot of sounds that's for sure the massive colonies are made up of family units called coderies the families usually consist of one breeding male several females as well as their pups these Sister Wives will stick together their entire lives while the males will move on and try to find other females to mate with every year typical the families even have their own language allowing them to tell kin from stranger they don't just have cute sounds they have a multitude of cute sounds they all mean something very specific they've developed pretty much their own language despite their massive numbers they only mate once a year in early winter and females only enter estrus for a single hour one hour once a year she'll have a litter of three to eight pups and only half of them will survive their first year these little families are super tight-knit though they're not always very good neighbors the males are super protective about their Harem and won't hesitate to try and bite any trespassers there is also a theory that family units will call out to alert a predator to start a jump Yip what dogs would call a howl and then quickly they'll shut up so when the Predator is closer it's the other families that are making lots of noise and calling attention to themselves wherever you find large colonies of animals you're also bound to find large amounts of their bones so I just found a little lower jaw see how deep it is back here there's a lot of room for muscle attachment the more muscle you've got to work that jaw the stronger your bite force is I didn't just find a job I also found a skull look at this beauty you see these sharpen sizers at the front yeah you don't want to get bit by that it could do a lot of damage these incisors will keep on growing their entire lives because they need to keep using them every single day for every little thing they don't just use them for eating they also use it for maintenance they keep their area as tidy as possible so they always have a clear vantage point you hadn't already guessed given the setting black-tailed prairie dogs primarily eat grass but they are opportunistic and will eat forbs Roots Sagebrush and cacti even insects given the chance so this prairie dog spotted me sounded an alarm and then scampered off from that hole to the next one hoping to lose me the holes that they pop out of are part of a vast underground network of tunnels the biggest dog Town ever discovered was 64 000 square kilometers which is just a bit larger than Manhattan oh my gosh this prairie dog really knows how to pick a home right at the exit to his burrow he's got this incredible View look at all that oh I'm just gonna have a romantic sunset with my new friend the prairie dog these Mega dog towns can be home to as many as 400 million prairie dogs at a time but since their tunnel networks are so massive a lot of other species use them for shelter you definitely need to be cautious while approaching a prairie dog's Den because you never know what kind of animal might actually spring out of it as a keystone species of the Prairies the Burrows they dig serve us homes for all kinds of prairie dwellers such as short horned lizards burrowing owls and Swift foxes these are just a few of the dangers that prairie dogs have to deal with with such massive colonies prairie dogs are the number one source of food for many grassland predators in fact prairie dog support at least 136 other species in the grasslands which is nice for the 136 other species but kind of sucks for the prairie dogs thanks for taking one for the team Little Buddies foreign there are two advantages are that they can call out to alert their compatriots of danger and they can escape through their massive winding network of tunnels it's Sunset and things are getting wild in the dog town right now we're experiencing some of the incredible pressures that prairie dogs experience there is a coyote out there scanning for its next meal as well as a burrowing owl don't envy these guys right now [Music] coyotes have been observed teaming up with Badgers in order to hunt prairie dogs coyotes are built for Speed but they're too big to pursue their prey into tunnels Badgers on the other hand are clunky Runners but built for digging and so they have formed a mutualistic relationship the coyote will chase the prairie dogs on land and when they run into a tunnel The Bachelor will be waiting inside having gone in from the other side [Music] the prairie dog is already underground the badger will charge in to flush it out where the coyote will be waiting these prairie dogs are pretty much the Cornerstone of the ecosystem here in grasslands National Park they play a role for just about every species out here because they are such an important prey species when their numbers take a hit it releases a wave through their habitat that has a profoundly negative impact on the species that rely on them to survive prairie dog numbers have gone down by 95 percent since Europeans arrived in North America part of this is due to the Bubonic plague brought to North America by Rats on ships which decimated prairie dog populations in the 1800s yet the plague still persists today and when it hits a colony it will wipe it off the map the other big impact we've had on them is destroying their habitats to create Farmland cattle elk Rays prairie dogs and quickly will eat all the food that would otherwise be consumed by the prairie dogs as grazing competition for cattle and being potentially destructive for crops many farmers have seen these prairie dogs as pests and have thus eradicated them from many of their natural ranges as a result of all of this the black-footed ferret which is a species of ferret that has evolved to primarily eat prairie dogs is endangered they've tragically been extirpated from the park sadly there's just not enough prairie dogs to go around anymore here in grasslands National Park despite the hundreds of prairie dogs that you see around me there are still not enough to reintroduce the black-footed ferret into the park but there are several ongoing conservation programs and hopefully soon we will see a Resurgence of the prairie dogs and the many endangered animals that rely on them oh I heard the squeak and I see him now there's a prairie dog straight ahead of me we'll approach cautiously see how close we can get oh they're so small and so sweet like fuzzy baked potatoes always sees me now hmm curious though this one's small and doesn't seem to have the black tip of the tail I dare say it's actually a ground squirrel black-tailed prairie dogs share the park with the more Northerly Richardson's ground squirrel commonly called the Prairie gopher they can be tough to tell apart from a distance as they are quite similar looking but the ground squirrels are about half the size of the prairie dogs and they lack their characteristic black tipped tail the females live in social groups made up of only their female kin the males on the other hand do not socialize with anyone as a result they get into some pretty epic confrontations oh my gosh I can see two tussling over here I'm gonna try and catch up to them [Music] Andres can you see these guys teslan oh yeah they're playing a game of tag or something [Music] foreign [Music] it's really Bittersweet leaving this place I'm very happy to see it thriving but I am sad to leave it bye grasslands hope to see you again soon [Music] so what should we talk about next please let me know in the comments and be sure to subscribe for new episodes every week thank you for watching and see ya thank you ever tell me that the Prairies are boring or I will have to drag you here myself [Music]

Channel: Animalogic

Views: 1,212,838

Keywords: animals, animal, logic, education, animalogic, crazy, ugly, weird, gross, beautiful, interesting, facts, about, information, research, learn, learning, 4k, nature documentary, nature doc, floralogic, second nature, black tailed prairie dog, prairie dog, coyote, prairie, ground squirrel, goffer, snake, rattlesnake, prairie rattlesnake, prairie dog language, complex language, shit talker, animals talking, alan, steve, al, mating, animal fighting, predation, predator, prey, hunt, badgers, coyote and badger, mutualism

Id: LY22b8kx240

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023