A Type of Talking Dog

The prairie dog doesn't seem very closely related to a dog in its looks or demeanor but we're all animal lovers here so I thought this story would appeal to you.

Scientists have been studying these cute little creatures and have made a startling discovery: prairie dogs have one of the most advanced languages of all animals, coming second only to the human language. As you can imagine this came as a bit of a shock because of the widely held opinion that primates or sophisticated mammals (e.g. dolphins) were better communicators.

Professor Slobodchikoff studied the prairie dogs' alarm calls and told the Telegraph that they use a number of different warning calls for different situations. For example when a badger tries to enter their colony (or town as it's called) they have a specific call, which is different to when a coyote enters the colony. If a hawk enters, there is a different call again.

Why would they have different calls? Because for each of those animals a different response is required to protect themselves:

Badgers: They try to dig into the prairie dogs' burrows.
Prairie Dog Response: Go deep into their burrows to avoid being discovered.

Coyotes: Try to covertly creep up on the prairie dogs.
Prairie Dog Response: Stand by their burrows, alert to any predator.

The really interesting part is they react the same way when a recording of their own call is played back to them, showing they understand the varying calls.

Prairie dogs are actually rodents native to North America and are otherwise known as gound squirrels. They do however have one thing in common with dogs, apart from their name, and that is the fact that they have a warning call that is just like a barking dog (see and hear for yourself in the video below):

Prairie Dog Barking 

...ok it doesn't sound that much like a barking dog but only because it has such a high pitch 'voice'. I'm sure it would sound more like a dog at a lower pitch but think about what this prairie dog is saying!

These animals, just like dogs and cats, can show great afection to one another as can be seen in this video:

Kissing Prairie Dogs

Well that's prairie dogs but what about your dog? Does yours have a strange bark or you think they can talk to you in some way, please let me know. I'll happily feature your pet on this website. Send me a photo or a video link of your pet and tell me a funny/interesting fact about them.

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