Animal · United States, Mexico, Canada
Black-tailed prairie dog
Cynomys ludovicianus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The black-tailed prairie dog is not a dog at all but a stout ground squirrel that digs huge burrow towns on the plains of North America. Its barking alarm call gave the animal its misleading name.
Picture credit: Liuthalas (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Photos of Japan (CC0) · James St. John (CC BY 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the black-tailed prairie dog live?
Home: Dry short-grass prairie of the North American plains.
In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States, Mexico, Canada.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 36-43 cm long, plus a black-tipped tail of 8-10 cm. It weighs about 1 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
Prairie dogs live in colonies that people call towns, and a town is split into small family plots, usually one male with three or four females and their young. Every burrow has a raised rim of earth that keeps rainwater out and makes a good lookout post. When a hawk or a coyote appears, sentries bark an alarm, and studies suggest the calls differ depending on what kind of danger is coming. Once the danger has passed, an animal throws its front paws up and yips, and the signal ripples across the town. The largest town ever described, in Texas, was said to hold millions of animals; today prairie dogs occupy only a small part of the land they once covered.
Find it on the globe
Black-tailed prairie dog is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Is a prairie dog really a dog?
No. It is a rodent, closely related to ground squirrels and marmots. Early settlers named it after its sharp barking call, not after its looks.
How deep are prairie dog burrows?
Most tunnels run about one and a half metres below the surface and can be many metres long, with separate chambers for sleeping and for the young. The raised rim at the entrance keeps rain out.
Why do prairie dogs bark?
Barking is their alarm system. Sentries warn the colony when a predator appears, and researchers have found that the calls vary with the kind of danger, so the others know whether to watch the sky or the ground.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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