Size: 350 to 425 mm long and up to 1.4 kg in weight.

Habitat and Distribution: It occurs only in the dry grasslands of North America from South East Canada to Northern Mexico.

Age: Up to 5 years.

Groups and Breeding: The life of a Prairie Dog is surprisingly complex. They live in intricate networks of underground tunnels that generally have multiple openings to the surface. The burrows contain separate "rooms" for sleeping, rearing young, storing food and eliminating waste.

Each family (a male, 1to 4 females and their offspring) will live in what is known as a “coterie”. Although they may be highly protective of this “coterie”, they will cooperate with other Prairie Dogs in the area to look out for predators etc. A group of families cooperating in this manner is known as a “ward”. In turn, each ward will cooperate with other wards and form a “town” and again each town cooperates with others to form a “city” or “super colony”!

At an individual coterie level, male and females become sexually mature at 1 to 2 years, breed once a year with a gestation of about 30 days and will give birth to between 3 and 8 young.

Diet: They are a mainly herbivorous species feeding on grasses, although about 2 per cent of their diet is insects.

• They are not dogs at all but are actually related to squirrels. Prairie Dogs earned their name from settlers travelling west who thought their chirping alert calls sounded similar to dogs barking.
• Prairie Dogs have one of the most complex systems of communication in the natural world, including calls and displays to mark their territories, as warnings for different predator species and greetings. It is thought that there is even a small amount of grammar in their language!
• It was once thought that they actually kiss on greeting each other as they touch teeth together!
• In 1900, a huge Prairie Dog settlement was reported on the high plains of Texas. It extended 100 miles in one direction and 250 miles in the other. An estimated 400 million prairie dogs lived in this "city"!
• Prairie Dogs play an extremely important role in sustaining other prairie life. Biologists count more than 170 vertebrate species that are affected by the Prairie Dogs' existence, and it is thought that this is the only species that if it were completely to disappear, it would have a huge effect on the survival of other species. This kind of species is known as a ‘keystone species’.