Talkative prairie dogs chat with `an advanced language`

Prairie dogs chat in one of the most advanced and sophisticated languages in the animal kingdom - second only to humans.

London: Prairie dogs, the burrowing rodents found in the Great Plains of North America, may appear to be a kind of nervous ground squirrel at a first glance. But, a new study has now revealed that they are some of the nature`s most talkative creatures, who chat in one of the most advanced and sophisticated languages in the animal kingdom -- second only to humans.

Biologists, led by Prof Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University, have found that the prairie dogs` squeaky bark contains surprising amounts of information which describe colours, size, directions of travel and even speed. According to them, the prairie dogs communicate by using loud alarm calls when predators enter their territories, to alert other members of the colony of a threat; and they use specific calls for different types of predator. "There is quite a lot of variation between the alarm calls used by prairie dogs. The call for a coyote is different from that for a badger which is also different for the call for a hawk. "This makes sense because the prairie dogs have different evasion responses for each type of predator. Coyotes for example, hunt by surprise so the prairie dogs run to the entrances of their burrows and stand up to watch for threat. "Badgers can dig down into the burrows, however, so the prairie dogs run to their burrows and hunker down to avoid being seen and attracting the threat to their burrow. "When no predators were around and the calls were played back through loud speakers, the prairie dogs still responded to the relevant threat, which shows they understood the calls," Slobodchikoff was quoted by a daily mail. In fact, in their study, the biologists found that for humans the barks described the size and shape, the colour of clothes and the speed of travel. For domestic dogs, the barks described the shape of the dog and the coat colour. "This may be useful as even within species of predator there`ll be different hunting methods so the extra information can help them distinguish between individual predators. "One coyote might walk casually around a colony until it sees a prairie dog far enough away from its burrow before rushing at it, while another might sit outside a burrow and wait for a prairie dog to stick its head out," Slobodchikoff said. PTI