A Career Studying the Sophisticated Vocabulary of Prairie Dogs – The Human Evolution Blog

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A Career Studying the Sophisticated Vocabulary of Prairie Dogs

August 18, 2015

7–11 minutes

(A longer discussion of Animal Vocabulary can be found in my book.)

Who would have thought that Prairie Dogs, seen by many as nothing but hole-digging nuisances, would have a rich vocabulary? Professor Con Slobodchikoff has spent nearly 30 years studying these small rodents and he spoke with me about the many things his research group has discovered.

(Prairie Dog Photo by Joe Ravi.)<br>Professor Slobodchikoff didn’t set out to work with Prairie Dogs at all. He set up his research lab at Northern Arizona University studying a small flightless beetle that sprays noxious chemicals on would-be predators. Suddenly, Slobodchikoff developed a severe allergy to those secretions. This forced him to halt his work and seek other research subjects for his budding career, a risky move for a junior faculty member on the tenure track.

"My entire research career was going down the drain!" says Slobodchikoff.

As he pondered his next move, he looked out the window in rural Arizona and saw some prairie dogs scurrying about.

Photo by Gunnar Ries<br>" data-large-file="https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-10-55-49-pm.png?w=701" class="wp-image-616 size-medium" src="https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-10-55-49-pm.png?w=300&h=223" alt="Photo by Gunnar Ries" width="300" height="223" srcset="https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-10-55-49-pm.png?w=300 300w, https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-10-55-49-pm.png?w=600 600w, https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-10-55-49-pm.png?w=150 150w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Photo by Gunnar Ries<br>Slobodchikoff began with the prairie dogs by studying what he knew best: predator-prey relationships. It wasn’t long before he noticed what others had already documented: prairie dogs warn each other when they see a predator. He observed prairie dogs make chirping sounds when they spotted a predator and how other dogs then responded by taking cover in their burrows, responding to the calls that others had made, rather than because they had seen the predator themselves.

He also noticed that the behaviors of the prairie dogs did not always follow the same pattern. He noticed that when a prairie dog sounds the alarm when she spots a hawk, the other dogs respond by running to their burrow holes and diving deep down inside the tunnels immediately. However, when a prairie dog spots a coyote and makes a call, the other dogs run to the entrance of the burrow, but do not dive down. Instead, they stand at the entrance and look around. The question he asked was, “How did the dogs know which predator was threatening when the look out gave the signal?”

Photo by Marci Saját<br>" data-large-file="https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-11-00-19-pm.png?w=892" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-617 size-large" src="https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-11-00-19-pm.png?w=1024&h=579" alt="Photo by Marci Saját" srcset="https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-11-00-19-pm.png?w=660 660w, https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-11-00-19-pm.png?w=150 150w, https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-11-00-19-pm.png?w=300 300w, https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-11-00-19-pm.png?w=768 768w, https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/screen-shot-2015-08-14-at-11-00-19-pm.png 892w" sizes="(max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px" />Photo by Marci Saját<br>To answer this, he and his team watched the prairie dogs and, every time a predator appeared in the field, they took audio recordings of the sounds the prairie dogs made. They then took the recordings back to the lab, converted them to sonograms, and analyzed them statistically. They found that the prairie dogs make a different alarm sound for different kinds of predators!

To test their hypothesis, Slobodchikoff’s team performed “playback experiments” in which they set up loudspeakers, played recorded calls, and observed if the listening prairie dogs responded appropriately. (I have previously written about this clever kind of experiment as it was performed by Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth with vervet monkeys. Plenty of others have, also.

Photo by Brocken Inaglory<br>" data-large-file="https://thehumanevolutionblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/800px-kissing_prairie_dog_edit_3.jpg?w=800" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-637"...