Pious, playful prairie dogs
They are extraordinary creatures - good housekeepers, with different chambers for nurseries and toilets. And yes, they pray, with eyes closed and front paws folded, as in a namaste.
I had never really given any thought to the matter, so I continued to assume that prairie dogs were a species of dog. Not so, said a friend, and went on to tell me that these “dogs” were a kind of “middle ground between the rabbit and the squirrel,” that they were 12 to 16 inches long, and lived in underground burrows in large groups, mainly in the American Southwest.
More than that, he said, they were extraordinary creatures -- they prayed to the sun, and had a language probably “second only to humans in its complexity.” Except for farmers, almost everyone has a good word for them (‘charismatic’ is one of them). A 19th century American writer, George Wilkins Kendal says in his account of the Texas Santa Fe Expedition: “In their habits, they are clannish, social and extremely convivial… They are a wild, frolicsome, madcap set of fellows when undisturbed…and appear to take special delight in chattering away the time, and visiting from hole to hole to gossip…”
And yes, they pray, with eyes closed and front paws folded as in a namaste. Several people who have observed prairie dogs over a period of time say that half an hour before sunrise and sunset prairie dogs stand facing the sun “with their little paws in a prayer position,” for anything up to thirty minutes.
Dr Con Slobodichikoff, who is Professor Emeritus at North Arizona University, has been studying the language of prairie dogs for over thirty years. He has recorded and analysed the various sounds they make when they see predators such as hawks, coyotes, domestic dogs and human beings. (His book, “Chasing Doctor Doolittle: Learning the Language of Animals”, 2012, deals in part with prairie dogs, crows, ravens and vervet monkeys). He and his team trapped some of the animals and painted them with fur dye to identify each one.
He says in an article, “They’re able to describe the colour of clothes the humans are wearing, they’re able to describe the size and shape of humans. In one tenth of a second they can say, ‘Tall thin human wearing blue shirt walking slowly across the colony.’
Complex speech is probably common within the animal kingdom, he says. If we are surprised by this or don’t look into it it’s probably because we don’t think they have the intelligence. (And when humans behave badly we say they are behaving like animals!)
The acclaimed naturalist, environmentalist and writer, Terry Tempest Williams says in an interview about her book “Finding Beauty in a Broken World,” (Paperback 2009) that it includes both prairie dogs and Rwandan refugees.
She says, “The plight of the prairie dog, the extermination of a species, and the extermination of a people are predicated on the same impulse: prejudice, cruelty, ignorance and arrogance… until we can begin to see the world whole, even holy, we are destined to this fractured, fragmented, disconnected world that literally creates the seabed of war.”
For obvious reasons, I’ve had to rely mainly on research for this column. But I have had some experience of listening to animals talk, in the case of my two dogs, for instance. Or rather, one talks and the other listens. It’s like listening to a foreign language. One can get a rough idea from the intonation---is he grumbling, complaining? On the one occasion I happened to be there, the dog who was listening stood up and patted the other dog’s face with his paw.
I had never really given any thought to the matter, so I continued to assume that prairie dogs were a species of dog. Not so, said a friend, and went on to tell me that these “dogs” were a kind of “middle ground between the rabbit and the squirrel,” that they were 12 to 16 inches long, and lived in underground burrows in large groups, mainly in the American Southwest.
More than that, he said, they were extraordinary creatures -- they prayed to the sun, and had a language probably “second only to humans in its complexity.” Except for farmers, almost everyone has a good word for them (‘charismatic’ is one of them). A 19th century American writer, George Wilkins Kendal says in his account of the Texas Santa Fe Expedition: “In their habits, they are clannish, social and extremely convivial… They are a wild, frolicsome, madcap set of fellows when undisturbed…and appear to take special delight in chattering away the time, and visiting from hole to hole to gossip…”
Members of a family group, we are told, “interact through oral contact or ‘kissing’ and grooming one another, never with prairie dogs from another family group.” They are also fastidious housekeepers, with different chambers for nurseries, toilets, for the night and for winter.
And yes, they pray, with eyes closed and front paws folded as in a namaste. Several people who have observed prairie dogs over a period of time say that half an hour before sunrise and sunset prairie dogs stand facing the sun “with their little paws in a prayer position,” for anything up to thirty minutes.
Dr Con Slobodichikoff, who is Professor Emeritus at North Arizona University, has been studying the language of prairie dogs for over thirty years. He has recorded and analysed the various sounds they make when they see predators such as hawks, coyotes, domestic dogs and human beings. (His book, “Chasing Doctor Doolittle: Learning the Language of Animals”, 2012, deals in part with prairie dogs, crows, ravens and vervet monkeys). He and his team trapped some of the animals and painted them with fur dye to identify each one.
He says in an article, “They’re able to describe the colour of clothes the humans are wearing, they’re able to describe the size and shape of humans. In one tenth of a second they can say, ‘Tall thin human wearing blue shirt walking slowly across the colony.’
Complex speech is probably common within the animal kingdom, he says. If we are surprised by this or don’t look into it it’s probably because we don’t think they have the intelligence. (And when humans behave badly we say they are behaving like animals!)
The acclaimed naturalist, environmentalist and writer, Terry Tempest Williams says in an interview about her book “Finding Beauty in a Broken World,” (Paperback 2009) that it includes both prairie dogs and Rwandan refugees.
She says, “The plight of the prairie dog, the extermination of a species, and the extermination of a people are predicated on the same impulse: prejudice, cruelty, ignorance and arrogance… until we can begin to see the world whole, even holy, we are destined to this fractured, fragmented, disconnected world that literally creates the seabed of war.”
For obvious reasons, I’ve had to rely mainly on research for this column. But I have had some experience of listening to animals talk, in the case of my two dogs, for instance. Or rather, one talks and the other listens. It’s like listening to a foreign language. One can get a rough idea from the intonation---is he grumbling, complaining? On the one occasion I happened to be there, the dog who was listening stood up and patted the other dog’s face with his paw.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's own. The opinions and facts expressed here do not reflect the views of Mirror and Mirror does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
