Adorable prairie dogs become serial killers
Prairie dogs kill ground squirrels to remove competition for food and space
Prairie dogs kill ground squirrels to remove competition
The Wyoming ground squirrel and the slightly larger white-tailed prairie dog live in similar open habitat in the western United States. They are also similar in colour, they both burrow and both are herbivores, which means they mostly eat grass.
But a new study by Dr. Charles Brown, a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Tulsa, and colleagues, has found a very surprising behaviour, never observed before. The seemingly harmless prairie dogs seek out and kill ground squirrels, usually babies, to reduce competition for shared resources.
The study found that female prairie dogs do most of the killing. Those that kill the most squirrels - becoming so-called serial killers - have three times more babies than prairie dogs that do not kill.
Related Links
- Paper in The Royal Society Biological Sciences
- The Atlantic article
- Discovery News article
- National Geographic article
- Interview with co-author on As It Happens