[4] The prairie dog habitat has been affected by direct removal by farmers, and the more obvious encroachment of urban development, which has greatly reduced their populations.

[5] The 1804 journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition note that in September 1804, they "discovered a Village of an animal the French Call the Prairie Dog".

[11] Prairie dogs are stout-bodied rodents that, on average, are 30 to 40 cm (12 to 16 in) long, including the short tail, and weigh between 0.5 and 1.5 kilograms (1 and 3 lb).

Black-tailed prairie dogs in South Dakota eat western bluegrass, blue grama, buffalo grass, six weeks fescue, and tumblegrass,[16] while Gunnison's prairie dogs eat rabbit brush, tumbleweeds, dandelions, saltbush, and cacti in addition to buffalo grass and blue grama.

Sometimes, the entrances are simply flat holes in the ground, while at other times, they are surrounded by mounds of soil either left as piles or hard-packed.

They live in large colonies or "towns", and collections of prairie dog families can span hundreds of acres.

When two prairie dogs encounter each other at the edges of their territories, they stare, make bluff charges, flare their tails, chatter their teeth, and sniff each other's perianal scent glands.

Behaviors that signal that a female is in estrus include underground consorting, self-licking of genitals, dust-bathing, and late entrances into the burrow at night.

In addition to nursing the young, the mother also defends the nursery chamber and collects grass for the nest.

Supporters of the theory that prairie dogs are communal breeders state that another reason for this type of infanticide is so that the female can get a possible helper.

Using its dichromatic color vision, it can detect predators from a great distance; it then alerts other prairie dogs of the danger with a special, high-pitched call.

Constantine Slobodchikoff and others assert that prairie dogs use a sophisticated system of vocal communication to describe specific predators.

According to Slobodchikoff, these calls, with their individuality in response to a specific predator, imply that prairie dogs have highly developed cognitive abilities.

[20] Predators, though, seem to have difficulty determining which prairie dog is making the call due to its "ventriloquistic" nature.

[27] A black-tailed prairie dog stretches the length of its body vertically and throws its forefeet into the air while making a call.

[29] Nevertheless, prairie dogs are often identified as pests and exterminated from agricultural properties because they are capable of damaging crops, as they clear the immediate area around their burrows of most vegetation.

[30] As a result, prairie dog habitat has been affected by direct removal by farmers, as well as the more obvious encroachment of urban development, which has greatly reduced their populations.

[32] In spite of human encroachment, prairie dogs have adapted, continuing to dig burrows in open areas of western cities.

[33] One common concern, which led to the widespread extermination of prairie dog colonies, was that their digging activities could injure horses[34] by fracturing their limbs.

Fish and Wildlife Service plans to distribute an oral vaccine it had developed by unmanned aircraft or drones.

[37] Until 2003, primarily black-tailed prairie dogs were collected from the wild for the exotic pet trade in Canada, the United States, Japan, and Europe.

[40] They can be difficult pets to care for, requiring regular attention and a very specific diet of grasses and hay.

In mid-2003, due to cross-contamination at a Madison, Wisconsin-area pet swap from an unquarantined Gambian pouched rat imported from Ghana, several prairie dogs in captivity acquired monkeypox, and subsequently a few humans were also infected.

This led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue a joint order banning the sale, trade, and transport within the United States of prairie dogs (with a few exceptions).

[49] Prairie dogs that were in captivity at the time of the ban in 2003 were allowed to be kept under a grandfather clause, but were not to be bought, traded, or sold, and transport was permitted only to and from a veterinarian under quarantine procedures.

[50] On 8 September 2008, the FDA and CDC rescinded the ban, making it once again legal to capture, sell, and transport prairie dogs.

Major European Prairie Dog Associations, such as the Italian Associazione Italiana Cani della Prateria, remain against import from the United States, due to the high death rate of wild captures.

[53][54] Several zoos in Europe have stable prairie dog colonies that generate enough surplus pups to saturate the EU internal demand, and several associations help owners to give adoption to captive-born animals.

[59][60] The same term is also vulgar slang to refer to one who is on the verge of defecating (often involuntarily), with the implication that fecal matter has already begun partially exiting the anus.

[61] The Amarillo Sod Poodles, a minor league baseball team, use a nickname for prairie dogs as their cognomen.