Sentences with phrase «many prairie dogs»

(15 minutes away prairie dogs and horses roam, too!)

Little did I know that our team would encounter not only cows but also deer, moose, roadrunners, prairie dogs, route - blocking freight trains, hair - raising lightning storms and spoke - clogging tumbleweeds.

The black - footed ferret, never common, is about to flicker out and die as a species, victim of the poisons that are also wiping out the prairie dogs on which the ferret dines.

I love that time slows down and I notice things (rabbits, a fox, prairie dogs, flowers, birds) that I wouldn't see if I were speeding by in a car.

In the latest study, the team recorded the alarm calls as three similar - sized women wearing blue, yellow or green T - shirts walked past the prairie dogs 99 times.

PRAIRIE dogs talk some pretty colourful talk.

Ultimately, the application will be limited — just selected populations of prairie dogs that are either in ferret territory or endangered themselves, such as the Utah prairie dog (C. parvidens).

SPECIAL DELIVERY Normally, plague vaccine baits might be delivered on foot — dropped by hand in the vicinity of prairie dog colonies.

The ferrets survive on a diet of mostly prairie dogs and had nearly gone extinct in the 1970s due to centuries of habitat loss, prey declines and plague.

On the opposite side of the globe from Bale, on North America's Great Plains, Rocke's lab is testing an oral vaccine to protect prairie dogs and endangered ferrets from plague.

If the Wisconsin family's prairie dog had escaped, it might have infected wild rodents, thereby creating a permanent U.S. - based reservoir for the monkeypox virus.

But instead of returning with a puppy or parakeet, they purchased two prairie dogs.

After the monkeypox virus fiasco, the import of African rodents and trade in prairie dogs were banned.

(Plague can threaten prairie dog populations too, so everybody wins.)

Saving plague - ridden prairie dogs (Cynomys spp.) is an indirect way to protect the real target: an endangered predator, black - footed ferrets (Mustela nigripes) of the Great Plains.

WWF conjectures that one - quarter of this trade is illegal (at the time, selling prairie dogs was not illegal), making animal smuggling, after the drug trade, the most lucrative illegal activity in the world.

The prairies of the Upper Missouri River Basin are home to iconic species such as the prairie dog and provide critical habitat for many grassland birds, but they are losing ground to food production and, increasingly, to bioenergy crops.

So why would a female prairie dog take the risk to mate with multiple males?

These species are black - tailed, Gunnison's, Utah, and white - tailed prairie dogs.

«Why do female prairie dogs copulate with more than one male?

For Gunnison's and white - tailed prairie dogs, however, polyandrous females were less likely than monandrous females to survive until the next mating season.

To contain U.S. disease outbreaks spread by prairie dogs to ferrets, it's Kazakhstan's giant gerbils to the rescue

For the last 35 years, Hoogland has studied four species of prairie dogs living in grassland ecosystems within national parks or wildlife refuges in the western U.S..

«For most animals, including Utah and white - tailed prairie dogs, the truth about polyandry usually lies somewhere between these two extremes.»

If I had studied only Gunnison's prairie dogs, on the other hand, I would have concluded that both costs and benefits of polyandry dramatically affect female survivorship and female reproductive success,» says Hoogland.

«Multiple mates worth the risk for female prairie dogs.»

An excerpt from Todd Wilkinson's latest book looks at the media magnate's almost evangelical efforts to save the prairie dog — a passion that has earned him converts to his cause as well as the enmity of his fellow ranchers

If I had studied only black - tailed prairie dogs, I would have concluded that costs and benefits of polyandry are minimal.

Mating with more than one male increases reproductive success for female prairie dogs, despite an increase in risks.

After ranchers destroyed its prey, prairie dogs, the ferret disappeared.

Health investigators eventually traced the outbreak to 28 prairie dogs that had come in contact with an infected giant Gambian pouched rat while they were held together in a cage by a pet distributor in Illinois.

The health scare began when Schyan Kautzer, a 3 - year - old from Dorchester, Wisconsin, was bitten by her new pet prairie dog and developed a mild fever.

Today it is a national wildlife refuge, home to bald eagles that feast on its prodigious prairie dog population.

In the United States, plague cases tend to crop up in the bubonic form, usually among people in the American Southwest who have been exposed to prairie dogs or ground squirrels and their fleas.

They mostly feed on small mammals called prairie dogs.

Robert Pringle, an assistant professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton and co-author of the Science paper, said that the unexpected function of termites in savannas and grasslands suggests that ants, prairie dogs, gophers and other mound - building creatures could also have important roles in ecosystem health.

The same method might be used for the black - tailed prairie dog — removed from the endangered species list but still declining on the Great Plains and often infected by fleas with plague bacteria, Knutie says.

And prairie dogs have some color vision but can't tell red from green.

Scientists have argued that protecting the habitat of key species — such as large carnivores that need expanses of land, or organisms such as prairie dogs on which many others depend — would shelter additional species, thus offering a bigger bang for the conservation buck.

Throughout their analysis of plague in prairie dogs, they concluded that such diseases may «smolder» unnoticed in a population for years, rather than jump from species to species immediately before an outbreak.

Research scientist Salkeld and Antolin, professor and chair of biology in the College of Natural Sciences, assert that the swirl of ecological factors driving plague outbreaks in prairie dogs can lend key insights into the study of zoonotic diseases.

Plague doesn't usually kill people these days, but it's alive and well among the millions of ground - dwelling rodents of Colorado and other western states, notably the black - tailed prairie dog.

Colorado State University biologists say this sporadic ebb and flow of prairie dog plague is an ideal model for the study of rare infectious zoonotic disease — disease that can jump from wildlife to humans — like MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and Ebola.

«Plague - riddled prairie dogs a model for infectious disease spread.»

Throughout their study, Salkeld and Antolin found that grasshopper mice and coyotes that scavenge plague - killed prairie dogs can speed transmission of the disease by spreading the disease - carrying fleas.

They also found that an outbreak in a prairie dog colony might go unnoticed for years, because the animals are dying underground.

«It affects different hosts, including rats, prairie dogs and grasshopper mice.

As was widely reported on social media, the U.S. is indeed going to use aerial drones to spread vaccine - laced pellets among prairie dogs to save endangered ferrets, although, contrary to some reports, no M&M s will be involved.

Fortunately, the mass communications system also evolved an escape mechanism, namely, yet another viewing of the video of the sensational dramatic prairie dog (often taxonomically miscategorized as a dramatic chipmunk).

Between 10 - 20 people in the United States are infected each year from flea or rodent bites, mainly in the rural southwest where prairie dogs sometimes carry the bacterium.