The prairie dog is a social, large ground squirrel that lives in under ground burrows called towns, which can have tens of thousands of residents and extend for miles. The towns are split into wards made up of prairie dog family groups called coteries or clans. These wards can have up to 70 different burrow entrances as well as separate chambers for sleeping, rearing young and eliminating waste. They are active during the day and spend most of their time looking for food.

Chiefly herbivorous, prairie dogs feed on grasses, leafy plants, seeds, roots and occasionally insects. Some species will also eat various grasses, tumbleweeds, dandelions, saltbush and cacti. They spend most of the day looking for food because they do not store food in their burrows.

They have short gestation periods lasting about 28 to 32 days and can give birth to as many as eight pups and as few as three. The young spend their first six weeks in the burrow nursing and are considered full-grown adults at five months.

With a combination of their sharp warning calls and dichromatic color vision, they can both spot predators from long distances and alert the town using specific calls to identify different threats. Their most common enemies are hawks, owls, eagles, snakes, ravens, coyotes, badgers and ferrets. The population has declined since the turn of the century, when estimates had the prairie dog population of the North American grasslands in the millions.

Native to the grasslands of North America, they can be found in Canada and various U.S. states and can live as far south as Mexico.