Prairie Dogs Sound Alarms In Living Color

Prairie dogs have dichromatic vision, a form of color blindness in which only two of the three primary colors can be recognized.

Researchers studying the prairie dogs in the U.S. Midwest have discovered that the animals can not only sound the alarm of an approaching predator, but they also can communicate such details as the colors it might be sporting.

Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and colleagues had previously documented the different alarm calls the ground animals make in response to humans, coyotes, domestic dogs and hawks.

In their latest study, three comparable-sized human females walked through a prairie dog colony wearing one of three different colored shirts.

The alarm calls for the blue and yellow shirts were found to be significantly different, but the calls for the green shirt were not that much different from the calls for the yellow shirt.

Published in the journal Animal Cognition, the study confirmed beliefs that the prairie dogs have the ability to communicate complex details about potential predators.

Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service