Social Learning

Because of the possibility of kin selection within prairie dogs through the use of the anti- predator call and cooperative breeding, researchers often wonder what the cause of this kin selection may be. In addition, a high level of kin recognition accounted for a low level of inbreeding (Dobson, Chesser, Hoogland, Sugg, & Foltz, 1997). Evidence for this low level of inbreeding was that daughters would not mate with their fathers when their fathers where the only resident male (Dobson et al.). One then wonders, "What is the mechanism that prairie dogs use to recognize kin to increase their indirect fitness and prevent inbreeding?" Hoogland (1995) attibutes the ability of prairie dogs to determine the difference between kin and nonkin through the use of direct social learning or learning through "direct behavioral interactions with those kin" (pp. 211). Hoogland says that this direct social learning is limited to interactions within the home coterie territory and thus they learn to associate kin as those other prairie dogs that inhabit their home territory. Through this way, male prairie dogs also discriminate between their offspring. Those offspring that are located in areas in which they copulated they take part in the care of, while those offspring located in areas in which they did not copulate they do not help care for (Hoogland, 1995). In this way, the male prairie dog deals with paternity uncertainty.

Learning of the Anti- predator call

In addition to dichromatic color vision and burrows for predator defense, prairie dogs also engage in anti- predator calls (Slobodchikoff, 2002). These alarm calls consist of single or multiple barks and are very specific to the predator spotted. According to Slobodchikoff, the alarm call contains information as to what type of predator is near, how fast it is approaching, and a description of its appearance. Slobodchikoff found that the urgency of the call is communicated to the other prairie dogs within the coterie by the time interval between the barks of the prairie dog. Slobodchikoff describes the elements of the alarm calls of prairie dogs act as a form of grammar. The information that the call communicated to the other prairie dogs seemed to trigger specific responses. For calls that signal coyotes and domestic dogs, the other prairie dogs in the coterie would respond by running to the edge of their burrows and standing there or standing where they where feeding and watching for any predator advances. Calls that warned about human and hawk threats, however, triggered the other prairie dogs to run to their burrows and enter immediately (Slobodchichoff, 2002).

According to Slobodchickoff, the individuality of each alarm call in response to a specific predator implies the highly developed cognitive abilities of the prairie dog (2002). In Slobodchikoff’s experiments, three different representational silhouettes triggered different alarm calls. Two silhouettes were of animals: a skunk silhouette and a coyote silhouette. The third was of an oval. Even though the skunk silhouette and the oval silhouette did not represent natural predators, prairie dogs still had a specific call for them. This response suggests that prairie dogs have a very descriptive language in which they can give a warning call to describe any potential threat (Slobodchikoff, 2002).