USA/SD: Badlands National Park – Black-tailed Prairie Dogs
One of them most distinctive animals of the Great Plains on the USA is the prairie dog. As we entered the spectacular Badlands National Park, a prairie dog town was the first attraction. Prairie dogs are rodents or ground squirrels that inhabit the grasslands of the central North American planes and they form massive colonies or towns with burrowed underground like some prairie dog Manhattans. They were first described during the westward journeys of Lewis & Clark in late 1700s and named “prairie dogs” for their barking warming calls, quite closely resembling the barking of small dogs. You can sit and watch the little guys for hours, there are hundreds and hundreds of them in a single town, they socialize, and even “kiss”.
