ZooBorns

Mom Palms Prairie Dog Pup at Budapest Zoo

Hungary's Budapest Zoo is home to a large family of breeding Prairie Dogs. These pictures are a mashup of this year's litter as well as last year's. Prairie Dog "towns" can be easily identified by the large mounds of dirt which contain their tunnelled homes beneath. According to the San Diego Zoo, when a female Prairie Dog is ready to give birth, she goes to the nursery burrow. The young, called pups, are born hairless and with eyes closed. In the nursery, the mother will take care of her pups until they are about six weeks old and ready to venture aboveground. At about one year of age, the young Prairie Dog may leave to start a new coterie by taking over abandoned tunnels or by digging new ones.

Photo credits: Budapest Zoo

Prairie Pups Are Out in Force

It's baby prairie dog season at the Nuremberg Zoo in Germany and, lucky for us, photographer dark-ness spent two days there capturing prarie dogs doing what they do best: eating and greeting one another. As we mentioned in a previous post, prairie dogs live in "towns" of tens of thousands or more and touch noses to say hello.

Open wide!

More pics below the fold.

Tiny Things Debut at the SF Zoo!

Earlier this week the San Francisco Zoo introduced some of their newest, and smallest, friends to the public. First we have two baby Emperor tamarin twins who will spend the next few weeks clinging tightly to mom's back. This species gets its name from the regal mustaches of adulthood. Secondly we have a feisty black-tailed prairie dog pup. Prairie dogs are a type of highly social ground squirrel that live in huge "towns" made up of countless individuals across hundreds of miles. They often make "house calls" on neighbors and greet each other by touching noses, which looks an awful lot like Eskimo kisses.

Kisses for mom!

Photo credits: Tamarins twins - Amy Hansen, Prairie pups - Marianne Hale

Prairie Dog Days of Summer

Life can be hectic for us creatures. After this Twycross Zoo Prairie pup's full day of wrestling with Mom...

keeping a lookout for mounds of dirt...

and munching on seeds...

...a little downtime is critical...

Photo Credits: Clare H.

A Mini Prairie Dog Munches with Mom

At Phoenix Zoo last week, visitor dmguz caught this peek at a baby Prairie Dog nibbling away on some greens. We just learned of a phenomenon called 'prairie dogging', in which folks in large companies respond simultaneously to a noise or distraction by popping their heads out from the tops of their cubicles. While we don't recommend disturbing your co-workers with squeals, feel free to pass this little guy along..

below, Mom takes a snack break of her own, but baby's not far behind...

A Pile of Prairie Dog Pups

ZooAmerica recently welcomed sixteen tiny black-tailed prairie dogs. Highly social animals, prairie dogs frequently visit one another and greet by rubbing snouts, which people compare to a kiss.