ニューヨーク・タイムズのインスタグラム(nytimes) - 5月12日 21時54分

A prairie dog’s voice has about as much acoustic appeal as a chew toy. (Listen for yourself.) North American analogue to Africa’s meerkat, it lives underground, surfacing to forage during the day and rarely venturing far. While on assignment for @nytmag, the photographer @ronan_donovan spent time with Con Slobodchikoff, an emeritus professor of biology at @nauflagstaff, who has been analyzing the sounds of prairie dogs for more than 30 years. The moment a prairie dog detects a hawk, coyote, human or any other threat, it cries out to alert the cohort and take appropriate evasive action, using distinct alarm calls for different predators. Its calls, Con learned, also specify a predator's size, shape, color and speed. No scientist had ever put forward such a thorough guide to the native tongue of a wild species or discovered one so intricate. #Prairiedog communication is so complex, the professor says — so expressive and rich in information — that it constitutes nothing less than language. That would be an audacious claim to make about even the most overtly intelligent species — say, a chimpanzee or a dolphin — let alone some kind of dirt hamster with a brain that barely weighs more than a grape. Can prairie dogs talk? To read more, visit the link in our profile.

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