Talk:Prairie dog

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[edit] Prairie dog language

http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=108412 —Omegatron 19:59, 6 December 2004 (UTC)

I have worked this citation into the article (finally). —mjb 05:50, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pests to ranchers

Why is it that prairie dogs are said to be pests to "ranchers"? If they cause damage to crops, then they're pests to farmers, not ranchers. The latter raise livestock, which is not threatened by herbivorous rodents. —71.32.244.55 02:42, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I suspect livestock don't do well in areas full of leg-sized holes. Cattle aren't particularly bright. They can also keep the vegetation down in areas to the point of making the land less productive for grazing. —Aranae 03:00, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

They are actually good for the land. They fertilize the vegetation and make the grass more succulent by their minimal grazing.

I just asked a rancher, and she said that prairie dogs kill enough grass to allow poisonous weeds (like pigweed) to grow, killing the cattle. Normally the grass is competitive enough to keep the poisonous weeds out of the pasture land, but the prairie dogs remove this natural barrier, especially during dry seasons.

Prairie dogs eat things like pigweed. Pigweed is actually among one of the more common things in their diet.^{[1][2] -Dawson 08:10, 23 November 2006 (UTC)}

[edit] Prairie dogs as pets

Someone should write about the fact that they make great pets and it's a shame they were made illegal because of some disease that can probably be vaccinated against. —65.248.169.5 03:42, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The article already says "Lately some of the animals have found their way to human homes as pets"; to say they're "great" pets and so on would violate the NPOV policy. —mjb 05:50, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge and citation requests

Along with reducing a great deal of redundancy and making copyedits and wikilink fixes, I've placed citation request templates throughout the article. I've done this basically anywhere that a possibly controversial claim has been made. It is evident that there are people who are editing this article who have a conservation agenda, so it seems reasonable to ask for documentation to verify any claims, no matter how plausible, about near-extinctions, prairie dogs as pests being a mistaken impression, and so on.

Also, there is also a fair amount of information in the Black-tailed Prairie Dog article that is noteworthy and relevant to prairie dogs in general. In particular, there is more detail about the animal's role in the ecosystem and as pets. If no one gets around to it, I will eventually work on it, but I'd like someone else to give it a shot, first. —mjb 22:13, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Since I was the one that wrote most of the 'conservation status' and 'captivity' stuff in Black-tailed Prairie Dog I figured I might as well do the merge. I also did some Google searching and came up with references for various claims and clarified that prairie dogs -are- capable of damaging crops, and gave it a citation. -Dawson 19:38, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks!—mjb 17:56, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal

I propose that the two wikipedia articles on prairie dog subspecies (Utah Prairie Dog and Black-tailed Prairie Dog be merged into the Prairie Dog article. Almost all of the information in the two subspecies articles are included in the main prairie dog article - in fact, much of it is cut-and-pasted in. I've been updating the various pages with links to recent studies, and it is nightmarish to make sure all the pages are in synch. And personally, I don't think the subspecies are unique or notable enough to warrant their own articles. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Adagio 18:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Note: I added Mexican Prairie Dog to the list of potential pages to be merged today. Adagio 16:28, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. There is a considerable literature on all three species of prairie dogs listed for merging. The fact that the articles do not yet incorporate this literature merely means that they are at an early, stubby, state. It does not make them candidates for merging. I think it's a foregone conclusion that each species of organism warrants its own article and certainly that each species of mammal, particularly well-known mammals like prairie dogs, warrant their own article. --Aranae 20:42, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, per Aranae. There already is some information which pertains to each species - such as the Utah prairie dog being the most endangered and the black-tailed prairie dog being the only species readily kept in captivity, and the Mexican prairie dog being the southernmost ranging species, thus has a different wintering cycle. The main article should only contain general information which covers all species, and other information should be moved to the specific article. -Dawson 21:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, how is this for an acceptable alternative. Your thoughts, please.

• Create new pages (stubs) for the Gunnison's and White Tail prairie dogs
• Add stub tags to the Mexican, Black Tailed and Utah prairie dog articles
• Remove the Conservation Status section from the main article (except perhaps a few sentence blurb) and move the specifics for each species into the respective article
• Keep descriptions of the species in their respective articles, perhaps add a general description to the main article
• Keep characteristics that are not unique to one of the species in the main article (for example, the section on Biology and Behavior, which is general for all species, should be kept in the main article and the redundant information removed from each of the species articles, perhaps referencing the main article)
• Add a section to the main article called 'Distribution' which would list each of the species (and link to their articles) and where each species is found

My thoughts: I like this approach, as it keeps pages for each of the species, but avoids redundancy. My main concern is that, after cleaning up and citing a more recent population study for the Black Tailed prairie dog, I found that that species had its own article that cited the older, outdated studies. If I hadn't found that, we would have two different articles with different facts cited, meaning one of them would be incorrect. My hope is to set up the articles in such a way that situations like this can be avoided. Adagio 16:41, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

It all sounds good, though you may just consider adding the distributions to the existing species list. --Aranae 22:23, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

• merge: if we put in a section about the diffences of the species we should be okay with merging them, Chuck61007 01:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] too many images

it is a rare problem but there is too many image on this article and it has destroyed all page formatting yuckfoo 03:30, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I've taken a hand at fixing that. In addition to moving where the images were in the article and playing with the left-right alignment, I've also moved three images into a new "additional images" section. This was an editorial decision based on what the image was illustrating relevant to the text. The images in additional images could be re-integrated into the text at some point when the article gets larger. --Martinship 00:41, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prairie Dogs as pets

Praire dogs are cute and i think that just because they have some diseases doesn't mean that they can't be a good pet. I think that with the scince and all the inprovements in the medical world that they could come up with something to get ride of the diseases.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.178.17.200 (talk) 04:44, 22 April 2008 (UTC)