Prairie Dogs as Pets

Welcome back everybody. So somebody asked me the other day what my uh what my most unique pet was and pretty sure they was expecting me to mention one of my reptiles but we've got a couple little critters here that we just happened across by chance and I'm gonna tell you the story about them and introduce you to one of them here when we come back on Intrepid Exotics. Of all the animals that I've had, crater dogs are easily among some of the coolest most fun animals to interact with and they're actually some of the smartest to interact with. A quick story the way I ended up being introduced to them is the way some of us are introduced to I'd actually seen a pair of them that were being kept in a snake house of all places in a bear cage. One of them was deteriorating really fast and it was apparent that the other one just wasn't going to make it if uh if somebody didn't take him out of that environment. So I knew even though I didn't know anything about prairie dogs at the time that the best chance this guy had to make it was if I brought him home and learned how to take care of him. So that's what we did. Now yeah this poor little guy we ended up calling him Pooh Bear because we got him a little log and put it in his enclosure and he was a chubby little guy and he would crawl into it and he'd sit there with his butt sticking out it looked just like Pooh Bear going after his honey. So the name stuck and this guy did really good for us the whole time we had him. He lived out the rest of his life. He had some really bad hip issues and his teeth were really maligned because they'll grow constantly and if they're not lined up to where they can grind them down then they'll just continue to grow. So we had to continually trim his teeth and pay particular attention to him. So he recently passed on us but prairie dogs only have a lifespan of about three to five years and we had him for about a year and a half and he was an adult when we got him. So under the circumstances I think he managed to live out the rest of his days naturally so I was pretty happy about that. But before he passed through educating ourselves on these animals we learned that they were really social animals they live in little communities so we decided to look around and was lucky enough to find someone who was rehoming two more and we brought them home so we had them for company. And the pair that we brought home we named them Archie and Edith Bunker and I'll introduce you to Archie right now however he is not big on the lights and doesn't like sitting still for the camera at all so it's probably going to look more like a blooper reel but this is half of our half of our latest pair that we have. I want everybody to meet Archie and he is a prairie dog and as you can see he really loves banana chips. I got just by chance and he is all over the place these guys are a hundred miles an hour all the time. These little guys here are actually related to ground squirrels so I'm not going to have him out very long because these guys are notorious for not wanting to sit still for very long and they've actually got one of the most highly involved means of communication of any animal that's been studied so far to include whales, dolphins, primates so it was really interesting to start to learn how these guys act and interact with each other and so forth. The studies and I can provide a link in the description if you're looking for more information about it from the man who did the studies on it the really interesting stuff in the course of study they determined that they have such a highly involved means of communication that they can differentiate between a coyote and a domesticated dog they can they've got different sounds that they'll make for birds or snakes even for human beings and it's believed that they can differentiate between colors as well like a human being that walks up to them they'll make similar sounds indicating that it's a human being but there'll be a different sound attached to those based on whether they're wearing a red shirt or blue shirt so it's really neat to see how complicated and comprehensive their communication system is amongst themselves as far as being pets they're awesome they're adorable they require a good deal of attention not so much in the care I mean their care is pretty simple especially compared to some of the reptiles but you have to really watch them because these things are like little miniature teacup beavers and they will eat anything that they can get in front of you've really got to make sure that you're keeping them in some kind of a cage that's got steel bars on it without a whole lot of plastic accoutrements on it because they will go after everything they love shredding anything that they can get their teeth on making bedding out of it and so forth and you've really got to watch them if you let them out run around and so forth they will go after your baseboards they'll go after your walls your doors it doesn't matter so it's definitely not an animal that you want free roaming in your house unsupervised unless you really love doing trim work but they're definitely definitely the neatest animals they have around in the house their room is actually right next door to my office so I'll be sitting in the office working or something and every time I cough or sneeze or something like that they're picking up on that and they'll start barking back to me from the next turn and it's just the coolest thing but as far as being able to have these things as pets and really widespread way to live the way you might have hamsters gerbils things of that nature ferrets it's uh I'm not entirely sure how easy that would be um the main reason being is they have a really unique breeding cycle and that consists of one hour per year some think a little bit less than an hour females have only got one hour per year that they breed and when they do breed they're going to have between three to six pups something like that and of course the mortality rate in the wild is pretty high generally for animals so it's really concerning about how these populations are going to be looking down the road of course you know you're looking at less than 10 percent of the original population left because the loss of their environment and plus how difficult it is for them to reproduce and how difficult it's going to be to breed them in captivity I've got a pair here and I really hope that we get lucky and they end up mating you know this year next year and like I said they've only got a lifespan of like three to five years so you don't have a very long window of trying to get some pups out of these guys when you get them and it's definitely not an animal that you want to to have alone you know you definitely need to have companionship of some sort they're really social animals and they really thrive on that interaction with each other so like I said I wanted to take some time to share these little animals with you it's not something you see every day and when I have people over to the house I'll invite friends over let them see the reptile room let them see the big snakes and so forth and then before we leave I always end up taking them in letting them see the ferrets and the prairie dogs and everybody's always amazed you know that most people have never even seen one before and when they see how cool these guys are to interact with it always everybody always loves so I thought it'd be a really good thing to share with everybody out here and one thing that's really cool is I'm not really in a position right now where I can go out on location and show you the habitats where these guys live so I've got the good fortune of having the green screen set up here so we can bring the habitat here so anything that I put together I'm going to always try to have something related to where the animals are from and I think it helps to to kind of pair our husbandry and how we take care of these animals if we can see and visualize what kind of natural environment they're in and then we can try and bring that little microcosm to our own homes when we're taking care of these animals so that we can take care of them a little bit better so I hope you guys enjoyed seeing our little friends as much as we enjoy keeping them they're definitely a lot of fun and if you've got an opportunity to take some in and learn about them they're not too bad they just take a little bit of attention so again hit the like button subscribe keep up with what we're doing we're just getting fired up here and I intend to be putting out a lot more content I want to gear stuff again like I said I only want to talk about the things that you guys want to hear about the only way I'm going to know that you guys get down the comments let me know what you want to hear more about and I'll be more I want to be putting out at least one or two videos a week so there's definitely more to come so keep an eye out I look forward to seeing you guys out there have an outstanding day and I'll see you next time on Intrepid Exotics