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One of the most intriguing questions humans face is not only whether we are alone in the universe, but whether we alone have a rich language to use on earth. Do other creatures communicate like we do? We know they make sounds, and birds chirp in all sorts of complex ways, but does this count as having a language? We know that parrots mimic our sounds exceptionally well, but are they really talking and understanding the sounds they are making?

A curious set of answers to this question is coming from an unexpected source, the so-called prairie dog. These creatures are actually closely related to the squirrel, and are about the same tiny size. They live in burrows dug deep into the ground. They inhabit the North American continent and combine in small families. A family is a single male and one or more females with their off-spring. Their underground homes include safety exits, storage rooms, sleeping chambers and even toilet areas.

Prairie dogs distinguish themselves from other small rodents with an unusually rich community life. Prairie dog colonies can stretch for miles and include hundreds of families. Estimates from a century ago speak of over a billion such creatures alive in America, with some colonies said to have included hundreds of millions of creatures. Today their numbers are much reduced by farming and human expansion, but the behaviors they reveal are increasingly convincing scientists that they have a rich, complex language all their own. It may well be the most complex language we have yet found in the animal kingdom.

Dr. Con Slobodchikoff at Northern Arizona University has been leading research into prairie dog communication for over 20 years. He has been video and audio-taping prairie dogs as they respond to new stimuli in their environment, and used the results to infer a complex vocabulary. He claims that prairie dogs even use nouns, verbs and adjectives, the building blocks of human speech.

Dr. Slobodchikoff used sonograms to determine how prairie dogs reacted to environmental stimuli. His work showed that these creatures used different sounds to tell each other about the presence or arrival of coyote, hawks and human beings. They apparently can distinguish between the colors a human is wearing, or the type of coyote who is approaching. Different warnings sounds led to different reactions. Whether a hawk was diving or just flying around, for example, led prairie dogs to either dive for the nearest burrow, or stand and watch alertly.

In an interview with the Arizona Daily Star from January 2006, Dr. Slobodchikoff explains “Within these calls, they [prairie dogs] can describe the physical features of the predator. They can describe the size and shape of an individual human and the color of clothes that he or she is wearing. They can describe the coat color and the size and shape of a domestic dog. . . . Our studies are showing that prairie dogs have the most sophisticated natural animal language that has been decoded to date.”

What caused prairie dogs be so advanced in their communication skills? Are they the unique in this capacity? We do not know yet. Other animals may have similarly complex systems of communication, only we have not yet had the scientists and tools to study them in depth. Their means of “talking” - like the sounds whales make - may not be as amenable to analysis. In short, this is too new a field to make grand generalizations.

Dr. Slobodchikoff’s work with prairie dogs suggests, though, that one reason for the complex communication between these creatures has to do with the extreme danger they face on the open prairie. They are food for so many other creatures - mammals, birds and reptiles in their environment - that without the means to communicate among each other, they could not survive. Dr. Slobodchikoff thinks it might be the need for language that drives its development. From this point of view, the prairie dog has little choice: to talk is to live.