Courting Costs: Male prairie dogs seem too busy mating to dodge predators

Mating season makes the normally fast and tough male prairie dog so preoccupied that he’s easy pickings for predators, researchers find.

In a study of prairie dogs in the wild, a fox and a few goshawks caught adult males only during the short breeding season, says John L. Hoogland of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Frostburg.