I've always found this very interesting, especially their seemingly built-in vocabulary. It's definitely not news though as the blog suggests. I remember having heard about this for years. Here's a reference from 2005: http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2005/prairi....
I really didn't expect to read a conclusion like this in an article about prairie dog linguistic research:
This article has summarized groundbreaking research that reveals sophisticated language use by the prairie dog. Their ability to coin new words has thus far defied reasonable explanation. To us it indicates that a divine Creator was required to endow these rodents with this language gift. Surely, even a higher level of design and intelligence would be required to enable the incredibly more complex linguistic abilities of mankind as spiritual children of the Living God.
Well, to be fair, there's a fair amount of goofy Biblical quoting at the beginning. Really, that article is hilarious, you should read it. Complete with pseudo-information theory bullshit -- it's INCREDIBLY COMPLEX, says the title of one section--, artificial intelligence from the sixties (I guess if SHRDLU couldn't do it, then GOD must have done it), and just general obtuseness from a pair of pompous fundamentalists. Come on, the conclusion of this religious tract disguised as scientific paper is, literally, "we don't know why this happens, so GODDIDIT"! Got to laugh at that :)
Were the authors catholics, they'd be either hypothesizing the existence of a Prairie Dog Jesus, or contemplating whether to send missionaries. I can't decide on what would be funnier.
It'd be nice to blockquote this. I can scroll much slower than I can read, or I can scroll much faster than I can read, but I can't scroll at a pace approximating my reading speed.
I also remember reading an old article from around 2000 about prairie dog language. It wasn't as hokey as the article linked above though.
I remember something about researchers realizing the dogs had a vocabulary when they would bark differently based on wether a person or a bird of prey was near.
