Mexican prairie dog

The rodent

Mexican prairie dog is a rodent in the family Sciuridae (order Rodentia) — Cynomys mexicanus.

Range and habitat

The Mexican prairie dog is a diurnal burrowing rodent native to north-central Mexico.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet

Although they are mainly herbivores, they have been known to eat insects.

In crisis

Treatment as an agricultural pest has led to its status as an endangered species. Mexican prairie dog originated about 230,000 years ago from a peripherally isolated population of the more widespread Cynomys ludovicianus. Viewed as a pest and an obstacle to agriculture and cattle raising due to their burrowing and frequent consumption of crops, Mexican prairie dogs were frequently poisoned, and became endangered in 1994.

Due to the underground structures in that many prairie dogs live, it is difficult to accurately survey populations. The Mexican prairie dog is considered endangered and is continuously decreasing in population.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Mexican prairie dog is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Mexican prairie dog, Wikidata item Q1093802. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.