Urban Animals - Art Gallery of Alberta

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The Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition Program Animal Studies: Prairie Dog continued For black-tailed prairie dogs, the resident male of the family group fathers all the offspring. Mother prairie dogs do most of the care for the young. In addition to nursing the young, the mother also defends the nursery chamber and collects grass for the nest. Males play their part by defending the territories and maintaining the burrows. The young spend their first six weeks below the ground being nursed. They are then weaned and begin to surface from the burrow. By five months they are fully grown. Prairie dogs showing affection Females remain in their natal groups for life and are thus the source of stability in the groups. Males leave their natal groups when they mature to find another family group to defend and breed in. Juvenile prairie dogs The prairie dog is well adapted to predators. Using its dichromatic colour vision, it can detect predators from a far distance and then alert other prarie dogs to the danger with a special, high-pitched call. Some scientists believe that prairie dogs use a sophisticated system of vocal communication to describe specific predators. Ecologists consider the prairie dog to be a keystone species. Prairie dog tunnel systems help channel rainwater into the water table to prevent runoff and erosion, and can also serve to change the composition of the soil in a region by reversing soil compaction that can be a result of cattle grazing. Prairie dogs are an important prey species, being the primary diet in prairie species such as the black-footed ferret, swift fox, golden eagle, American badger, and ferruginous hawk. Other species also rely on prairie dog burrows for nesting areas. Despite this, prairie dogs are often identified as pests and exterminated from agricultural properties because they are capable of damaging crops. As a result, prairie dog habitat has been impacted by direct removal by ranchers and farmers, as well as the more obvious encroachment of urban development which has greatly reduced their populations. AFA Travelling Exhibition Program, Edmonton, AB. Ph: 780.428.3830 Fax: 780.421.0479 youraga.ca
The Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition Program Animal Studies: Rabbit Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae. There are eight different genera in the family classified as rabbits, including the European rabbit, cottontail rabbits, and the Amami rabbit. There are many other species of rabbit and these, along with pikas and hares, make up the order Lagomorpha. Rabbits are found in many parts of the world. Their habitats include meadows, woods, forests, grasslands, deserts and wetlands. More than half the world’s rabbit populations resides in North America. Rabbits live in groups, and the best known species, the European rabbit, lives in underground burrows or rabbit holes. A group of burrows is called a warren. Jason Carter The Rabbit, 2012 Acrylic on canvas Collection of the artist Rabbits are perfectly suited for their environments. The rabbit’s long ears, which can be more than 4 inches long, are probably an adaptation for detecting predators. They also have large, powerful hind legs. The two front paws have 5 toes while the hind feet have 4 toes. Their size can range anywhere from 8 inches in length and .4kg in weight to 20 inches in length and more than 2 kg. The fur is most commonly long and soft, with colors such as shades of brown, gray, and buff. Rabbits have two sets of incisor teeth, one behind the other. This way they can be distinguished from rodents. Rabbits are hervibores. They feed by grazing on grass, forbs, and leafy weeds. In consequence their diet contains large amounts of cellulose which is hard to digest. Rabbits graze heavily and rapidly for roughly the first half hour of a grazing period - usually in the late afternoon - followed by about half an hour of more selective feeding. Rabbits are hindgut digesters. This means that most of their digestion takes place in their large intestine and cecum. This is a secondary chamber between the large and small intestine containing large quantities of symbiotic bacteria that help with the digestion of cellulose and also produce certain B vitamins. The unique musculature of the cecum allows the intestinal tract of the rabbit to separate fibrous material from more digestible material: the fibrous material is passed as feces, while the more nutritious material is encased in a mucous lining as a cecotrope. Cecotropes, sometimes called ‘night feces’, are high in minerals, vitamins and proteins that are necessary to the rabbit’s health. Rabbits eat these to meet their nutritional requirements. Rabbits are prey animals and are constantly aware of their surroundings. If confronted by a potential threat, a rabbit may freeze and observe then warn others in the warren with powerful thumps on the ground. Rabbits have a remarkably wide field of vision, and a good deal of it is devoted to overhead scanning. They survive predation by burrowing, hopping away in a zig-zag motion and, if captured, delivering powerful kicks with their hind legs or by biting. AFA Travelling Exhibition Program, Edmonton, AB. Ph: 780.428.3830 Fax: 780.421.0479 youraga.ca
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Urban Animals - Art Gallery of Alberta

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