Black-tailed and Mexican prairie dogs do a funny call, Jump-Yips!

One of the best-known signals of the black-tail and Mexican prairie dogs is the jump-yip, where the prairie dog stands up on its hind legs, stretches its front legs up towards the sky, and produces a yipping call. This occurs in many different contexts, such as territorial disputes, a predator leaving, or a snake appearing. No one has looked at the acoustic properties of these calls to see if they are different for different contexts. Sometimes the jump-yip call occurs when there is no obvious context. Maybe in that case the prairie dogs are simply saying, hooray it's a wonderful day!

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