Prairie dog towns dot the preserve, full of life. The prairie dog may be losing a long battle to survive, threatened constantly by the changing Western landscape and everything from fleas to the bubonic plague to its own kinfolk. HOME>TECHNOLOGY Can the Prairie Dog Be Saved? March 17, 2013 COLUMN By LEE DYE via WORLD NEWS PHOTO: The prairie dog may be losing a long battle to survive. The prairie dog may be losing a long battle to survive. Getty Images John Hoogland dragged his new bride up the side of a mountain a while back to watch a colony of prairie dogs go about a day's work. Within about 10 minutes, the young graduate student concluded he could "study these things for 10 years." It's 40 years later now, and he's still studying them, turning up dirty secrets that nobody knew were there until he started spending five months every spring watching the dramas unfold in one of nature's more complex societies. The prairie dog may be losing a long battle to survive, threatened constantly by the changing Western landscape and everything from fleas to the bubonic plague to its own kinfolk. It turns out there is a nasty side to the story of a highly social animal known for public displays of affection and cooperation. Hoogland found the bloody evidence himself a few years ago when, following up on a suspicion, he used a backhoe to dig into a recently abandoned burrow. There, just as he had expected, he found the corpses of five infant prairie dogs, slain by a relative while mom was out looking for food."They were committing infanticide," Hoogland said in a late night phone interview from his outpost this year at Valles Caldera National Preserve near Los Alamos, N.M.