Other animals benefit from their labors. Burrows may be shared by snakes, burrowing owls, and even rare black-footed ferrets, which hunt prairie dogs in their own dwellings. Family groups (a male ...

As insectivorous, burrowing mammals, pangolins play a key role in our ecosystem by controlling insect populations, recycling soil nutrients and sheltering other animals in their abandoned burrows.

Desantis says that to survive, the owls mostly eat bugs and rely on burrowing mammals to dig their tunnels, both of which are declining due to poison and pesticides. “All the flat places in ...

They can live their whole lives in the hottest and driest place on Earth without drinking a drop of water, surviving only on moisture in the small insects, reptiles and burrowing mammals they feed on.

They are also killed by rodenticides and collisions with wind turbines and cars. The owls rely on burrowing mammals such as ground squirrels to excavate underground burrows for nesting and roosting.