Prairie dog and Clark in 1804. Lewis described it in more detail in 1806, calling it the "barking squirrel". On average, these stout-bodied rodents will grow to be between long, including the short tail, and weigh between . Sexual dimorphism in body mass in the prairie dog varies 105 to 136% between the sexes. Among the species, black-tailed prairie dogs tend to be the least sexually dimorphic, and white-tailed prairie dogs tend to be the most sexually dimorphic. Sexual dimorphism peaks during weaning, when the females lose weight and the males start eating more, and is at its lowest when the females
Utah prairie dog consume flowers in shrubs. Utah prairie dogs choose only few species of grasses only that are native to the soil. Utah prairie dog shows polyandry behavior, and lays only one litter per year, which generally consists of 1 to 8 litter size. The breeding occurs generally from mid-March through early April. They build extensive "towns" of underground tunnels and chambers, each town composed of a population of members of an extended prairie dog family group called “clan”, and they forage from dawn to dusk. The species appears in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, with a status of Endangered,