Data from: Catch the wave: prairie dogs assess neighbours' awareness using contagious displays

The jump–yip display of black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus)
is contagious, spreading through a prairie dog town as ‘the wave’ through
a stadium. Because contagious communication in primates serves to assess
conspecific social awareness, we investigated whether instigators of
jump–yip bouts adjusted their behaviour relative to the response of
conspecifics recruited to display bouts. Increased responsiveness of
neighbouring town members resulted in bout initiators devoting a
significantly greater proportion of time to active foraging. Contagious
jump–yips thus function to assess neighbours’ alertness, soliciting social
information to assess effective conspecific group size in real time and
reveal active probing of conspecific awareness consistent with theory of
mind in these group-living rodents.