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Black-tailed prairie dogs once numbered in the billions across the grasslands of the Western US and Mexico, but ranchers essentially exterminated the rodent to make way for livestock. Now conservationists are working to revive the once-thriving prairie dog community and the Mexican prairie along with them.
Ari Daniel Shapiro travels into the field with microbiologists to watch a special group of bacteria consume iron from natural water sources and build mini-structures out of rust.
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