The other day I met Chester, one of the cutest, most enchanting dogs I’ve ever encountered. He was small, slightly pudgy, and devoted to his master, whom he greeted with a brand of flattering enthusiasm only a dog can muster.

"Big deal,"you might say. "My dog is like that."

Indeed, by nature, dogs are highly social and often decidedly loyal. They have cohabited with us for millennia, each manipulating the other in a coevolutionary bargain that has benefited both. Many dogs have even perfected the smile.

What is special about this "dog" is that he isn’t the coddled canine whose ancestors barked at lurking predators and accepted scraps at stone-age firesides.

He is a rodent.

Specifically, Chester is a 6-year-old prairie dog, and one of the wildlife residents of a small menagerie at Pace University’s Environmental Center. Visiting Pace to give a lecture, I welcomed the chance for a close encounter with a prairie dog. During my biology studies I had learned that they are intensely social creatures, occupying tight family clusters, or coteries, within their larger prairie dog towns.

When prairie dogs make the news, it’s usually related to harm, not charm. Cattle ranchers have sought to exterminate them because of perceived grazing competition (generally unsupported by data). In early December, an alliance of environmental groups sued the U.S. government for failing to list the Gunnison’s prairie dog as an endangered species. Once numbering as many as five billion, prairie dog populations have plummeted by 98 percent, primarily from persecution and habitat loss. Some hunters take pleasure in "misting" prairie dogs—shooting the animals with hollow-point bullets that cause them to literally explode in a mist of blood.

To help deal with myriad threats, prairie dogs have a sophisticated system of predator detection. Their alarm calls convey specific information about an approaching foe, including species, size, shape, color, and even whether or not a gun is being carried. Until recently it was thought that only apes and monkeys were capable of semantic language like this.

Housed alone in a large terrarium, Chester has made the best of his solitary confinement by adopting Jim Eyring, the Center’s Assistant Director, as his family member.

As Jim led me into the sunlit room Chester shares with an assortment of reptiles, mammals and birds, he roused and stood on his hind legs, leaning against the glass pane of his tank.

Jim lifted the cage lid and reached in, explaining a prairie dog’s greeting ceremony while Chester demonstrated by pressing his open mouth against Jim’s knuckles. Jim then reached down and gave Chester a vigorous belly tickle, causing the rodent to roll onto his rump, eyes closed and squirming with unmistakable pleasure.

Jim beckoned Chester to come out, and the portly rodent had to make three attempts before his claws gripped the rim of the glass wall and he could hoist himself up. Tickling Chester’s chin, Jim explained that Chester had been adopted from a local household when it became illegal to keep prairie dogs as pets.

Carrying Chester into an adjoining room, Jim set him down among the three resident (real) dogs, and produced a few treats from his pocket. As the dogs paced about in anticipation, Chester stood on his hind-legs, following Jim’s every move, then deftly took his proffered tidbit.

When I think of Chester’s cousins being obliterated for someone’s amusement, I wonder which species is more noble: ours or his. For all our technology and culture, humankind has a knack for moral fickleness. We have the might, but do we really have the right to define other beings—each with a capacity for pain and pleasure, and a fierce will to live—as pets or pests? Or, for that matter, as a dissection specimen, a toxicity test subject, or a favorite recipe?

We can do better—for Chester’s sake, and Fido’s, and ultimately our own.