Gone to the Dogs: Canine Placenames in the USA

For this map I used the Google Maps Javascript API to symbolize data queried for the USGS Board of Geographic Names database. I used their heatmap renderer function to create the symbology. Pretty cool and user-friendly. If you toggle Fox and Dog off, notice the east/west regionality of Wolf and Coyote features--a bit counterintuitive, as wolf habitat is now limited to the upper north woods and the Rocky Mountain West. You can also see the abundance of fox-related placenames in the Fox River Corridor in Wisconsin and Illinois. You could spend your life making cool maps with the BGN placenames database, and I may just do that. I queried about every different animal I could think of. I'll have more of these up soon!