Dig In: All About the Gopher

This week’s animal conjures up thoughts of Bill Murray blowing up an entire golf course and a little rodent with a big personality doing the now famous dance—That’s right it’s the gopher.

I have to say that this week’s pick came to me in a literal sense. As I sat in my office chair, I was staring out the window when I saw a brown animal scurrying under my neighbor’s car…it was a gopher. 

The gopher, or pocket gopher, is sometimes confused with moles or voles as they have overlapping habitats and similar body structures. The gopher is usually 12 inches long and has a short tail.  The front teeth of both the upper and lower jaw are large and are always exposed and constantly grow as they use the teeth to dig. They also wear away rapidly. 

A gopher has a bite force of 18,000 pounds per square inch! In addition, the gopher has big claws on its front paws, which it also uses to help dig. A single gopher can burrow as much as 200 square yards of tunnel and move 2.25 tons of soil per year. 

I guess we should have hired the gopher for the Big Dig!

The tunnels that the gopher digs are actually quite beneficial to soil as it increases aeration and water flow and prevents compaction of the soil, but if you are a gardener, you probably to not appreciate the gophers hard work for the environment.

The gopher is an omnivore and its diet consists of fruit, berries, insects and anything in your garden. 

The “pocket” gopher gets its name for the large fur lined pouches that are outside in its cheeks. These pouches are what give the gopher its cheeky appearance.  They use these pouches to store food to bring back to the burrow to store food. 

In a way, the pocket gopher is nature’s ultimate hoarder, as the gopher is known to store large amounts of food in their homes.

Unlike most burrowing mammals, the pocket gopher spends very little time above ground. 

The gopher can also run as fast in reverse as it can forward and it uses its tail as a feeler when doing so.  If going full speed in reverse isn’t good enough, the gopher can actually do a somersault in its tunnel because of the looseness of its skin. 

Pocket gophers are generally solitary animals and only seek out other gophers for mating.  Each female will produce four to six pups. 

The gopher is active all year round and does not hibernate.  If a gopher has taken up residence in your yard, there are several humane ways of getting rid of the gopher, and the Mass Wildlife can be contacted to discuss removal of the gopher in a humane and legal manner.