Gophers are funny and cute animals with a colonial lifestyle. Their habitat is quite extensive: from the most extreme point of the Arctic to southern latitudes.
Description
Gophers are small rodents that belong to the squirrel family. Their body length can be up to 40 cm. The forelimbs are shorter than the hind ones. The ears are short, there is very little fur on them. The color of the fur of the back of ground squirrels is very diverse; sometimes gophers with stripes or specks are found. Gophers have cheek pouches.
Gophers are typical burrows, that is, animals that spend most of their time in burrows. They lead a colonial lifestyle.
The food of ground squirrels is varied: juicy parts of herbs, bulbs, seeds, fruits, insects. They can find food by smell. In search of food, they can sometimes travel several kilometers.
Funny gophers
Gophers are very funny animals. They are quite interesting to watch. They are very careful, but as soon as one or two get out of the mink and start frolicking, they are immediately surrounded by dozens of other gophers. And when there is danger, everyone scatters very quickly, and after a moment the clearing becomes empty.
You can often see gophers standing at their burrows, frozen like poles. But if you move, trying to approach them, like gophers emit a piercing whistle and instantly disappear.
Winter sleep
Gophers live in deep burrows that change every season. For the winter, they walled up the entrance to the hole with earth and hibernate. They sleep all winter, during which time they do not eat anything. The body temperature drops, the heart beats very rarely, 5 times per minute. During the winter, gophers lose a lot of weight, losing almost half of their usual weight. Six months later, they wake up, gradually warm up in the burrow, go outside and begin an active life.
Pests
Gophers sometimes cause significant damage to orchards and vegetable gardens. They gnaw fruit seedlings at the roots, dig up crops, eat green parts of plants and fruits, trample the beds. We have to fight them by flooding holes and seeding.
Habitat
There are many gophers in northern and temperate latitudes, in the Arctic. Meadow gophers are not afraid of the cold. Steppe gophers prefer to settle in deserts and semi-deserts. They can also be seen in Eastern Siberia, the steppes of Central Asia and in the mountains of the North Caucasus.
Recently, the number of gophers in central Russia has declined as a result of plowing and cultivating the land. The habitat conditions of these rodents changed, and they began to move from here to the northwestern part of the country.
