Behavior
Plains pocket gophers show no seasonal change in activity, except for an increased level of activity during mating season. They do show a bimodal pattern of activity during the day with increased activity occurring from 1300-1700 and then again from 2200-0600. For a fossorial animal with a metabolically expensive lifestyle (360-3400 times as much as terrestrial creatures), planning daily activity around burrow temperature, where lack of air flow and high humidity lead to a decrease in evaporative and convective cooling, is likely to be important.
The gophers spend 72% of their time in their nests, coming above ground to search for food or mates, and for young animals to establish new burrows. Territorial and aggressive, especially in male-to-male interaction, these rodents appear to use their greatly increased sensitivity to soil vibration to maintain their solitary lifestyle. They will rarely explore burrows inhabited by other gophers, although they will sometimes investigate those that have been previously abandoned.
Read more about this topic: Plains Pocket Gopher
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