Life History of the Kangaroo RatVorhies, Charles Taylor
Science
Life History of the Kangaroo Rat
Vorhies, Charles Taylor
Kangaroo rats
One individual in a laboratory cage, which had not yet been given a nest
box, busied itself in broad daylight in carrying its grain supply into
the darkest corner of the cage. When a nest box is supplied the
individual will retreat into its dark shelter, and will only come forth
after darkness has fallen unless forcibly ejected, but will store the
food supplied.
In another case an animal escaped while being handled, and sought refuge
behind a built-in laboratory table, where it could not be recovered
without tearing out the table. For four days and nights it had the run
of the laboratory. On the first night of its freedom it found and
entered a burlap bag of grass seed that had been taken from a mound. A
trail of seed and chaff next morning showed that it had been busily
engaged in making its new quarters comfortable with bedding and food.
After four nights of freedom it was captured alive in a trap, and later
it was found that it had moved from the corner behind the table to the
space beneath a near-by drawer, where it had stored about 2 quarts of
the grass seed and a handful of the oatmeal used for trap bait.
BREEDING HABITS.
Observations on breeding habits have consisted mainly in taking records
from the females trapped at all seasons of the year throughout the
course of the investigation, and from examinations made during poisoning
operations, and yet from this source the number of pregnant females
taken or of young discovered is disappointingly small. The records
indicate a breeding period of considerable length, extending from
January to August, inclusive. It is possible that the length of the
period may be increased by a second litter from the earliest breeding
females in summer, but the large percentage of nonpregnant or
nonbreeding animals which occurs throughout the season would indicate a
wide variation in the time of breeding of different individuals.
Trapping in February and March for the purpose of securing greater
numbers of female specimens, begun with the idea that these months were
most likely to be the breeding months, has invariably yielded an
unsatisfactory number of nonbreeding specimens and males. Unfortunately,
the numbers of females secured in some months were not sufficient to be
significant if worked out in percentages of breeding and nonbreeding
individuals, and this, coupled with the fact that the importance of
recording carefully all nonbreeders was not at first recognized, makes
it impossible to tabulate such information reliably. The total of
females taken in April, for example, is only 3, of which 1 was breeding;
while in June, during the course of poisoning operations, 45 females
were examined, of which 21 were breeding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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