UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS 



ZOOLOGY 



Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 25-29, 1 text fig. November 20, 1913 



NOCTURNAL WANDERINGS OF THE 

 CALIFORNIA POCKET GOPHER 



HAROLD C. BRYANT 

 (Contribution from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology of the University of California) 



An incident bearing' on the life-history of the pocket gopher has 

 been recently reported to the writer by Mr. J. E. Light of Berkeley, 

 California. He found on the morning of May 1, 1913, more than fifty 

 pocket gophers (ThoiiiuiHijs hot lite bottae) stuck in a strip of oil about 

 two feet wide which had been left along the side of a street in process 

 of repair in North Berkeley. These facts have been fully verified by 

 the writer. All of the gophers appeared to have been traveling in the 

 same direction, namely, east, and had crossed a macadam road before 

 reaching the oil. The sticky oil had rendered them helpless in a short 

 time, and their struggles to escape resulted only in entrapping them 

 the more firmly, thus hastening their death. Some had been torn to 

 pieces by cats and dogs after being caught in the oil. and others had 

 doubtless been carried away altogether by these predators. Ten of the 

 gophers were collected the next day within a stretch of two hundred 

 feet. Two of these were apparently adult males, the rest being females 

 and half-grown young. 



If this incident be taken as evidence, gophers come out of their 

 burrows at night and travel above ground. Some mammals are known 

 to travel about during the rutting season more than at other times. 

 The time of year and the occurrence of large numbers of half-grown 

 individuals, however, would seem to preclude the use of this fact in 

 explanation of the phenomenon in this case. Bailey (1S95, p. 16) in 

 speaking of the pocket gopher states: "Apparently only the males 



