ON THE HABITS OF THE KANGAROO RATS 
IN: CAPTIVITY. 
DR. R. W. SHUFELDT. 
SOME time during the early part of the month of June or 
the latter part of May, 1901, Mr. Edward S. Schmid, a dealer 
in pets and animals, with an establishment at 712 Twelfth 
Street, Washington, D.C., received from one of his collectors 
in Kansas some two dozen specimens of “kangaroo rats." At 
first glance I did not recognize the species; but Mr. Schmid, 
with his usual generosity, presented me with three of the finest 
specimens in the lot, — two males and a female. 
Upon taking these to my study I consigned them to a roomy 
cage with an inch or more of soil on the bottom of it, and I 
soon found that these very interesting little mammals fed with 
great avidity upon hemp and canary seed mixed up with a 
supply of wheat grains. They also drank freely of water 
placed for them in little china vessels. 
After they had been in my possession a day or two, I found 
they had become sufficiently accustomed to my presence and 
handling to allow me to make the attempt to obtain photo- 
graphs of them. This I undertook on two separate occasions, 
selecting for the purpose the darker and better marked male 
animal of the trio. Both times I succeeded in obtaining life- 
size pictures, and the reproductions of my results, reduced rather 
more than one-half, illustrate the present article. Fig. 1 rep- 
resents the animal as he appears when asleep during the day- 
time, and Fig. 2 shows him when wide awake and engaged in 
busily nibbling upon a piece of root at the entrance of a shallow 
burrow he had dug for himself. As my methods of obtaining 
such photographs as these have been fully set forth by me 
during the past year or two in the technical journals devoted 
to scientific photography in this country and abroad, it will not 
be necessary to touch upon that question here. 
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