The pocket gopher is a medium-sized rodent native to North and Central America, best known for its extensive underground tunnel systems. While often confused with other burrowing rodents, the pocket gopher’s diet is highly specialized. Understanding their feeding habits is linked to their subterranean existence and why they are frequently considered pests in agricultural and garden settings.
Gophers Are Not Omnivores
Pocket gophers are classified as strict herbivores, meaning their diet consists almost exclusively of plant matter. This classification contrasts directly with that of an omnivore, which consumes both plant and animal material. Any animal matter ingested by a gopher, such as small insects or worms, is considered incidental, not a purposeful part of its sustenance.
As fossorial herbivores, these rodents are intensely adapted to an underground existence, which dictates their food source and orients their entire life cycle around the plants rooted above their tunnels.
Primary Diet: Root Systems and Tubers
The pocket gopher’s survival hinges on subterranean storage organs, making roots, tubers, bulbs, and rhizomes the foundation of their diet. They continuously tunnel and excavate new burrows, feeding on the roots they encounter. This constant consumption is why gophers are destructive to crops and landscaping, as they target the part of the plant that sustains it. Plants with large, fleshy taproots, such as alfalfa and dandelions, are among their preferred foods.
While the majority of their food is harvested underground, gophers occasionally venture to the surface to forage for above-ground vegetation. They rarely move more than a body length from the tunnel entrance and often pull the entire plant down into their burrow. They also consume the stems, leaves, and seeds of various grasses and shrubs, utilizing the high moisture content of these plants to meet most of their water needs.
Specialized Feeding Adaptations
The gopher’s anatomy is finely tuned to support its herbivorous, burrowing lifestyle. Their powerful, continuously growing incisor teeth are external to the mouth, allowing them to gnaw through roots or loosen soil without getting dirt in their mouths. This adaptation is coupled with strong forequarters and large, clawed front paws used for efficient digging.
Pocket gophers possess large, external, fur-lined cheek pouches that extend from the side of the mouth back to the shoulders. These pouches are used exclusively for storing and transporting gathered plant material back to their underground food caches. The pouches can be turned inside out for cleaning and are essential for maximizing the efficiency of their underground foraging. Recent studies have suggested that the animals may actively manage the roots growing into their tunnel systems by using their waste as fertilizer, a behavior that some researchers describe as a form of non-human mammalian root “farming.”