speckled gopher lives mainly in the plains.This fussy creature, vigilantly guarding its own burrow.Anyone who has ever been in the plains, saw the silhouettes of animals repeatedly standing columns, with front paws crossed on his chest, and look around the neighborhood.One moment - and gopher disappeared!
Interestingly, folk legends they ascribed special properties.Nomads believed that these animals know where buried gold treasure in the plains, and that if sleep in the open field, the squirrels may come to relax and open his ear all her secrets.
Distribution
Gopher speckled distributed in the southern forest-steppe of the East European Plain.There are also 2 small pockets of isolated: in the west of Belarus and northwestern Ukraine.
speckled gopher: a description of the appearance of
This is one of the most short-tailed ground squirrels and small.Its weight is 500 g, while slightly more males than females.The head is large, with huge eyes.Paws of animal are short, with long fingers moving.Gopher has spotted a rare and short, adjacent scalp;just on his tail and long feathered hair.Stained back motley and bright: on a brown or gray-brownish background scattered mostly large, clearly defined, yellowish or whitish specks merging back into a ripple.
wonder that young animals specks can be arranged in rows.The upper part of the head with the back of a single color, occasionally a little darker.Bright eyes are surrounded by a ring;below them are the brown spots.The head and neck are white below.Belly changes color from ocher yellow to light gray.The tail is bicolor, has a bright fringes.The general tone of color within the range dims and brightens towards the south.
have spotted ground squirrel in the karyotype 34 chromosomes.
Reproduction
These animals during the breeding season begins later half weeks after emerging from hibernation.At the same rut it lasts about two weeks.It is accompanied by the arrival on the territory of males than females.Males at this time are very aggressive - they chase each other, "are boxing," bite.Mating takes place always in the hole.This pregnancy lasts about 27 days.After this comes about seven cubs.
At the beginning of June, the young animal (ground squirrel) first emerges from its burrow.Then the female leaves their offspring for 3 days, thus forcing him to start eating solid foods.More in a few days the very young leaves his mother, settling in their burrows.
Gopher speckled gives neplodovitye hybrids on the average the Volga region with a small gopher.But the average European Transnistria gopher.
Power
But this is only interesting speckled gopher.The animal feeds on this?The composition of its feed plant.He has about 50 names, the main part consists of cereals (feather grass, fescue, bluegrass, wild oat), as well as flowering herbs (yarrow, clover, dandelion).Well pronounced change in diet depending on the season.In early spring, the animal eats plant roots, green part of the summer, and the seeds fall.
cultivated cereals (wheat, rye, barley sometimes) eats whole (stems, sprouts, grains, leaves), with more than 50 meters from the edge portion of the field does not go.In the period of active flight of beetles and it feeds them.Stocks makes small - 500 g, and that - in case of bad weather in the summer (in winter the animals do not eat).In the period when young and rutting in dense settlements are also seen cases necrophagia and cannibalism (eating caught in the trap of relatives).
Lifestyle
Dweller feather grass steppes, the southern part of the forest and upland meadows is a gopher.The description of his way of life we consider in this article.Its native habitat are considered elevated areas steppes used for grazing, pastures and meadows.But due to the extensive plowing steppe gopher it was supplanted by the slopes of the dry beams outskirts belts, boundaries.
During his high population temporarily settled along the country roads in the vineyards and old gardens on the edges of fields sown with wheat and corn.Lowlands and only rarely used as sites for feed.
speckled gopher, photos are presented in this article, live in colonies (dense and sparse) along roadsides, floodplains, and so on.They come across as solitary animals.In addition, each adult individual holds his own hole.There are temporary and permanent burrows.There's ground squirrels hibernate, breed and letuyut.
Sometimes holes have extra moves and otnorki.Temporary housing smaller and simpler structure.Animals are sedentary life, it does not make migrations in search of food.Mobility only males during the rut, and the young in the period of settlement.
number
Total speckled gopher declined in recent decades due to the destructive activities carried out with the use of chemicals and plowing of virgin lands.
relationship with a man
On the main part of the area (in addition to Moldova and Ukraine) because of the small size of the gopher does not cause substantial harm to agriculture.Periodically hurting grain, orchards and vegetable crops, forest plantations, pastures.
contributes to the total destruction of the soil layer.At the moment it has no commercial value.Natural carrier of some parasitic infestations, the causative agent of tularemia.No value for the human animal is not, therefore, it is not hunted.
