YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — According to Yellowstone National Park (YNP), dirt mounds often seen in the spring or early summer are being created right now by one of the Park’s most rarely seen animals, the pocket gopher.
In a Facebook post this week, YNP describes these worm-shaped mounds of dirt as something that at first glance look like tunnels that some little creature must run through, but upon further inspection are solid inside. YNP confirms that those mounds are made by pocket gophers as they burrow through the ground and occasionally surface to dig through the snow.
“When they again burrow underground, they push the excavated dirt back into an empty part of the tunnel, filling it up,” YNP writes. “After the snow melts, any part of their snow tunnel that was filled with dirt is left behind as a cast of a long-melted tunnel under the snow.”
YNP’s website explains that pocket gophers do not hibernate; instead they spend the winter season doing the dirty work, literally, of digging and burrowing. According to YNP, burrow systems are elaborate and often bi-level, and can be up to 400 to 500 feet long. Pocket gophers are very territorial about their burrows, and YNP writes that there is only one gopher per burrow.
