Southeastern pocket gopher

Pocket gophers spend almost their entire lives underground, digging long tunnel systems with their claws and teeth and pushing the loose sand to the surface in mounds, then plugging the opening. Each gopher lives alone in its own burrow system.

They carry food and nesting material in their external cheek pouches, which they can turn inside out to empty and clean.

Their Georgia name, "salamander", is thought to be a corruption of "sandy mounder".

Pocket gophers are important soil engineers of the southern sandhills. Their digging turns over large amounts of sand, mixing nutrients into the soil and creating bare patches where wildflowers and grasses can take root.

Their burrows are also used by other animals, and in longleaf pine country they are part of the same underground world as the gopher tortoise.

Breeding — much of the year, with peaks in late winter and summer
Litter — usually one to three young
Leaving the burrow — within a few weeks
Lifespan — a few years
Much of this species' breeding biology is not well recorded.

• Mounds in lawns and pastures are a sign of a gopher; they do not harm people or pets.
• Poisons used on gophers can harm other wildlife and pets.
• Longleaf sandhills with deep, loose sand are their home; development and soil compaction remove it.

• A "salamander" in Georgia is always an amphibian. In sandhill country it is also the local name for this gopher.
• Gophers and moles are the same. Pocket gophers are rodents that eat plants; moles are insect-eaters.
• Gophers and gopher tortoises are related. They share a name and a habitat, not a family.

• Eastern mole
• Hispid cotton rat
• Oldfield mouse