How long will Stephens’ kangaroo rats keep drumming their feet in Southern California?

Talk about charismatic microfauna! This animal has to be the most attractive animal in Southern California weighing less than a pound. The Stephens’ kangaroo rat, known as SKR by those in the know, is the subject of one of our new conservation programs in the San Diego Zoo’s own backyard.

Just up the road from San Diego, at Lake Skinner in Riverside County, the endangered SKR lives in one of its few remaining strongholds. The Riverside County Habitat Conservation Agency manages lands for the express purpose of saving this little-known rodent. It may be a rodent, but despite its name, it’s more closely related to pocket gophers and squirrels than it is to rats and mice.

As director of our far-reaching team of researchers in the San Diego Zoo’s Applied Animal Ecology Division, I get to participate in some pretty cool projects. Earlier this month I spent a couple of nights working with Dr. Debra Shier and her team, catching and tracking these nocturnal animals. The size of a potato, it was a rare treat to be able to see these animals up close and learn more about their natural history. Most fun was listening to their signature communication mechanism: foot drumming. These small mammals communicate by drumming their feet on the ground, which makes vibrations that can be detected by “k-rats” living in neighboring burrows. People can hear them above ground if they listen carefully, but my perceptual abilities were greatly aided by using a special microphone that detects ground-borne vibrations.

The other highlight was observing them through night vision scopes. I was able to watch them emerge from their burrows and scurry around on their little network of trails, picking up seeds and filling up their check pouches, which are, amazingly, outside the mouth. Later on, in the comfort of the burrow, they pull the seeds out and consume them.

Debra’s team has already done significant conservation work for this species, last year orchestrating a translocation of kangaroo rats from where they were vulnerable to a new area. This year the team is finding ample evidence that most of these animals survived and, most encouraging, they had offspring. We appear to have established a new population where previously there was none. Meanwhile, the team is preparing to translocate another group of “k-rats” in the hope of continuing to expand their range within the Lake Skinner Reserve.

Look for posts by Debra and her team in the near future.

Dr. Ron Swaisgood is the director of Applied Animal Ecology at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute of Conservation Research.

Here’s more information about the project

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