pack rat

Pack rats Fossil range: Late Miocene - Recent
Neotoma cinerea
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Rodentia
Superfamily:	Muroidea
Family:	Cricetidae
Subfamily:	Neotominae
Tribe:	Neotomini
Genus:	Neotoma Say & Ord, 1825
Species
Neotoma albigula Neotoma angustapalata Neotoma anthonyi Neotoma bryanti Neotoma bunkeri Neotoma chrysomelas Neotoma cinerea Neotoma devia Neotoma floridana Neotoma fuscipes Neotoma goldmani Neotoma lepida Neotoma leucodon Neotoma macrotis Neotoma magister Neotoma martinensis Neotoma mexicana Neotoma micropus Neotoma nelsoni Neotoma palatina Neotoma phenax Neotoma stephensi

A pack rat, also called a trade rat or wood rat, can be any of several species in the genus Neotoma, but most commonly the Bushy-tailed Woodrat (Neotoma cinerea).

Description

Pack rats are prevalent in the deserts and highlands of western United States and northern Mexico. They also inhabit parts of the eastern United States and Western Canada. Pack rats are a little smaller than a typical rat and have long, sometimes bushy tails.

Pack rats build complex nests of twigs, called "middens", often incorporating cactus. Nests are often built in small caves, but frequently also in the attics and walls of houses. Some Neotoma species, such as the White-throated Woodrat (N. albigula), use the base of a prickly pear or cholla cactus as the site for their home, utilizing the cactus' spines for protection from predators. Others, like the Desert Woodrat (N. lepida) will appropriate the burrows of ground squirrels or kangaroo rats and fortify the entrance with sticks and bits of spiny cactus stems fallen from Jumping and Teddy-bear Chollas.

In houses, pack rats are active nocturnally, searching for food and nest material. A peculiar characteristic is that if they find something they want, they will drop what they are currently carrying, for example a piece of cactus, and "trade" it for the new item. They are particularly fond of shiny objects, leading to tales of rats swapping jewelry for a stone. They can also be quite vocal and boisterous, sounding at times as if a "family rift" is taking place.

Historically, houses in or near ghost towns were typically infested with pack rats.

Some species of pack rats were called "prairie flounders" by settlers. This might have occurred because the eyes of pack rats are set somewhat higher in the head than other rodents.

Species

• Neotoma
• Subgenus (Neotoma)
  • Neotoma albigula - White-throated Woodrat
    • Neotoma albigula varia - Turner Island Woodrat
  • Neotoma angustapalata - Tamaulipan Woodrat
  • Neotoma anthonyi - Anthony's Woodrat
  • Neotoma bryanti - Bryant's Woodrat
  • Neotoma bunkeri - Bunker's Woodrat
  • Neotoma chrysomelas - Nicaraguan Woodrat
  • Neotoma devia - Arizona Woodrat
  • Neotoma floridana - Florida Woodrat (Eastern Woodrat)
    • Neotoma floridana smalli - Key Largo Woodrat
  • Neotoma goldmani - Goldman's Woodrat
  • Neotoma lepida - Desert Woodrat
  • Neotoma leucodon - White-toothed Woodrat
  • Neotoma macrotis - Big-eared Woodrat
  • Neotoma magister - Allegheny Woodrat
  • Neotoma martinensis - San Martin Island Woodrat
  • Neotoma mexicana - Mexican Woodrat
  • Neotoma micropus - Southern Plains Woodrat
  • Neotoma nelsoni - Nelson's Woodrat
  • Neotoma palatina - Bolaos Woodrat
  • Neotoma stephensi - Stephens's Woodrat
• Subgenus (Teanopus)
  • Neotoma phenax - Sonoran Woodrat
• Subgenus (Teonoma)
  • Neotoma cinerea - Bushy-tailed Woodrat
  • Neotoma fuscipes - Dusky-footed Woodrat

Pack rat midden

A large pack rat midden (center) from the Pleistocene period.

A pack rat midden is the nest of a pack rat. Pack rat middens may preserve the materials incorporated into it up to 40,000 years. The middens may thus be analyzed to reconstruct their original environment, and comparisons between middens allow a record of vegetative and climate change to be built. Examinations and comparisons of pack rat middens have largely supplanted pollen records as a method of study in the regions where they are available.

Midden structure

Active pack rat midden in northern Nevada

Pack rats are known for their characteristic searching of materials to bring back to their nests creating an ever expanding collection known as a "midden" for its messiness. In natural environments, the middens are normally built out of sticks in rock crevices or caves for protection from predators. In the absence of crevices or caves, the middens are often built under trees or bushes. The pack rats will also use plant fragments, animal dung and small rocks in building the nest. The vast majority of the materials will be from a radius of several dozen yards of the nest. The pack rats urinate in the midden; sugar and other substances in the urine crystallize as it dries out, cementing the midden together. After a few decades, the rats will abandon the midden and move on to start a new nest.

Pack rat midden analysis

In 1978, paleoecologist Julio Betancourt was asked to study pack rat middens. Betancourt had previously tried to imagine where the Anasazi had gotten the numerous large logs for the buildings of the treeless Chaco Canyon site in what is now northwestern New Mexico; he called midden expert Tom Van Devender and confirmed that Van Devender had found piñon needles near the site, though none of these trees grew there in modern times. Thinking that the middens were perhaps a century old, Van Devender and Betancourt submitted the middens to radiocarbon dating and found that many of them were over 1,000 years old. Research since then has found middens can last 40,000 years.

The resilience of the middens is due to three factors. The crystallized urine dramatically slows the decay of the materials in the midden. The dry climate of the American Southwest further slows the decay, and middens that are protected from the elements under rock overhangs or in caves survive even longer.

Zoologists examine the remains of animals in middens to get a sense of the fauna in the neighborhood of the midden, while paleobotanists can reconstruct the vegetation that grew nearby. Because middens are abandoned after a short period of time, they are uncontaminated "time capsules" of several decades of natural life, centuries and millennia after they occurred. The analysis of middens was key in understanding the fauna around Pueblo Bonito, and thus helping to explain its history.

References

• Betancourt, Julio L., Thomas R. Van Devender, and Paul S. Martin, eds. Packrat Middens: The Last 40,000 Years of Biotic Change, University of Arizona Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8165-1115-2.
• Duff, A. and A. Lawson. 2004. Mammals of the World A Checklist. New Haven, Yale University Press.
• Kays, R. W., and D. E. Wilson. 2002. Mammals of North America. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 240 pp.
• Musser, G. G. and M. D. Carleton. 2005. Superfamily Muroidea. Pp. 894-1531 in Mammal Species of the World a Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. D. E. Wilson and D. M. Reeder eds. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

External links

• "Desert Woodrats" at DesertUSA.com
• "Pack Rat Piles: Rodent rubbish provides ice age thermometer", Science News, 24 September 2005