This is the tenth post in the NiCHE series Animal Encounters, edited by Heather Green and Caroline Abbott. You can read all posts in this series here.
I began to encounter Pocket Gophers (Heterogeomys heterodus) three years ago. My first encounter was neither casual nor premeditated: it occurred while I was conducting an ethnography related to my doctoral research in San Gerardo de Oreamuno, Cartago, Costa Rica. In 2021, I relocated there to analyze the relationships between humans and wildlife. This rural region is flanked by Irazú Volcano National Park, designated by the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC) in 1955. It primarily hosts mountain and cloud forests, characterized by high elevations and various species of trees and vegetation adapted to misty and high-humidity conditions.
Residents near the protected area often interact with animals that move between the forested regions and the agricultural land surrounding them. When I began my fieldwork, I knew relatively little about the history of Pocket Gophers, and even less about how their lives intertwine with those of humans. I had heard vague references to the damage they cause to San Gerardo’s horticultural activities, such as the destruction of young plants and roots, as well as soil destabilization from the erosion generated by their tunnels.1 However, I had never considered the implications of these interactions or the territorial values established around multispecies coexistence.
My training as a sociologist predisposed me to notice connections with nature’s vitality, which often become significant to settler-colonial communities only when perceived as commercially valuable. This awareness resonated with the work of Donna Haraway, whose perspective of “learning-with” emphasizes the importance of reciprocal interactions. Her work suggests that our interactions with other creatures provide valuable insights into our coexistence practices and understanding of the environment.2 This idea became crucial in my relationships with the Gophers.
For me, “learning-with” Pocket Gophers involved understanding how they construct their tunnels and navigate cultivated areas. I focused on observing their behaviors and feeding habits. Whenever I interacted with a captured Gopher, I paid close attention to its appearance, distinguishing details of its anatomy — like the small eyes, almost closed due to lack of exposure to light, the prominent incisors, and its powerful claws. I also listened to their faint, barely audible squeaks. I took photographs and, careful not to get bitten, ran my fingers over its body to experience the texture of its skin.
This approach offered the fossorial rodents a form of attention different from what they had received from other scholars throughout the 20th century. Over the past century, discussions about this species in Costa Rica have been dominated by agronomic approaches focused on controlling their presence in farm-land. Pocket Gophers, due to their habit of digging underground tunnels to feed on crop roots, were classified solely as “pest vertebrates,” relegating their ecological role — which remains largely unknown — to a vilified status. Despite efforts to control Gopher populations, they were an integral part of the region’s ecology before agricultural activities developed in the 20th century.
As a result of their classification as pest vertebrates, governmental authorities recommended biological and chemical control methods to eradicate them in San Gerardo. Biological control involved using plant species considered poisonous to gophers, while chemical control included ecologically-riskier methods using broad-spectrum rodenticides. However, these approaches proved ineffective, as Gophers are clever and elusive, quickly detecting danger and avoiding traps. Consequently, the most effective technique has been mechanical control, involving devices installed within tunnels that immobilize the animal’s paws when activated as it passes over them. This method does not cause immediate death, requiring taltuceros — an appellation derived from the word “taltuza,” (the common name by which Pocket Gophers are known in Costa Rica) — to manually kill the animal, typically by striking its head with a stick or pipe.
“Learning-with” Pocket Gophers in this case represented an act of epistemological humility: allowing me to distance myself from presumptions about their negative impacts on agricultural activities and instead see them and the taltuceros as entangled beings. After researching population control histories, my interest in the knowledge taltuceros must acquire to trap gophers led me to a new perspective. One might think the only role of the taltuceros is as executioners: yet these laborers must establish closer contact with the Gophers to truly understand their behavior, their interactions with the plants they feed on — so maintaining their livelihood.
The concept of “learning-with” manifested in my ethnography through the taltuceros‘ attempts to experience the perspective of the Pocket Gophers. The installation of capture devices involves multiple stages, each requiring careful action to avoid alerting the animal to any changes to its tunnel, thereby lessening the chance of escape. Attention to detail is crucial; knowing when Pocket Gophers prefer to enter cultivation areas, the arrangement of their tunnels, and their reactions to obvious manipulations in the terrain helps the taltuceros establish a kind of intimacy with the animals they hope to capture.
In these practices, both Pocket Gophers and taltuceros are active participants. The gophers are not mere “objects of hunting,” but recognized interlocutors in the capture process. Likewise, in a way, taltuceros become aware and part of the activities of the Gophers, their own form of predation in dialogue with them by following their movement in tunnels and allowing them to teach about their underground inhabitation and daily routines. The relationship between taltuceros and Pocket Gophers has shown me that it is possible to generate learning from the worlds we share through both empirical experiences and intuitions. Although these interactions may have historically held less relevance to prevailing scientific practices, they hold deep significance for the people of San Gerardo.
It was not until my arrival in San Gerardo that I learned Costa Rica is home to four of the more than forty species of Pocket Gophers worldwide, distributed from southern Canada to northern Colombia. The species Heterogeomys heterodus is particularly relevant, as it is endemic to Costa Rica, found in only a few locations in the national territory.3 One of the most ecologically-important populations could exist precisely in the area where I conducted my ethnography.4 Realizing that this region could be the only home of this species made me more aware of the importance of preserving it, a cause in which taltuceros can play a fundamental role.
Despite the violence involved in trapping, the installation and inspection of traps provide valuable insights into the lives of Pocket Gophers. It could become an ecopedagogical tool if directed towards environmental education or species conservation. Observing the activities of taltuceros helped me recognize the porosity of agricultural boundaries and their associated ecologies. The interactions between taltuceros and Pocket Gophers reveal unique and complex knowledge which makes the details of these animals’ lives visible to those interested in studying and protecting the species in the future. Taltuceros with whom I conversed during my research mentioned having observed that Pocket Gophers do not build burrows within cultivated fields, but rather along the edges bordering grasslands. This behavior helps protect their young by reducing the risk of flooding from irrigation and disturbance from soil preparation during planting cycles.
The Pocket Gophers’ subterranean lifestyle, described as “cryptic”,5 contributes to their vilification and underscores the need for new understandings where animals are not merely obstacles to agricultural industries or individual study subjects. In this sense, the perspective of “learning-with” can be valuable for a research agenda exploring the dynamics between Pocket Gophers, microorganisms, and the soil’s biogeochemical cycles. The construction of tunnel and gallery systems may positively impact the availability and circulation of elements like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, as documented in studies of other species, primarily in the United States.6
We often think from the surface of the ground, while Pocket Gophers invite us to delve into the vitality of the subsurface. This immersion requires developing skills to observe these rodents differently and perhaps receive their gaze in return. We must move toward knowledge-making modes that help us recognize the social relationships uniting us with other species. As Haraway reminds us, we should acquire ways of “learning-with” that deepen our understanding of Pocket Gophers beyond their relationships with agricultural activities which agricultural monopolies brand as problematic, thereby enhancing our comprehension of their complex interactions with the ecosystem and defining future ways of living together.
Notes
[1] Monge-Meza, Javier. “El impacto de las taltuzas en el cultivo de banano”. Agronomía mesoamericana 22, no. 1 (2011): 167-174.
[2] Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the trouble: making kin in the Chthlucene. (Durham, North Caro-lina: Duke University Press, 2016), 312.
[3] Monge, Javier, and Carol Sánchez. Las taltuzas: historia natural y control. (San Pedro, Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica, Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio, 2015), 64.
[4] However, these data are inconclusive, as there are no population censuses to validate distribution patterns. Systematic fieldwork is necessary for this.
[5] Begall, Sabine, and Simone Lange, Cristian E. Schleich, Hynek Burda. “Acoustics, Audition and Auditory System”. In: Begall, Sabine, and Hynek Burda, Cristian E. Schleich (eds.). Subterrane-an rodents: news from underground. (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2007), 97-112.
[6] See in: Inouye, Richard S., and Nancy Huntly, Gerald A. Wasley. “Effects of pocket gophers (Geomys bursarus) on microtopographic variation.” Journal of Mammalogy 78, no. 4 (1997): 1144-1148 and Reichman, O. J., and Eric W. Seabloom. “The role of pocket gophers as subterranean ecosystem engineers”. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 17, no. 1 (2002): 44-49.
Feature Image: “Botta’s Pocket Gopher” by Dominic Sherony is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Luis Miguel Barboza Arias
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- “Learning-With” Pocket Gophers - November 29, 2024