Kangaroo Rat – Making Your Own Way
Keywords:
Making your own way, hoarding, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, storing things for later, developing a nest egg, saving something for later, learning how to savour things in the moment, needing to mole or withdraw from time to time, adapting to your environment, specialisation.
General Description:
The kangaroo rat of North America is named for its bipedal locomotion of hopping on its’ two hind legs. They are very well adapted to desert life, able to gain all their moisture from their diet which mostly consists of seeds, thanks to an adaptation of their kidneys. Kangaroo rats will store food by scatter-hoarding (making many different caches of food), and larder-hoarding (having a single cache of food); both have their pros and cons, and allow kangaroo rats to access food when resources are scarce. To help assist their hoarding habits, they have very well developed cheek pouches in which they carry food, and empty out with the help of their forepaws.