The term gopher as it is commonly used does not relate to any one species, but is a generic term used to describe any of several small burrowing rodent

Rodent

Rodentia is an order of mammals also known as rodents, characterised by two continuously growing incisors in the upper and lower jaws which must be kept short by gnawing....

s endemic to North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, including the pocket gopher

Pocket gopher

The pocket gophers are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. These are the "true" gophers, though several ground squirrels of the family Sciuridae are often called gophers as well...

 (family Geomyidae), also called true gophers, and the ground squirrel

Ground squirrel

The ground squirrels are members of the squirrel family of rodents which generally live on or in the ground, rather than trees. The term is most often used for the medium-sized ground squirrels, as the larger ones are more commonly known as marmots or prairie dogs, while the smaller and less...

 (family Sciuridae), including Richardson's ground squirrel

Richardson's Ground Squirrel

Richardson's ground squirrel , or the flickertail, is a North American ground squirrel in the genus Urocitellus...

 and species of prairie dog

Prairie dog

Prairie dogs are burrowing rodents native to the grasslands of North America. There are five different species of prairie dogs: black-tailed, white-tailed, Gunnison's, Utah and Mexican prairie dogs. They are a type of ground squirrel, found in the United States, Canada and Mexico...

.

Gophers weigh around 0.5 pounds (226.8 g), and are about 15 inches (38.1 cm) long in body length, with a tail 7 inches (17.8 cm) long. Their lifespan is normally 2-3 years (assuming no diseases or predation). Gophers dig tunnels and subterranean chambers, and are associated with the rodent order

Order (biology)

In scientific classification used in biology, the order is# a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, family, genus, and species, with order fitting in between class and family...

, Rodentia. There are over 100 kinds of gophers in America. Gophers, because of their burrowing, can disrupt human plans like commercial agriculture, garden plots, some landscaping, and some underground cables. This has led to their frequent treatment as pest

Pest (animal)

A pest is an animal which is detrimental to humans or human concerns. It is a loosely defined term, often overlapping with the related terms vermin, weeds, parasites and pathogens...

s.

Gophers create a large community of tunnels with large mounds of dirt and rocks at their entrances, frequently referred to as gopher towns. Adult gophers will frequently stand watch at the entrance to a tunnel and whistle when predators are spotted, causing all the other gophers to run for the safety of the tunnels. A gopher town can easily spread to take over large sections of prairie or mountain meadow and may have a population in the thousands. The resulting destruction of plant life will then leave the area a stretch of denuded dirt. Gophers eat shrubs and other vegetation.