Of the animals which share the woodrat's habitat, many small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates use its houses and live in a somewhat commensal relationship.
Woodrats are somewhat territorial, each defending its house and an indefinite surrounding area against intrusion by others. Houses tend to be spaced at intervals of at least 40 feet; occasionally they are closer together. Most foraging for food is done within 75 feet of the house. However, woodrats often wander far beyond the limits of the usual home range. On the average, males travel more frequently and more widely than females, and the larger and older males travel more than the smaller and younger. Search for mates provides the chief motivation for wandering. Extent of wandering is controlled to a large degree by availability of natural travelways, such as rock ledges, by shelters for temporary stopping places, such as old deserted houses, and by population density of the rats themselves.
Food of the eastern woodrat consists chiefly of vegetation; many kinds of leaves, fruits, and seeds are eaten. For many individuals foliage and seeds of the osage orange are the staple; hedge rows and dense trees of osage orange provide favorable sites for the houses. Woodrats are attracted to meat baits, and have been known to feed on flesh of carcasses, even on one of the pilot black snake which is a predator on the rat.
Woodrats are born blind, naked, and helpless, at a weight approximately four per cent of the adult female's. They gain at a rate of at least 1.5 grams per day in the first two months. When they have reached a weight of 100 grams, the gain averages somewhat less than one gram per day, but individual variation is great. Males gain more rapidly than females, especially in the later stages of growth, as adult weight is greater by approximately one-fourth in the male. Some individuals grow to maximum adult size at an age of one year. Unusually large individuals are not necessarily those that are unusually old. Longevity is greater in woodrats than in most smaller rodents. One female of adult size when first trapped was last captured 991 days later when she must have been well over three years old, and others are known to have survived more than two years even though populations were shrinking so that few of the rats were able to survive for their normal life span.
Literature Cited
Crabb, W. D.
1941. Food habits of the prairie spotted skunk in southeastern Iowa. Jour. Mamm., 22:349-364.
Fitch, H. S.