When watching beside a mound by moonlight one is impressed with the fact
that the rats possess either a very keen sense of hearing or of sight,
probably both. The very slightest movement or noise on the part of the
observer results, with a timid individual, in an instantaneous leap for
safety, a disappearance into the burrow so sudden as to be almost
startling. All attempts to obtain flashlight photographs at the mounds
were failures, the animal either having gotten completely out of the
field before the light flashed following the pull of the trigger, or
leaving merely an indistinguishable blur on the plate as it went, and
this in spite of carefully hiding the trigger chain behind a screen. A
slight noise accompanying the trigger action gave the alarm in one case,
and in another the length of time of the flash was sufficient for the
get-away. The marvelous quickness of the animal clearly indicates a
remarkably short reaction time. Occasionally a bold individual is
found, as in the case of one which came out repeatedly, even after being
flashed twice in the same night.

Certain peculiar physical characteristics suggest a relationship to
sense reactions. On these, however, the authors are not prepared to do
more than offer suggestions for future work. The extremely large
mastoids found in kangaroo rats suggest a connection in some way with
special developments of the sense of hearing or of balance. It may be
noted that an intermediate condition between the kangaroo rats and the
majority of rodents in respect to this character is to be found in the
pocket mice (_Perognathus_), which belong to the same family. Herein
lies a field for some interesting experimentation and discovery.

The small, pointed nose might suggest a not overkeen sense of smell, and
there appears no reason to believe that this sense is particularly well