Jf. Taulman et al., DOUBLE CAPTURES OF SMALL MAMMALS IN SINGLE-CAPTURE TRAPS - RANDOM ENCOUNTERS OR SOCIAL TRAVELING, The Southwestern naturalist, 39(4), 1994, pp. 358-363
We captured 38 intraspecific pairs of five species of small mammals in
single-capture Sherman live traps during 76,508 trap nights over 14 c
ombined years in four separate studies in Texas and Arkansas. While ra
ndom nonsynchronous encounters cannot be completely ruled out for doub
le-capture events in single-capture live traps, double-capture data me
eting one or more of the following restrictive criteria may best be in
terpreted as the result of close pair or social traveling: 1) no inter
specific double captures, 2) a nonrandom sex-age association between p
airs captured together, 3) recaptures of pairs previously caught toget
her, 4) a small proportion of double to single captures, and 5) no mor
e than two animals captured together in one trap. The double captures
reported here largely meet the above criteria. We also captured four i
ntraspecific pairs of small mammals in three sizes of snap traps durin
g 81,311 trap nights over 4 years in a fifth study. Data from double c
aptures in snap traps provide stronger indirect evidence of close soci
al traveling in small mammals than is available from live traps.