The width of the gopher tortoise burrow is about the same as the tortoise's length, which means it can turn around anywhere in its burrow. Generally, the larger the burrow, the older the tortoise. Gopher tortoises can live at least 40 years and possibly much longer, but no one has studied them long enough to know just how long they live. The Florida scrub is home to many different species of digger wasps that build nests in the sand by raking, pulling, pushing, or carrying grains of sand. Some digger wasps can throw sand six inches or more, which keeps the sand from accumulating at the burrow entrance and helps conceal it from potential predators.
Some species even make several shallow false burrows to confuse enemies such as velvet ants.
Velvet ants , which are actually wingless parasitic wasps, will slip into the undefended burrow of a digger wasp and lay their eggs on the mature larvae . When the eggs hatch, the velvet ant larvae eat the wasp larvae . A gopher tortoise burrow can provide year-round shelter for over two dozen vertebrate species including the threatened eastern indigo snake, the gopher frog, and the Florida mouse. The gopher frog spends most of its life in the burrow, coming out only to feed and to find water in which to breed in late summer. Most spider babies leave home as soon as they emerge from the egg, but the Lake Placid funnel wolf spider mother keeps her young at home in her burrow until they are half adult size.