The hind feet have three toes, the central three metatarsal bones having fused to form a single structure.

The animal excavates the tunnel with its fore limbs, using its teeth to cut roots, and pushes soil out with its hind feet or nose, forming a characteristic fan-like mound of waste material.

[4] The species is nocturnal and emerges after dark to forage primarily for seeds, but also eats grasses, shoots, leaves, bulbs, roots and insects.

Breeding takes place during the summer with two or three litters, each averaging three or four young, being produced after a gestation period of 25 to 30 days.

These rodents are about four times more abundant on the dried-up seabed than in the surrounding terrain, and the presence of this abundance of rodent prey has attracted carnivores such as the red fox, the corsac fox, the steppe polecat, the marbled polecat and the Turkestan wildcat.

It is presumed to have a large total population and is a pioneering species, often being the first small rodent to occupy new habitat, such as the drying seabed of the Aral Sea.