When Squirrels Go Nuts

If it passes the test, Tekiela says squirrels will buy nuts one at a time, often over an area of one to two acres or more. Think of a squirrel GPS. And they go off of, okay there's a rock here

To account for missing nuts, squirrels bury a massive amount of nuts each year. While different breeds of squirrels vary a bit in their nut-burying ability, some squirrels, like the gray squirrel, bury almost 10,000 nuts per year. That's a pretty astonishing number! Gray squirrels can hide 50 nuts per hour.

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Fox Squirrels Sciurus niger bury their nutsseeds in scattered caches. Squirrels That Don't Bury Nuts. Although limited, a few species of squirrels do not habitually bury food for the winter period, which is mainly due to sufficient winter feeding. Abert's Squirrels Sciurus aberti feed off of Ponderosa Pines, among other species. They

Now this The 2017 study by Mikel M. Delgado and Lucia F. Jacobs, professors at UC Berkeley indicates more complex thinking behind the caching. In field experiments conducted over 19 months from 2012 to 2014, researchers fed 45 quotmarked, free-rangingquot Eastern fox squirrels one nut at a time 16 total for each squirrel varying the type of nut almonds, hazelnuts, pecans and walnuts.

For one, scientists have observed gray squirrels frequently burying and reburying their nuts. The scientists posited that this behavior was to help always keep a fresh memory of the nut's location. However, it's not only memory that squirrels need to combat in order to find their nuts! The gray squirrel community is rampant with nut theft

These two strategies exist along a continuum, and some squirrels go with the quotmixedquot method, where they will do both, Chow says. Usually different squirrel species will practice one or the

The squirrel then runs to another location to truly store the nut. Pilfering squirrels usually have to go through many false stashes before they discover the real ones. The third tactic involves hiding the nuts in challenging areas such as muddy areas and under bushes. The stress involved in recovering the nuts discourages the pilfering

While Dr. Jacobs' study found that the rate of a nut's deterioration seems to have little bearing on whether squirrels eat or bury nuts, some scientists disagree. so they go bad faster. When free-range grey squirrels were given red and white oak acorns in six separate experiments, they consistently ate the white acorns right away and buried

Squirrels are just nuts about nuts. Image credit Neil BurtonShutterstock the lower the risk that a hungry competitor will discover the squirrel's entire supply and destroy it in one go.

The main reason squirrels bury nuts is to prepare for the winter months when food is scarce. This behavior, known as quotcachingquot, helps ensure they'll have enough to eat when the cold sets in and trees are bare. But how does it all work? 1.Food Storage for Winter. Squirrels gather nuts, seeds, and other food items and bury them in small