A Brilliant Disguise: The Seventh Day of Squirrel Awareness Month

On the seventh day of Squirrel Awareness Month my squirrel love gave to me

Seven smelly snakeskins,

Six comfy dreys,

Five giant sweet peanut patties shaped like Texas,

Four cups of nuts,

Three Baby Ruth bars,

Two ice cream cones,

And an acorn in an oak tree!

California ground squirrels have an ingenious trick to fool one of their predators, the rattlesnake. When a ground squirrel comes across a shed snakeskin, it will rub the skin over its fur, coating itself with the snake's scent. This confuses any rattlesnake that threatens the squirrel and its young.

If a rattlesnake wanders into the area of a California ground squirrel colony, the squirrels will not wait for it to attack. They will go on the offensive against the snake, confronting it, kicking dirt at it, and waving their tails. These squirrels are even able to shunt extra blood to the veins in the tail, heating it up. Since the snake detects heat more effectively than it sees, this makes the squirrels appear larger and more threatening to the rattler.

Here is a video that demonstrates how effectively these little ground squirrels deal with a threatening rattlesnake:

Fox Squirrel Caching Behavior

An interesting article from the UC Berkeley News Center discusses the strategies that fox squirrels use when caching nuts.

A group of students at the University of California, under the direction of psychology graduate student Mikel Delgado, have been tracking 70 campus fox squirrels, mapping their territories, and studying the strategies that the squirrels use to find, hide, and retrieve different kinds of nuts. The students hope to determine how the squirrels determine the quality of each nut, and decide what amount of investment to put into that nut, whether to discard, eat immediately, or to cache the nut.

Like the video in my previous post, this article confirms that tree squirrels rely on much more than just their sense of smell to locate hidden nuts. According to Delgado, the squirrels use a combination of landmarks and spatial memory to narrow down the location to a specific area, while probably relying on smell only for the "final bit of searching."

The article includes a cute video of some of the UC campus fox squirrels hiding nuts:

This looks like some extremely interesting research that promises to shed some light on the intelligence of our squirrely friends!

The Fourth Day of Squirrel Awareness Month

On the fourth day of Squirrel Awareness Month my squirrel love gave to me

Four cups of nuts,

Three Baby Ruth bars,

Two ice cream cones,

and an acorn in an oak tree!

Today's squirrel video demonstrates how tree squirrels use spatial memory to locate hidden nuts. The poster of the YouTube video experimented with three different squirrels, hiding nuts under one of four cups in a squirrely shell game. The squirrels always returned to the cup in the same position where they had previously found the nuts, even when the nuts were moved to a different cup, and even after a different colored cup had been substituted for the original.

The poster of the video makes one error in the description, saying that squirrels do not smell nuts but only locate them based on memory. Squirrels have an excellent sense of smell and most certainly can smell nuts. However, this video may demonstrate that squirrels rely more heavily on spatial memory when searching for recently-cached nuts or for food that they have recently found in a specific location.

I hope that after the experiment was ended, the squirrels were rewarded with all four cups filled with nuts!

Classic Squirrel Video, and the Third Day of Squirrel Awareness Month

On the third day of Squirrel Awareness Month my squirrel love gave to me

Three Baby Ruth bars,

Two ice cream cones,

And an acorn in an oak tree!

This classic video shows a squirrel negotiating an obstacle course that was set up in Great Britain. I believe it may have originally aired as part of a BBC program several years ago. The obstacle course segment is impressive, as the narrator describes how quickly the squirrels figured out the moves needed to reach the treat at the end.

The best part of the clip, for me, is at the end, when a city squirrel climbs into a vending machine, steals a Baby Ruth candy bar, and carries it off to a corner of a parking lot to enjoy the peanutty, caramelly, chocolatty goodness. I suppose it might have enjoyed an Almond Joy bar even more had any been available, because sometimes you feel like a nut!

On the Second Day of Squirrel Awareness Month...

On the second day of Squirrel Awareness Month my squirrel love gave to me

Two ice cream cones

And an acorn in an oak tree

Yes, squirrels do love ice cream. If you need more proof, here it is...

Squirrel Video: With a Little Help From My Friends

For day one of Squirrel Awareness Month, I want to share one of my favorite squirrel videos. It's about a big squirrel, a young squirrel, and some human friends on the campus of UCLA. Enjoy!

German Squirrel Makes Dramatic Escape!

This video of a red squirrel hurling itself out of a kitchen window of an apartment in Germany has recently gone viral.




The squirrel appears to be unhurt as it is seen running in the courtyard after plummeting four stories.

A translation of the voices of the two people speaking in German can be read here.

The one question that is unanswered in the video and in the story linked above is, how did the squirrel get into the apartment in the first place?

Longview, WA Celebrates Squirrels Today!

The town of Longview, WA is known for its fondness for squirrels. This statue occupies a prominent place in the town...

And the Nutty Narrows bridge, designed and erected years ago by a local businessman after he witnessed a squirrel being run over in the street, helps local squirrels cross a busy roadway in safety...

And today the town is holding its annual celebration in honor of its furry neighbors, Longview Squirrel Fest. This is an event that I truly wish I could attend, if it wasn't for the distance and lack of money! The annual celebration, started last year, offers a full daylong slate of fun activities, performances, food and drink, and demonstrations from vendors. And best of all, each year at Squirrel Fest a new squirrel bridge will be unveiled, all to make life safer and happier for the town's beloved squirrels.

And just in case anyone doubts whether the squirrels actually use the bridges, here's proof...

Water-Skiing Squirrel

Our friend Winkelhimer Smith the Painting Squirrel has recently raised an important and troubling question about the popular water-skiing squirrel Twiggy. Winkelhimer asked "What do you guys think about the people that make squirrels ride in boats or water ski?" and followed this question with speculation about whether the squirrels being forced to perform on the water skis are afraid of falling into the water and drowning.

Twiggy the water-skiing squirrel

I have wondered about this myself. In fact, for a long time I have thought about writing a post about Twiggy on this blog, but have hesitated to do so because I have very mixed feelings about this subject.

In general, I think it is wrong in most if not all cases to make animals perform tricks or stunts for public entertainment or amusement that they would not do of their own free will. I have demonstrated outside the Ringling Brothers' Circus protesting their treatment of elephants and other animals for this very reason.

Regarding the question of whether squirrels can swim, as Winkelhimer points out, the answer is that yes they can, but they prefer not to. According to the book Squirrels: The Animal Answer Guide by Thorington and Ferrell, gray squirrels will swim across streams and even large rivers if they have to during migrations in search of new food sources.

However, squirrels have never been observed riding water skis unless a human put them there.

The "About Us" page at Twiggy's web site explains how the original Twiggy (there have been several squirrels who have performed under this name over the years) was rescued after a hurricane and taught by Chuck and Lou Ann Best to water ski in the late 1970s.

I checked out a few videos from YouTube of Twiggy performing--most of the performances are done at boat shows, and take place in a wading pool with ankle-deep water. You can watch one of the videos below. My gut feeling from watching the performance is that the squirrel is getting onto the skis willingly, without being forced. I still have mixed feelings about this, but I don't see any reason to consider it abuse.

Gibbons Befriend a Baby Squirrel!

Interspecies relationships are always cute. And even more so when one of the species is a squirrel! Two gibbons at the Henry Vilas zoo, Richie and Moe, recently adopted a baby squirrel from a nest that was in their enclosure. The video below shows one of the gibbons, Richie, as he holds, grooms, and plays with the squirrel.




As the article notes, the gibbons had tried to adopt a baby squirrel last year, but gave it back to its mother when the fascination wore off. This time, after the gibbons played with their friend for a couple of days, the zoo staff stepped in and, to ensure their safety, took the whole litter of squirrels to a wildlife rehabilitation facility for relocation.

Squirrel Video: Determined Squirrels Score Big!

I want to share two videos I found on YouTube of squirrels hitting the jackpot.

In the first clip, a squirrel in a park steals a can of planters nuts and hauls it up into a tree:




Next up, an even more determined squirrel carries a jar of peanut butter up a tree:




It just goes to show the lengths that a squirrel will go to to get what it wants!

Introducing RoboSquirrel

Meet RoboSquirrel...

Hello!

He(?) is a robotic California ground squirrel. His skin is a real squirrel skin, and when he is not working, he is kept in an actual captive squirrel nest so that he will have the scent of a real squirrel.

RoboSquirrel was developed as part of a joint project by the Behavioral Ecology Lab at San Diego State University and the Robotics Engineering Lab at the University of California at Davis. His job is to help researchers study the predator-prey interactions between California ground squirrels and rattlesnakes.

Ground squirrels and rattlesnakes have lived in close proximity for thousands of years in California. Scientists have known for years about certain adaptations that the squirrels have evolved to help them avoid becoming snake food. They have developed a moderate degree of resistance to snake venom, so that they can often survive being bitten. They also have developed what may seem like an odd behavior: when it detects a rattlesnake in its vicinity, a squirrel does not flee but instead confronts the snake face-to-face and waves its tail back and forth, a behavior known as tail flagging. Here is a video to demonstrate:




When a squirrel engages in tail flagging, it also heats up its tail--I'm not sure how this is done, but I assume it somehow increases the blood flow to the tail.

What scientists don't understand is how tail flagging helps the squirrel avoid being bitten by a rattlesnake. RoboSquirrel will help scientists study how this behavior works, without exposing real squirrels to danger. After identifying a real rattlesnake in the field of vision of a remote control camera, they can send in RoboSquirrel to confront the snake. They can program the robot to either flag its tail, or to face the snake without tail flagging (something a real ground squirrel would never do) and compare the results. They can also change the rate of tail flagging.

Here is a video of one of the very early experiments with RoboSquirrel:




You can read more about this fascinating work at the robotics blog Hizook, and also at the rattlesnake behavior blog Strike, Rattle, & Roll, which promises to give updates on the project in the future.

Coast and Canyon: Squirrel Friends in California

Coast and Canyon is a nonprofit wildlife rehab center in Malibu, California. Not only do they do great and important work rescuing and rehabilitating baby squirrels and other wildlife for release back into the wild--they also have an awesome website. Seriously, when you go to a site and this is the first thing you see...

you know you've found a winner.

Their site also features awesome videos of squirrels that they have worked with, and even a live baby squirrel cam...



Live Video streaming by Ustream


So definitely visit their site, check out the work that they do. They have a link there where you can shop at Amazon and they will receive a portion of the sales. Or if you have the means, you can donate to them directly!

Video: Squirrel Mom Carrying Babies

A few days ago I posted a photo of a mother squirrel carrying one of her babies at a full run. Here is an excellent video that I found on YouTube that shows a squirrel retrieving two of her babies after they got separated from her:




Near the end of the video, the videographer stops the motion a couple of times so that you can see how the mother positions the baby. What is most impressive is that these baby squirrels, far from newborns, look like they are almost as big as the mother and yet she runs leaping across the yard and up the tree trunk effortlessly with each of them.

For a good comparison, imagine picking up your ten year old child, running with him in your arms across a large parking lot and then up the stairs to your tenth-floor apartment, and then going back to do the same with his twin sister!

Cape Ground Squirrels Humiliate Cobra

I have posted this video before, but it is one of my favorites and I just wanted to show it again. These badass little South African ground squirrels have absolutely no fear of the Cape cobra. They go right up to the snake and wave their bushy tails in its face, then jump out of the way when it tries to strike, taunting it until it finally slithers away defeated.

Winkelhimer the Painting Squirrel

Artist Shyla Mouton rescued Winkelhimer the squirrel as a baby after she was attacked and injured by a cat. After watching her rescuer at work painting dolls and jewelry, Winkelhimer was inspired to take up painting herself. Now her short video has gone viral on YouTube.




Since she lost the use of her right hand in the attack, Winkelhimer holds the brush in her mouth and her other hand. Mouton sells the paintings on eBay, bringing in up to $40 for a painting, which she uses to care for Winkelhimer and her other rescue animals.

Happy Squirrel Appreciation Day to Winkelhimer and all of the other wonderful squirrels out there!

Butterball: Horrific Abuse of Turkeys in NC

I am disturbed and outraged about the abuse of turkeys revealed by an undercover video here in my own state of North Carolina. The abuse was documented at a factory farm raising turkeys for Butterball, the largest producer of turkeys in the United States, in the town of Shannon, NC. I am posting the video from YouTube, which was shot by a member of the animal rights group Mercy For Animals who worked undercover at the farm in November and early December. The video is graphic and disturbing, so be aware before you watch. It shows turkeys being kicked and stomped, dragged by their necks and wings, thrown forcefully into transport trucks, and sitting neglected with open wounds and rotting eyes, untreated and covered with flies.




Fortunately, local sheriff department agents raided the farm yesterday, December 29. Now it is up to the law enforcement agency to do the right thing, shut down this facility, and prosecute the people who are responsible... not just the workers in the video, but also those in charge at the farm and Butterball.

Here is a link to a petition where you can tell Butterball what you think of their abuse of these gentle and intelligent birds.

Jesusland

Last night I got into a little argument with a couple of fundamentalist Rick Perry supporters on Twitter. I won't rehash the whole argument right now, but just say that later on it made me think of this song by Ben Folds, which I think captures the spirit of fundamentalist Christianity in America perfectly.

Town to town

broadcast to each house they drop your name

but no one knows your face,

billboards quoting things you'd never say

you hang your head and pray

for Jesusland

Dancing Squirrels

Here are some squirrels dancing to "Don't Stop 'Till You Get a Nut" by Michael Jackson.




My tweep @The_Lil_General was kind enough to bring this to my attention.

Oh, and that was the first time I've ever used the word "tweep." And hopefully the last.

Squirrel Facts: The Cape Ground Squirrel

The Cape ground squirrel lives in arid regions of southern Africa, including the Kalahari desert. It is cinnamon-colored on top and gray below, with a white stripe running down each side of its body, and has a large, bushy tail. It eats mostly roots and bulbs dug from underground, and grasses, shrubs, and herbs. The Cape ground squirrel hardly ever drinks, getting most of its water from the plants that it feeds on.

The Cape ground squirrels live in separate male and female groups, which come together only during the mating season. The female groups consist of around three adult females and their juvenile offspring. The male groups are made up of up to nineteen adult males. Groups live in clusters of burrows with numerous entrances.

Cape ground squirrels use their bushy tails like umbrellas to shade them from the extreme desert heat. They also use the tails to confuse and frustrate predators such as snakes, as seen in this video about a group of ground squirrels fending off a Cape cobra. Don't worry, the squirrels are more than capable of dealing with the snake:




Just check out how bushy those squirrels' tails get when they are mobbing the cobra. I would like to hear Randall from the Honey Badger video narrate a video of these badass little squirrels!