Squirrels are really interesting critters. I have a funny memory of my then-girlfriend's brother and his wife showing us home video of their trip to America and her family was totally fascinated with the 20 minutes of squirrel footage. At first I didn't understand why anyone, even those in New Zealand (where there are no squirrels), would see squirrels with the same awe one would show on a trip to a zoo, but I thought about it more and realized how weird they are.
For one, they seem to love roughhousing. Everyone has seen videos of squirrels being flung off of bird feeders by anti-squirrel devices, yet they love to come back for more. They'll go through great lengths just to get a single peanut, they're really daring too, but they're not stupid. My parents for a while constructed a squirrel obstacle course in their backyard and at first the squirrels are skeptical; they'll investigate, back off, come back and get a little closer, back off again until they get comfortable and then they figure it out. There's an unused dog-door at my parents' house and I suggested they extend part of their squirrel maze into their house through it. It was such a good idea they actually did it, and the squirrels did indeed come all the way into the house! They must have reasoned at some level that because those maze structures led to peanuts in the past that there could be a peanut inside the house where the maze lead. Of course this also lead birds like scrub jays observing the squirrels and entering the house as well!
For creatures that are relatively vulnerable to predators, they will relax out in the open in really cartoonish ways. It's humorous when they lie on the edge of a fence with their limbs dangling over both sides.
Periodically, my parents have to trim the pods off their palm trees which are quite tall now. Many of those peanuts the squirrels won from the obstacle course ended up at the top of those palms. It almost seems excessive given the amount of energy they seem to expend getting that food.
There are almost no stray dogs and cats in the US to catch the squirrels. In Bulgaria, there strays are common, squirrels are almost out. As a result, family in Bulgaria can grow tomatoes, strawberries and fruit trees in their yard and eat the fruit. In the East Bay Area, anything not fenced in gets eaten by squirrels. They would pick your fruit, eat one bite and drop it on top of your fence. If you have a fruit tree, you’ll see a line of one-bite fruit along the length of the fence neighbouring it.
Here in Bangalore where stray cats are fairly common, you don't see squirrels all that often. Because they mostly get converted to cat food.
A while back I used to feed pigeons at our home roof top. One day I saw while the pigeons were eating the wheat a cat hunted a pigeon. I realised my wheat feed was acting like a bait for cats to hunt pigeons. Stopped feeding them thereafter because I didn't want to be responsible for helping the cat kill the pigeons.
Rat population is less too. But rats are good at hiding below the earth, but I do witness a cat hunting a rat every other week.
>By the way, the squirrels eating just one bite is annoying for you but perhaps better for the sustainability of the tree?
Probably no difference for the individual tree, but I can imagine that partly eaten fruit being knocked to the ground is part of the seed-dispersal system.
Squirrels are really cool. They are human-like in that they have a level of curiosity and derring-do that seems, uh, greater than what you'd imagine evolution would select for.
We have a squirrel in our neighborhood that my wife and kids started leaving nuts out for. Within a few weeks, she would show up at the back door to wait for a handout. Now she has basically no fear of us. She'll take nuts from the kids' hands. She'll come right up to you, which is alarming if you're just trying to leave the house and don't actually have food on you. We have a Dutch door which we tend to leave open, and she's jumped onto the ledge before. It's probably only a matter of time before she comes all the way in the house, the cats notice, and all hell breaks loose.
A Canadian public-health Web site says although deer mice are the primary carrier of hantavirus, "all rodents including squirrels, rats, chipmunks and other kinds of mice should be treated as if they might carry the virus."
Those Experts™ all started life as egg-spurts just like us. Just do a bit more research and trust your heart and judgment. Generally, the method for disease decisions (epidemiology) is to look up the statistics for your area. You may not even have any Hanta virus cases nearby. And plague is extremely rare. Field rodents aren't as likely to carry disease as city vermin. I wouldn't worry too much about rural squirrels. They are cute and generally eat nuts, not insects. It is far less likely for a squirrel to contract a contagion because the squirrel isn't eating trash like pigeons or rats.
My wife has volunteered at a wildlife rehab place (PAWS) before and worked with squirrels. They have very strict protocols about animal-borne diseases. For example, you don't get to work with bats at all unless you have taken the rabies vaccine.
They don't have any particular protocols around working with local gray squirrels, so I interpret that to mean that there is little risk. There were only 243 cases of bubonic plague globally in 2018. According to the CDC, there are no known cases of hantavirus from squirrels. The only rodent species that have been seen to harbor it are deer mouse, white-footed mouse, rice rat, and cotton rat. (Neither of the latter are rat species you are likely to encounter, which are Norway and roof rats.)
"<common cute urban animal> causes <horrific thing>" is a very pervasive meme because it combines a familiar thing we're drawn to with a high risk negative outcome. That means the meme will spread dramatically out of proportion with its actual likelihood.
I'm from Australia and love watching squirrels when abroad. Our closest equivalents might be rats and possums which are mostly hidden away until night and are nowhere near as entertaining. Meanwhile, squirrels muck around constantly in broad daylight where anyone can spectate - they're always up to something.
people like spider-man movies but just go out and watch squirrels.. it's real life super heroes that fit in your hands. these go so fast, fly left and right you barely see them, quite amazing
They are really smart. I once tried to chase one away from a tree using a fishing rod, but it just moved to a distance an inch longer than where the rod could reach and stayed put, just keeping an eye on me while I was there.
There’s a squirrel in my neighborhood who I swear knows the exact length of my dog’s leash and uses the information for some sort of twisted entertainment. Every time we walk out the front door this squirrel dashes across our path juuust out of my dog’s reach. My dog goes nuts thinking that maybe this time he’ll catch that darn squirrel but of course the squirrel and I both know differently. I really think the squirrel gets a kick out of the whole ordeal.
You're right, there's no squirrels in New Zealand! Must be because only birds could fly here, it's too isolated.
This also means that birds are responsible for more incidents here on the cybersecurity parody site CyberSquirrel, which tracks when wildlife brings down computer systems.
Wait is this also true of China? It would explain why I've seen so many chinese tourists filming squirrels all the time. I've always been a bit baffled.
I had a group of Chinese grad students studying my black walnut trees, which was interesting in itself. They literally spent about two hours watching the squirrels go about their business.
I believe that squirrels are much more common in US (and Canadian?) cities than they are in the parks of the big cities of most other countries, which is why they can be so interesting to tourists.
Up until around mid-19th century or so, they were rare in US cities too. If you saw a squirrel in the city it was probably someone's pet. According to a newspaper account from 1856 New York, hundreds of people gathered around a tree that an escaped pet squirrel was spotted in to watch it.
In the later half of the 19th century, there was a popular movement in park design and management in the US that said that making city parks more natural was essential to the health and wellbeing of city dwellers who did not have time to get out of the city. As part of that many cities purposefully released squirrels into their parks.
This is also why you find Eastern gray squirrels in many cities far outside the Eastern gray's native range (which is as you can guess from the name the eastern US). When people wanted to introduce squirrels into, say, Seattle parks they didn't do what you might expect and send someone out to the nearest forest to rustle up some Western gray squirrels to move to the city. No, they had Eastern grays shipped across country and released those in Seattle parks.
The reason for this is that in many areas the native trees are not the kind of trees people like in their parks and so city parks often were largely populated by imported trees from the eastern US. If those imported trees did not produce the kinds of nuts and seeds that the native squirrels like, then native squirrels weren't going to work out in the parks so they brought in squirrels from where the trees came from.
Unfortunately, Eastern grays aren't very picky eaters. They are quite happy eating the nuts and seeds from the native trees and so quickly spread from the parks to the wild and have largely replaced the native Western gray squirrels in Washington. I think the Western grays here are down to just one population.
(The other native squirrels here, Douglas, Red, and Northern flying) weren't affected much by the spread of Eastern grays because they fill sufficiently difference niches in the ecosystem. With Western grays on the other hand Eastern grays are essentially slightly smaller versions of them that like a much bigger variety of nuts and seeds).
> I believe that squirrels are much more common in US (and Canadian?) cities [...]
Yes, very common in Canada. I live in Montreal and frequently have as many as four just hanging out in my backyard.
Funnily enough, gray squirrels were also introduced in London parks in the 19th century and have completely taken over the city, much like here in North America.
I worked with two guys who ran Sheep farms in Australia. Once at the lunch time they saw a couple squirrels (this was in Sri Lanka) and they were really fascinated by them. They said they don't have squirrels in Australia and I was fascinated by that. A quick Google kind of says there are at least a few still left[1] in Australia.
Can confirm. Went on a trip NZ->UK and was fascinated. They're so twitchy, fast and inquisitive, and so furry. They are legitimately as interesting to watch to me as almost any zoo animal.
There are squirrels in Brazil. They aren't as common as the (about equally sized) marmosets, but they are not all that rare. They are called "caxinguelê" or "serelepe".
For one, they seem to love roughhousing. Everyone has seen videos of squirrels being flung off of bird feeders by anti-squirrel devices, yet they love to come back for more. They'll go through great lengths just to get a single peanut, they're really daring too, but they're not stupid. My parents for a while constructed a squirrel obstacle course in their backyard and at first the squirrels are skeptical; they'll investigate, back off, come back and get a little closer, back off again until they get comfortable and then they figure it out. There's an unused dog-door at my parents' house and I suggested they extend part of their squirrel maze into their house through it. It was such a good idea they actually did it, and the squirrels did indeed come all the way into the house! They must have reasoned at some level that because those maze structures led to peanuts in the past that there could be a peanut inside the house where the maze lead. Of course this also lead birds like scrub jays observing the squirrels and entering the house as well!
For creatures that are relatively vulnerable to predators, they will relax out in the open in really cartoonish ways. It's humorous when they lie on the edge of a fence with their limbs dangling over both sides.
Periodically, my parents have to trim the pods off their palm trees which are quite tall now. Many of those peanuts the squirrels won from the obstacle course ended up at the top of those palms. It almost seems excessive given the amount of energy they seem to expend getting that food.