There's a Logic To How Squirrels Bury Their Nuts (berkeley.edu) 93
sandbagger shares an announcement from the University of California:
Like trick-or-treaters sorting their Halloween candy haul, fox squirrels apparently organize their stashes of nuts by variety, quality and possibly even preference, according to new UC Berkeley research... Fox squirrels stockpile at least 3,000 to 10,000 nuts a year and, under certain conditions, separate each cache into quasi "subfolders," one for each type of nut, researchers said... Over a two-year period, the research team tracked the caching patterns of 45 male and female fox squirrels as the reddish gray, bushy-tailed rodents buried almonds, pecans, hazelnuts and walnuts in various wooded locations on the UC Berkeley campus...
Using hand-held GPS navigators, researchers tracked the squirrels from their starting location to their caching location, then mapped the distribution of nut types and caching locations to detect patterns. They found that the squirrels who foraged at a single location frequently organized their caches by nut species, returning to, say, the almond area, if that was the type of nut they were gathering, and keeping each category of nut that they buried separate. Meanwhile, the squirrels foraging in multiple locations deliberately avoided caching in areas where they had already buried nuts, rather than organizing nuts by type.
Using hand-held GPS navigators, researchers tracked the squirrels from their starting location to their caching location, then mapped the distribution of nut types and caching locations to detect patterns. They found that the squirrels who foraged at a single location frequently organized their caches by nut species, returning to, say, the almond area, if that was the type of nut they were gathering, and keeping each category of nut that they buried separate. Meanwhile, the squirrels foraging in multiple locations deliberately avoided caching in areas where they had already buried nuts, rather than organizing nuts by type.
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UC Berkeley Campus? Study invalid! All the squirrels were high from the second-hand pot smoke and probably whatever traces of acid were in the soil.
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UC Berkeley Campus? Study invalid! All the squirrels were high from the second-hand pot smoke and probably whatever traces of acid were in the soil.
Surprised there were even nuts left after the pot-induced munchies kicked in....
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All the squirrels were wondering who's been fucking with their nuts.
Chevy Chase (Score:2)
"A reminder to those of our viewers who missed our story last week on the influx of so-called Killer Dope in urban areas around the country: Weekend Update has been analyzing the samples of marijuana sent to us anonymously all week.
"We are pleased to report that, so far, the only significant finding has been that if you force a baby squirrel to smoke seven hundred cannabis joints a day, he will become disoriented, and seems to take the laws of self-preservation less seriously, tending to play with his nuts
Attention span (Score:3)
That's a really interesting resea - SQUIRREL!
a good web interface (Score:2)
no one has mentioned that royalsocietypublishing.org interface is actually readable !
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Now that monkeys built a planet-wide communication network, nothing surprises me anymore.
A great study (Score:1)
Re:A great study (Score:4, Interesting)
Wilkes University PA study (Score:4, Interesting)
Cant cite a reference, but a local university where I live actually studied squirrels burying their nuts when they knew they were being observed vs. the opposite. It turns out squirrels, when knowing they are being watched will fake bury nuts and then move to another location and really bury the nut. Wilkes University- Wilkes Barre PA, Kirby Park squirrel study- an observation.
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Deez Nuts (Score:3)
Why would this surprise anyone? We've known that animals (and not just mammals, either) can use logic for a while now.
The notion that animals do not "think" is an artifact from the bad old days when it was widely believed that animals do not feel pain.
https://gizmodo.com/crows-unde... [gizmodo.com]
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I support studying squirrels if it improves our ability to shoot them.
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As long as universities have Economics departments, I don't want to hear one word about how any scientific research is "wasting" money.
Pnut=NPnut (Score:2)
As long as universities have Economics departments, I don't want to hear one word about how any scientific research is "wasting" money.
Additionally, academic research projects involve making funding proposals and submitting applications for at least one grant (and often several) coming from non-governmental entities, so gripes about waste of taxpayer dollars are not based on a realistic view.
Re:Wilkes University PA study (Score:4, Interesting)
What the researchers did not uncover was the pattern of nut burying that the squirrels use to both store food and propagate the trees that bear the nuts. Over the course of millions of years, the squirrels and various species of trees have co-evolved to achieve an optimal re-seeding pattern by squirrel which protects the trees from both disease and wind damage.
Prof. Mike Steele, Wilkes University as seen on TV (Score:3)
Canada's "The Nature Of Things" TV documentary series, hosted by Dr. David Suzuki, covered this very topic of squirrel food hoarding behaviour in a 2012 episode called "Nuts About Squirrels":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The show highlights the work of Prof. Mike Steele and team at Wilkes, as well as that of Prof. Joel Brown at the University of Illinois, and Dr. Sarah Parton at Hampshire College.
This new UC Berkeley research adds to a fascinating topic.
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I was about to say the exact same thing.
The even dig out stashes when felt observed by crows or other squirrels and burry them elsewhere.
Nuts (Score:2)
My Ig Nobel Nomination (Score:2)
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Cache Security (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say a competing species is able to smell almonds, but not other nuts. If all the almonds are separated into their own cache, then the competitor would only be able to sniff out the squirrel's almond cache, leaving their other nut caches safe. However, if they mix almonds in at all of their caches, then the competitor will smell the almonds in all of their caches, and thus find (and eat) all of their cached nuts. Separating the nuts thus prevents them from putting all their eggs in one basket, and the squirrel is less likely to starve because all its nuts were stolen. Those who sort their nuts survive and reproduce, those who don't die, et voila evolution.
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They certainly vary their risk tolerance depending on the presence of birds such as scrub jays that will raid their caches.
Tree Rat Bastards (Score:3, Funny)
They're not squirrels, they're tree rats. I fucking hate tree rat bastards, who are always stealing bird seed, chewing through wires, and making nests in attics. They are useless animals who lack intelligence and spend most of their lives stealing from bird feeders and taunting dogs. Tree rats are evil and deserve to be eaten by dogs or shot on sight. My hate is strong and I'm damned proud of it. In fact, my hate is getting stronger as I talk to you people. However, I'm not racist, and there's nothing racist about this post. I'm sure all the nutty tree rat lovers will use ad hominem attacks to justify their adoration of the disgusting rodents. It will prove that even they can't defend the evils of tree rats. And no, I'm not racist. I hate all colors of tree rats, whether they're gray, red, brown, black, or albino. They're all evil bastards that steal from respectable animals like birds and can carry rabies. They infest our college campuses, rummaging through the trash for scraps of food to sustain their miserable existence while pretending to act friendly around our young people. I hate tree rats with every fiber of my being. Tree rats should be shot on sight.
Note to moderators: This is a parody of a copy-and-paste racist troll that frequently appears on Slashdot. It's unfortunate that I have to say this, but I intend this post to be funny. There really isn't anything racist about it, just an obsessive hatred of everything about tree rats. The author may or may not actually despise tree rats.
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Well, naturally, but PETA terrorists will protest if you describe bird feeders as what they are: cat food lures!
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We have squirrels all over, none go in my attic, though they easily could if they wanted to. I guess they're happen enough with the huge ash tree in the back yard. Personally I think they're cute, we've even fed them. The skunks, OTOH, I hate them.
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Coincidentally, when my sister moved to Texas she was horrified to discover she had a huge colony of rats living under her back porch, and needed to call "the Rat Man" to have them removed. Her neighbors assured her this was all par for the course in that area. The Rat Man concurred ... adding, however, that if the infestation had been squirrels he would have advised her to sell the house. Too damaging, too hard to get rid of for good.
Sorting algorithm (Score:2)
Re:Sorting algorithm (Score:5, Funny)
Tree sort, of course.
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I was more thinking about what you call "pigeon hole sorting" ;D
Paid by the word? (Score:3)
...male and female fox squirrels...
Thanks. I'd been wondering how that worked.
Is this new? (Score:3)
"Like trick-or-treaters sorting their Halloween candy haul, fox squirrels apparently organize their stashes of nuts by variety, quality and possibly even preference..."
My buddy used to date a girl like that.
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Did she have cute little ears and a bushy tail? If so, I think your buddy and my Buddy are the same dog. He really loved to chase her around the yard, and she'd always wave her tail at him coquettishly and then call to him from the trees. It was a forbidden romance, but Buddy had it bad for her.
I can't blame him for trying though, since we took his nuts away when he was just a puppy.
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I'm confused ... she stashed his nuts? At different places?
And now... (Score:2)
Google will go tree by tree with sonar or even x-ray equipment to categorize every nut and target the squirrels better.
Over a two-year period, the research team tracked (Score:2)
the caching patterns of 45 male and female fox squirrels as the reddish gray, bushy-tailed rodents buried almonds, pecans, hazelnuts,walnuts and leftover pizza in various wooded locations on the UC Berkeley campus...
ftfy. This IS UC Berkeley afterall.
Not the squirrels around here..... (Score:4, Funny)
1. When they bury a nut, they immediately urinate on the spot. IF they ever managed to find the [whatever] again, this would be the way I would have guessed that they were doing it. And-
2. Often a blue jay or other larger bird will follow a squirrel around, wait until it buries a nut and takes a couple hops away, and then the bird will dig up the nut and eat it. As the squirrel watches. And the squirrel (standing literally a foot away) doesn't seem to be able to mentally connect the significance of these two sequential events.
I've seen the local squirrels in the yard "feeding the birds" lots of times.
There's not always a bird--but even so, I don't know that I've ever seen any squirrel recover anything it buried.
Re: Not the squirrels around here..... (Score:1)
those squirrels are clearly just entertaining themselves as they watch the dummies eat food that was just peed on
Sorry for those grad students (Score:1)
NOW I can rest better (Score:2)
Apologies to Almond Joy and Mounds (Score:2)
Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]