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Sneaky Squirrels

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Photo by Jim Block

Next time you’re watching your favorite backyard squirrel, think about this: she may be watching you, too. Scientists have discovered that gray squirrels deliberately mislead onlookers that may be after the nuts they’re hiding away for winter.

The squirrels excavate and cover phony cache holes to divert attention away from the holes in which they’ve actually stored nuts. While a few other species (mostly clever birds, such as ravens) are known to employ deceptive strategies in the presence of potential cache robbers, this is the first evidence of a rodent displaying this behavior.

Scientists from Wilkes University discovered this after they spent several years at sites in Connecticut and Pennsylvania observing and experimenting with wild gray squirrels.

At one site, the scientists presented squirrels with acorns and then recorded whether the acorn was eaten on the spot or hidden, and if hidden, how far away. Later, they performed the same experiment, but also recorded how close the nearest “observer” gray squirrel was from the “caching” squirrel. And in another experiment, humans acted not only as observers but also as pilferers. They searched for acorns based on where it appeared a caching squirrel had buried them, then stole the nuts.

The scientists hoped their experiments, which consisted of 500 observational trials, would determine whether the act of “multiple caching” (burying, then digging up and reburying nuts) and “deceptive caching” (digging trick holes) successfully fooled potential thieves. They found that both of these tricks reduced the probability of observers discovering acorns. These behaviors also caused would-be nut thieves to take longer to find acorns than it took them in straightforward, single-acorn burials.

The researchers also wondered if cache robbing caused squirrels that weren’t initially using deceptive behavior to subsequently employ deceptive methods.

The experiments proved that when human pilferers raided caches, gray squirrels tended to switch to deceptive caching behaviors, hide their nuts in areas out of view or difficult to reach by the humans, or eat nuts on the spot rather than burying them. The scientists were convinced that the squirrels’ deceptions do indeed reduce the probability of caches being pilfered.

This is the first study to offer evidence of a rodent practicing deceptive foodstoring behavior, a more advanced cognitive strategy than simply burying acorns all over the place in the hope that many of them won’t be found.

Squirrels in particular may benefit from such complex, responsive behavior to protect food, since they have overlapping territories and visit the same concentrations of nutfall in autumn. The areas in which they cache food, therefore, often overlap as well, so pilfering is thought to be very common amongst them. In years of low acorn availability, strategies to keep nut caches intact are particularly important.

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