Do you know that January 21 is Squirrel Appreciation Day? Squirrels are so popular and adorable, and extremely fun to watch. Here are some fun facts about squirrels, after reading, you might just appreciate squirrels a little more.
1. Squirrels can find food buried beneath a foot of snow.
Food is important during the cold winter months for squirrels. It makes sense, therefore, that some species are able to smell food under a foot of snow. The squirrel will then dig a tunnel under the snow, following the scent to their (or another squirrel’s) buried treasure.
2. Their Front Teeth Never Stop Growing
Squirrels have four front teeth that grow continuously throughout their lives, at a rate of about six inches (15 cm) per year. This helps their incisors endure the seemingly incessant gnawing, otherwise they'd quickly run out of teeth.
3. Squirrels may lose 25 percent of their buried food to thieves.
And that’s just from members of their own species! Scatter hoarders (squirrels with multiple caches of food) have a difficult time keeping an eye on all of their hidden food. Fellow squirrels or birds often take advantage of this for a free meal.
4. They zigzag to escape predators.
When squirrels feel threatened, they run away in a zigzag pattern. This is an incredibly useful strategy to escape hawks and other predators. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work so well on cars. Consider slowing down and giving squirrels a brake!
5. Squirrels may pretend to bury a nut to throw off potential thieves.
Squirrels have been observed engaging in “deceptive caching.” This is where a squirrel digs a hole and vigorously covers it up again, but without depositing the nut. It seems this is done to throw off potential food thieves.
6. The Biggest Squirrels Are 7 Times Larger Than the Smallest
Squirrels range in size from the five-inch (13 centimeter) African pygmy squirrel to relative behemoths like Indian giant squirrel (pictured above) or China's red-and-white giant flying squirrel, both of which can grow more than three feet (almost one meter) long.
7. Prairie Dogs Build Bustling 'Towns'
The squirrel family also includes more sociable types. Prairie dogs, for example, are social ground squirrels with complex communication systems and large colonies, or "towns," that can span hundreds of acres. The largest town on record was a Texas colony of black-tailed prairie dogs that stretched about 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide, 250 miles (400 km) long and contained an estimated 400 million individuals.
8. The Word 'Squirrel' Comes From Greek for 'Shadow Tail'
All tree squirrels belong to the genus Sciurus, which comes from the Greek words "skia" (shadow) and "oura" (tail). The name reportedly reflects tree squirrels' habit of hiding in the shadow of their long, bushy tails.
9. Only a Few Squirrels Hibernate
Some ground squirrels hibernate, but most squirrel species rely on caches of food to get through the winter. That could mean storing all their food in a single larder, although that's vulnerable to thieves, and some larder-hoarding ground squirrels lose up to half their cache this way. Many squirrels instead use a technique called "scatter hoarding," in which they spread their food across hundreds or thousands of hiding places, a labor-intensive hedge against theft.
Tree squirrels are even known to dig fake holes to fool onlookers, yet thanks to a detailed spatial memory and a strong sense of smell, they still recover up to 80% of their cache. Some fox squirrels also use a mnemonic strategy to organize nuts by species. And even the food these squirrels lose isn't really lost, since unrecovered nuts simply turn into new trees.
