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November 18, 2020 • 11 mins

We know squirrels hide nuts. But it's actually more complex a system than you think.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Here there, Hi, there, ho there, and welcome to these
short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and I'm Josh
and there's Chuck, and Chuck's here and I'm Josh. And
let's go because we're talking about squirrels. So zip zip zai.
Uh yeah, this is, you know, a continuant continuation of
our squirrel talk. Um, we've never done one on squirrels,
but I know a couple of years ago you talked

(00:26):
about the squirrel being your foe, and then you had
since turned to love and embrace squirrels. The squirrel. I
had a squirrel attack me, which you can see on
my video doorbell. If you go to Instagram Chuck the
Podcaster at Chuck the Podcaster, you can see my squirrel

(00:46):
attack that where the squirrel ran up my leg. And
now we're going to talk about something I thought was
pretty interesting, which is squirrels and the notion of them
gathering nuts and things for the wind and hiding them. Okay, wow,
heck of an intro, Chuck. That's it for short stuff, everybody. Um, yeah,

(01:08):
so I have heard about these studies before, hadn't you? Like?
This isn't news to me? It was news to me, okay,
so what we're talking about. It turns out that um
squirrels that live in trees called tree squirrels. They're different
from ground squirrels, and one big thing that differentiates them,
aside from where they nest or den either on the
ground or in a tree, is that tree squirrels typically

(01:31):
don't hibernate, which is cool because then that means you
can see squirrels year round. But it's rough for the
squirrels because then that means that they have to sustain
themselves nutritionally throughout the year, which can get kind of
hard in the winter months, which is why everybody, squirrels,
especially tree squirrels, tend to stow food. They gather food

(01:53):
during the fall to last them through the winter. That's right.
And it's also why this time of years, especially in Atlanta,
uh a k. A city of ten million squirrels, it
seems like they are everywhere this time of year. Um
nuts are falling on the ground, little acorns are falling
on the ground, and squirrels are very, very busy, and

(02:17):
it it's sort of you kind of take the squirrel
for granted because they're everywhere. But occasionally I will be
driving around, and I will just sort of laugh to
myself about the fact that in my perb, in my view,
let's say, walking or driving, I see like ten wild
animals just running around in the middle of a city. Yeah,

(02:39):
they're everywhere. They are. Well, you know, Georgia and Atlanta
in particular is a particularly wooded metropolous, so it makes
sense that they be everywhere in Atlanta. I think if
you went to like Kansas City, you'd be sorely disappointed. Metropolis. Okay,
I'm trying not some new ways of same things. I
love it. I hope that fire. Thank you, thank you

(03:02):
so um With these uh, with these squirrels when they're
storing stuff for the winter, and when they're gathering all
this stuff, um, what are they eating. Well, they're eating
what's called mast, which is one of my favorite words.
It's also called tree fruit, things like acorns, basically any
nuts that grow on trees. They also, I didn't know
this chuck apparently also will eat baby birds while they're

(03:24):
in their nest. Nest Like, yeah, I didn't know that.
That was disappointing to hear. It's a little rough. But
there's one other thing you need to know about squirrels.
It's pretty amazing when they jump off of a tree
and land on the ground. If you take a snapshot
photo of them landing, they land like they're superheroes in
like a three point stance with their they're one of

(03:45):
their arms bawled into a fist and pulled up by
their side like they should have a cape and a
mask on. Basically, it's it's pretty amazing. I think we
might have mentioned that in another episode, but it is.
It is worth looking up on the internet for sure. Ye. So, um,
when they're they're gathering nuts while they're wearing their little
cape or their mask, and as you know, um fall comes,
they really have to step it up because they want

(04:05):
to they want to gather it for winter. But the
thing is is when they gather this stuff, they don't
actually gather it and store it in their nest or
in their den because there's not enough room. And this
actually finally, Chuck, Finally, several minutes in four plus minutes
in we get to the point of this short stuff.
I think we should take a break off. That's the

(04:28):
best cliffhanger we've ever had. Are you kidding me? All right,
all right, let's take a break, and we're going to
talk about what happens from this point forward. Right after this. Alright,

(04:55):
superhero squirrels Winter is coming, Game of Throne style. Uh,
they know they got to hoard those nuts. They're also
eaten nuts. Yeah, they've got to you know, sustain themselves
along the way, so they will eat stuff that they find.
But they also bury their stuff. That's what they do.
They don't actually have like a pantry or an area

(05:15):
of their den or nest where they're storing the nuts.
They store them in an area around their tree usually
or where their nest or den is. But apparently Chuck,
they'll they'll expand out like to seven a seven acre
radius around that tree too. Yeah, they can. Um they're
called scatter hoarders. And I think generally they like to

(05:36):
kind of stick close to home, but if forced to
for whatever reason, they will expand, like you said, up
to seven acres away from their tree. And uh, I think,
you know, Chippendale did a lot of disservices. I don't
know if chipmunks are the same, but all you can
picture because of those Chippendale and Alvin and the gang,
well I guess Alvin and then all they did was

(05:57):
performed concerts. But all you can think about with chip
Chip and Dale's and running up and like stuffing a
tree hole full of nuts with a winter So that's
kind of what you figure happens. But they don't. They
They they know other squirrels are gonna be watching out,
so and then you know, can combine and steal their
their uh sack of nuts that is buried. So they

(06:20):
bury them it's called caching about an inch underground and
cover them up again. They'll even crack open nuts sometimes
to keep them from German eating. And here was there's
two really great parts here to the end of this one.
The first one really gets me was in two thousand
eight they did a study that found that Eastern gray
squirrels have deceptive caching. So they know other squirrels are watching,

(06:44):
so they will literally go dig a little hole and
go all right, I'm just gonna put this acorn right
in here, stuff it in their mouth real quick, cover
up the hole, and then run off and be like,
all right, I've just left that acorn buried over there,
nothing nothing, just you here. Isn't that amazing? It is
pretty amazing. I love that too, that that they they're

(07:05):
just play. Yeah, that's another way to put it. Um.
The other thing that they do as far as burying
this stuff um is that they will will put them
in areas where they're at risk to um go dig
them up, like at risk of predation, kind of out
in the open, far enough away from their tree where

(07:26):
they're kind of it's just getting increasingly risky to to
to go retrieve that nut. But that they'll put high
value nuts there. And we'll talk about how how squirrels
short nuts in a second, but they put high value
nuts are because if it's risky for them, it's just
as risky for another squirrel who's nut who who it
doesn't belong to, And so that might cut down on

(07:47):
another squirrel coming along and pilfering their they're buried nuts.
That's right. There was another study. This one was by
Michael Delgado and Lucia Jacobs, professors that you ce Berkeley,
and they said, you know what, this caching thing is
a lot more complex than even we knew about. They

(08:08):
did these experiments over nineteen months for fromen they fed
forty five marked free ranging Eastern fox squirrels one nut
at a time, uh sixteen for each squirrel and all
different kinds of nuts, hazel nuts, pecans, walnuts, almost the
good stuff. And if the squirrels didn't eat the nuts,

(08:28):
like you know, we said, they had to take care
of themselves. But if they were had been fed for
the day, they tracked using GPS where they buried their
little nut prizes. And what did they find out. They
found out that they um bury them basically according to
things like size, type, potentially, calorie density, taste, um and

(08:51):
so they graded them basically on on value. And so
like say, you know, they gave a squirrel a bunch
of walnuts, they would bury the all nuts generally in
the same area, away from say where they buried the
almonds or the acorns or whatever. And this is called
spatial chunking, and it's a mnemonic device that we use,
but it's pretty amazing that squirrels use it too, to

(09:13):
remember where they put something generally, like walnuts are generally
over here, so if I'm hungry for a walnut, i
can just go over there and I'm going to dig
up a walnut. Yeah, So it's it's literally a device
to remember things because it's a strategy. They said in
their quote, it's a. It's a cognitive strategy to decrease
memory load and increase accuracy of retrieval. So, um, how

(09:37):
you translate that is, squirrels have a lot going on
and they're bearing a lot of nuts, so they use
this little pneumonic device to remember where all the good
stuff is. Plus also don't forget they have squirrel sized brains.
So yeah, they want to take as many shortcuts and
use as many mnemonic devices as they possibly can to
remember where they bury these nuts. And it makes sense

(09:58):
that they would be good at this because their survive
all depends on it. You know, so are you, which
is to say huge brains, No, very small brains, very
small brains that are good at taking shortcuts, because it's true.
One of the other things though, is this, This really
indicates that squirrels remember where they bury nuts, and they do,
they have devices for that, but they also forget a

(10:18):
lot and they don't always crack open and nut, which
means that squirrels go around and plant lots of trees
every year by going and burying acorns you know, in
the ground or walnuts in the ground. Um, that's how
That's one of the ways that some a lot of
trees are propagated is through squirrels who go basically garden,
So that is squirrels everybody. They have their favorites and

(10:41):
they hide them where they don't want them to get found,
just like I would do. You know what's weird, though, Chuck?
I have one question real quick? Why don't humans eat acorns?
Wet everything else? All those other nuts that they used
to test the squirrels out with, almonds, walnuts, um, all
that those two? Basically, why don't we acorns any ideas?

(11:02):
I don't know. I think they might be toxic and
they're bitter. Okay? You have a roast one for a
roasted acorn? Yeah, but like on a campfire? Did and
eat it afterwards? Though? Acorn squash? Yeah, I don't. I
don't know if that's actually acorn. No, it's not. Um.
You got anything else about squirrels or acorns or anything

(11:22):
like that. Nothing else? Okay? Well everybody, since Chuck said
nothing else, that means that we have come to the
end of the short stuff, and short stuff is apt
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