S1E8: Sneaky Squirrels

In episode eight, Claudia Hirtenfelder talks about squirrels and how they use deception and their incredible memories to bury and find nuts across urban spaces. The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast. Season 1 is focused on “Animals and The Urban.” 

 Featured: 

• The Urbanization of the Eastern Gray Squirrel in the United States by Etienne Benson.
• Backyard Squirrel Maze 1.0 – Ninja Warrior Course by Mark Rober.

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, producer and host 
• Christiaan Mentz, sound editor and producer 
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Learn more about the team here. 

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• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
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Sponsor:

• Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics sponsored the season of The Animal Turn Podcast where these highlights were originally aired. Originally Aired/Recorded: 20 April 2021.

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

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The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

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Transcript

00:00 - Introduction 

• This first season animals and the urban and is extracted from Season 3 of The Animal Turn Podcast.  
• In today’s highlight we are focusing on squirrels. 
• Squirrels came up at the beginning of the episode with Philip Howell. 
• Squirrels are so fun to watch!

0:26 – Squirrels and their nuts

• A single squirrel can find and bury something like 10,000 nuts in an Autumn season. They don’t hibernate in the winter “so they are literally squirreling away food for the winter.”  
• What’s mind boggling, they can find up to 4,000 of those nuts again. 
• Their nuts are buried in widely, in an area that is as big as five football fields. This is why they are known as scatter hoarders. 
• They use their memories and some memory strategies to find their nuts again. One strategy is clustering together nuts that are of the same kind. Peanuts are buried in the same area and hazelnuts are buried in the same area, and so forth. They also use landmarks to remember where they left their nuts. 
• Squirrels use deception and theft to also obtain nuts – Something like a fifth of squirrels don’t forage their own nuts, they watch where others have buried their nuts and steal them. Sometimes squirrels are aware other squirrels are watching them, so they pretend to bury something. 

03:51 – Facts about squirrels 

• A squirrel nest is called a drey and it looks like a large mess nest. 
• Babies are blind and hairless and stay with their mom in the nest for the first couple of weeks of life
• Etienne Benson has written about the relationship between squirrels and urbanisation. 
• Squirrels were introduced to cities in the United States, they represented ideas of nature and their introduction wasn’t simple. 
• The size of the squirrel population in Central Park is massive. 
• Check out Mark Rober’s YouTube channel where he makes a maze for squirrels. 
• Mark explains fascinating features about squirrels such as how they are always able to land on their feet. 

06:18 – Credits 

• “A huge thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics for sponsoring The Animal Turn Podcast, where these clips were taken from. To Christiaan Mentz for editing this episode. Thank you also goes to Rebecca Shen for designing the Animal Highlight logo and episode artwork.”
• Show notes compiled by Claudia Hirtenfelder