Cutest Nimble Squirrel

Squirrels spend autumn stashing nuts away for winter, but how do they find them again? Sense of smell, memory and chance all play a part.

Red and grey squirrels can’t find enough food every day during the winter, and they’d starve to death if they didn’t make appropriate preparations. That means stashing nuts to make it through the winter, but first they must select the right ones: squirrelling food away is a waste of effort if it’s not nutritious and in good condition. The rodents recognise ripe nuts by smell, much as we tell a ripe melon from one that’s hard and tasteless.

Squirrels also reject acorns and hazelnuts that have been hollowed out by weevils, whose larvae develop inside the protective shell. By handling these dud nuts, the animals recognise that they are too light, tossing them aside – experiments show that hollowed-out nuts filled with plaster will fool squirrels into storing them away.

In an autumn when food is abundant, squirrels have plenty of spare time to collect nuts one at a time in their mouth. They scrape a small hole in soft earth and bury their prize, patting the soil down on top to hide it from birds.