Squirrely Squirrels!

Nutty behavior:  Squirrels can bury thousands of nuts for each winter, and studies show they both store nuts across dozens of locations, and organize nuts by type. –scientificamerican.com

You read it first in this week’s The Factory in Guide magazine.

Well it’s winter again! Do you ever find yourself eating more when it’s cold outside, as if getting ready for hibernation like some animals?  And it gets dark so early! Do you find yourself getting sleepy as soon as the sun goes down? I do! What’s up with that?!  Well, hopefully I am not the only one. And hopefully, these things are normal.  

In the fall, I watch the birds and squirrels as they are so busy getting ready for winter. They work on beefing up their nests in the trees, filling them with lots of dead leaves and other materials to help keep out the cold winds. And the squirrels collect as much food as they can. Somehow, they go around and hide it all (this is called caching) and in the middle of winter and snow, they know exactly where to find it again! Amazing!

Being able to find food in the winter is of utmost importance for their survival.  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. 

It is estimated that gray squirrels bury about 10,000 nuts per year, and can hide 50 nuts per hour. And they can usually recover between 50-85% of their cache. And as our top paragraph above states, some species of squirrels even organize their caches by type - seeds here, acorns there, and peanuts over there! Wow! God has surely created them in an amazing way!

Squirrels, of course, are famous for hiding nuts as a food supply for the winter. But they also have to protect their precious cargo from other squirrels or birds (25 percent of their hoard is lost that way). So how do they do this? A biology professor at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania found that sometimes squirrels engage in deceptive caching. A squirrel will dig a hole and cover it up, all the while holding a nut in its teeth and not depositing it. The squirrel sometimes repeats this behavior several times. 

Another researcher found that when she and her students uncovered these holes, the squirrels dug subsequent holes in locations that were harder to get to. By the way, squirrels don't uncover all the nuts they've buried in holes — many of those acorns and other nuts may grow into trees. Thanks, squirrels!

Squirrels have four front teeth that grow continuously throughout their lives, at a rate of about six inches (15 cm) per year. (That's about a 1/2 inch every month!) This helps their incisors endure the seemingly incessant gnawing, otherwise they'd quickly run out of teeth. Can you imagine if human teeth grew that much in a year?!!! Yikes!

All in all, squirrels are very hard working animals. Let’s be like the squirrel. As he works hard to store up his food, let’s work hard to store God’s Word and promises in our hearts!  Psalm 119:11, “Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you.”

Scripture taken from the New King James Version, Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.