There. Hi there. Hello there and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh Levs checking on 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. Zawi.

Yeah, this is, you know, a continuant continuation of our squirrel talk. We've never done one on squirrels. But I know a couple of years ago you talked about the squirrel being your foe and then you had since turned to love and embrace squirrels.

I love the squirrels. I had a squirrel attacking me, which you can see on my video doorbell.

If you go to Instagram, check the podcast or at Chuck the podcast or you can see my squirrel 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 winter and hiding them.

OK, wow.

Or storing them rather a heck of an intro. Chuck. That's it for short stuff, everybody. Yes. So I heard about these studies before and you like this isn't news to me. It was news to me. OK, so what we're talking about, it turns out that squirrels that live in trees called tree squirrels, they're different from ground squirrels in one big thing that differentiates them, aside from where they nest or den, either in the ground or in a tree, is that tree squirrels typically 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 kinda hard in the winter months, which is why everybody, squirrels, especially tree squirrels, tend to stow food.

They gather food during the fall to last them through the winter. That's right.

And it's also why this time of year, especially in Atlanta, a.k.a. a city of 10 million squirrels, it seems like they are everywhere this time of year. That's for falling on the ground. Little acorns are falling on the ground and squirrels are very, very busy. And 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 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, they're everywhere. They are. Well, you know, Georgia and Atlanta in particular is a particularly wooded metropolis. So it makes sense that they be everywhere in Atlanta. I think if you went to like Kansas City, you'd be sorely disappointed.

It's just your life, metropolis.

Hmm. OK, I'm trying out some new ways, the same thing. I love it. I hope that catches fire. Thank you. Thank you so much.

With these with these squirrels, when they're storing stuff for the winter, when they're gathering all this stuff, what are they eating while they're eating what's called mass, which is one of my favorite words. It's also called tree fruit. Things like acorns, basically any nuts, they grow on trees. They also I didn't know this. Chuck apparently also will eat baby birds while they're in their nest nest.

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. Yeah, it's like a three point stance with their their one of their arms balled into a fist and pulled up by their side like they should have a cape and a mask on.

Basically, 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. Yeah.

So they're gathering nuts while they're wearing their little caper, their mask. And as you know, fall comes, they really have to step it up because they want 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 stored 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. That's the best cliffhanger we 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.

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Listen on the I Heart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this whole ad perceptual test. Well, except for Indiana Jones. Wow. He ruins everything. All right, superhero squirrels when winter is coming, right? Game of Thrones style, they know they got a hoard, those nuts. They're also eating 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 area of their den or nest where they're storing the nuts. They store them in an area around their tree, usually where their nests are Denny's. But apparently, Chuck, they'll they'll expand out like to seven a seven acre radius around that tree, too.

Yeah, they can. They're called scatter hoarders. And I think generally they like to 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 I think, you know, Chippendale did a lot of disservices. I don't know. Chipmunks are the same. But all you can picture because of those Chippendale and Alvin and the gang, well, I guess Alvin and them all they did was perform concerts.

But all you can think about with Chippendale's and running up and like stuffing a tree hole full of nuts for the winter. Right. So that's kind of what you figure happens.

But they don't they they they know other squirrels are going to be watching out so and they can come out and steal their their sack of nuts is buried. So they bury him about an inch underground and cover them up again. They'll even crack open nuts sometimes to keep them from germinating. It's pretty smart and heroes. There's two really great parts here to the end of this one. The first one really gets me was in thousand eight. They did a study that found that Eastern grey squirrels have deceptive casing so they know other squirrels are watching.

So they will literally go dig a little hole and go, all right, I'm just going to put this acorn right in here and 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 to see here. Right. Isn't that amazing?

It is pretty amazing. I love that to that that they they're play-acting. Yeah. That's another way to put it. The other thing that they do as far as burying this stuff is that they will will put them in areas where they're at risk to go dig them up, like at risk of predation, kind of out in the open, far enough away from the tree where 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 sorting nuts in a second, but they put high value nuts there, because if it's risky for them, it's just as risky for another squirrel who's not who it doesn't belong to. And so that might cut down on another school coming along and pilfering their their buried nuts. That's right.

There was another study. This one was by Michael Delgado and Lucia Jacobs, professors at UC Berkeley. And they said, you know what, this thing is a lot more complex than even we knew about.

They did these experiments over nineteen months for from 2012 to 2014, they fed forty five marked free ranging Eastern Fox squirrels one night at a time. Right. Sixteen for each squirrel and all different kinds of nuts, hazelnuts, pecans, walnuts, almonds, the good stuff. And if the squirrels didn't eat the nuts 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 bury them basically according to things like size type, potentially calorie density taste. And so they 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 walnuts 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 to to remember where they put something generally like walnuts are generally over here. So if I am hungry for a walnut, I can just go over there and I'm going to dig up a walnut.

Yeah. So it's literally a device to remember things because it's a strategy. They said in their quote, It is a cognitive strategy to decrease memory load and increase accuracy of retrieval. So how you translate that is scrolls are a lot going on and they're bearing a lot of nuts. So they use this little mnemonic 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 buried these dots, it makes sense that they would be good at this because their survival depends on it, you know?

So, ah, which is to say, huge brains, no very small brains, very small brains 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 buried nuts and they do. They have devices for that, but they also forget a lot and they don't always crack open. And 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.

That's how that's one of the ways that a lot of trees are propagated is through squirrels who go basically garden. So that is squirrels, everybody, they have their favorites and 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? We everything else, all those other nuts that they used to to test the squirrels out with almonds, walnuts, all that those two basically. Why don't we acorns. Any ideas?

I don't know. I think they might be toxic and they're bitter. OK, you have ever roast one or a roasted acorn? Yeah, like on a campfire and eat it afterwards there ACORN squash. Yeah, I did.

I don't know if that actually ACORN, you know, tonight. You got anything else about squirrels or acorns or anything like that and nothing else. OK, well everybody said Chuck said nothing else. That means that we have come to the end of the short stuff. Short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart Radio, is it the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows?