Squirrels hide their nuts ‘just like humans put away groceries’

‘Flexible strategy’

SQUIRRELS organise their nut stashes by type, quality and possibly even personal preference, a study has found.

US researchers who tracked 45 fox squirrels with GPS for two years have concluded that just as humans organise their kitchens, squirrels arrange their food stash into more manageable collections. This, the scientists believe, is so they can remember where they buried them and conceal them from rivals.

Squirrels gather between 3,000 and 10,000 nuts each autumn, storing and using them during the winter months.

The study by the University of California, Berkeley, found that they frequently organised their stashes by varieties, keeping each one separate. Professor Lucia Jacobs, the study’s lead author, said: ‘Squirrels organise the same way you put away groceries. You might put fruit on one shelf and vegetables on another. Then, when you’re looking for an onion, you only have to look in one place, not every shelf in the kitchen.’

The study is the first to show evidence that squirrels arrange their food using a strategy similar to when humans organise things into smaller, more manageable collections, such as subfolders on a computer.

Dr Mikel Delgado, lead researcher in charge of the study said: ‘This is the first demonstration of organisation in a scatter-hoarding animal, and also suggests that squirrels use flexible strategies to store food depending on how they acquire food.’