The Animal Highlight

S1E8: Sneaky Squirrels

Claudia Hirtenfelder Season 1 Episode 8

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: 

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. 

Support the podcast via: 

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.


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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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00:00 - Introduction 

 

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 

 

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


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