Squirreling things away typically means we save it for a future need and it doesn't get much more elaborate than that. Squirrels, as it happens, turn out to be exceptionally good at squirreling things away and this goes all the way out to categorizing the types of things they are saving.
Eastern fox squirrels on the UC Berkeley campus have been found to organize their nut caches by variety, quality and preference.
Credit: Amber Engle
Like trick-or-treaters sorting their Halloween candy haul, fox squirrels apparently organize their stashes of nuts by variety, quality and possibly even preference, according to new UC Berkeley research.
The study, published today in the Royal Society Open Science journal, is the first to show evidence of squirrels arranging their bounty using "chunking," a cognitive strategy in which humans and other animals organize spatial, linguistic, numeric or other information into smaller more manageable collections, such as subfolders on a computer.
Fox squirrels stockpile at least 3,000 to 10,000 nuts a year and, under certain conditions, separate each cache into quasi "subfolders," one for each type of nut, researchers said.
Science Daily: Squirrels use 'chunking' to organize their favorite nuts
Squirrels aren't typically regarded as the geniuses of the animal world and yet this intelligent approach to storing their nuts seems a particularly good idea.
Using hand-held GPS navigators, researchers tracked the squirrels from their starting location to their caching location, then mapped the distribution of nut types and caching locations to detect patterns.
They found that the squirrels who foraged at a single location frequently organized their caches by nut species, returning to, say, the almond area, if that was the type of nut they were gathering, and keeping each category of nut that they buried separate. Meanwhile, the squirrels foraging in multiple locations deliberately avoided caching in areas where they had already buried nuts, rather than organizing nuts by type.
- SD
This behavior looks remarkably like things we do and the researchers make that point.
Presumably, sophisticated caching techniques maximize the squirrels' ability to remember where they've stored their most prized treats while at the same time hiding them from potential pilferers, the researchers said.
"Squirrels may use chunking the same way you put away your 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," said study senior author Jacobs.
- SD
Zen Yogi: are you implying human behavior in this way came from squirrels?
Nooooo, since we don't know the path that behavioral trait took but the observation is uncanny nevertheless. Taking the short cut to believing it came to us from them is anthropomorphizing the squirrels and that doesn't make the statement true.
Eastern fox squirrels on the UC Berkeley campus have been found to organize their nut caches by variety, quality and preference.
Credit: Amber Engle
Like trick-or-treaters sorting their Halloween candy haul, fox squirrels apparently organize their stashes of nuts by variety, quality and possibly even preference, according to new UC Berkeley research.
The study, published today in the Royal Society Open Science journal, is the first to show evidence of squirrels arranging their bounty using "chunking," a cognitive strategy in which humans and other animals organize spatial, linguistic, numeric or other information into smaller more manageable collections, such as subfolders on a computer.
Fox squirrels stockpile at least 3,000 to 10,000 nuts a year and, under certain conditions, separate each cache into quasi "subfolders," one for each type of nut, researchers said.
Science Daily: Squirrels use 'chunking' to organize their favorite nuts
Squirrels aren't typically regarded as the geniuses of the animal world and yet this intelligent approach to storing their nuts seems a particularly good idea.
Using hand-held GPS navigators, researchers tracked the squirrels from their starting location to their caching location, then mapped the distribution of nut types and caching locations to detect patterns.
They found that the squirrels who foraged at a single location frequently organized their caches by nut species, returning to, say, the almond area, if that was the type of nut they were gathering, and keeping each category of nut that they buried separate. Meanwhile, the squirrels foraging in multiple locations deliberately avoided caching in areas where they had already buried nuts, rather than organizing nuts by type.
- SD
This behavior looks remarkably like things we do and the researchers make that point.
Presumably, sophisticated caching techniques maximize the squirrels' ability to remember where they've stored their most prized treats while at the same time hiding them from potential pilferers, the researchers said.
"Squirrels may use chunking the same way you put away your 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," said study senior author Jacobs.
- SD
Zen Yogi: are you implying human behavior in this way came from squirrels?
Nooooo, since we don't know the path that behavioral trait took but the observation is uncanny nevertheless. Taking the short cut to believing it came to us from them is anthropomorphizing the squirrels and that doesn't make the statement true.
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