Could squirrels teach humans a thing or two about investing for the future …

By
Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED:

13:46 GMT, 5 October 2012

|

UPDATED:

13:46 GMT, 5 October 2012

Humans could learn something about padding their nest eggs from squirrels, claim a team of U.S. researchers who say the animals have an innate knack for long-term savings strategies.

Psychologists from the University of California, Berkeley are gathering evidence to show the fox squirrels scampering around campus have a sound investment plan behind their nut gathering.

'Think of them as little bankers depositing money and spreading it out in different funds, and doing some management of those funds,' said Mikel Delgado, a doctoral student in psychology.

Canny savers: A fox squirrel peeks from its nest in an old tree trunk. Berkeley psychologists say humans could learn a thing or two from the cute rodents about saving for the future

Ms Delgado whose research is funded by the National Science Foundation, leads the squirrel research team in the laboratory of UC Berkeley psychologist Lucia Jacobs.

Using the campus as their animal behaviour laboratory, she and a dozen undergraduates are tracking up to 70 fox squirrels to map their territories and study their 'caching behaviour' - the system they use to hoard and retrieve different kinds of nuts.

'We're trying to find out what kinds of strategies they might be using to assess the quality of each nut and what kind of investment they want to make in it,' said Ms Delgado. 'And we want to know how they remember where they hide all those nuts.'

First found on the UC Berkeley campus in the Thirties, fox squirrels are distinguishable from the more rat-like eastern grey squirrels by their reddish hue, bushy tails and overall cuteness.

They are diurnal creatures who don't hibernate and are prey for many animals, including foxes, coyotes, hawks, eagles and owls. They are not social animals, but loners.

As for mating, 'it's brief and involves a lot of chasing, squeaking, biting and scrambling around trees,' Ms Delgado said.

Yummy pecan: The Berkeley team are tracking up to 70 fox squirrels to map their territories and study their 'caching behavior' - the system they use to hoard and retrieve different kinds of nuts

In recent months, the team have followed the bushy-tailed rodents across creeks and meadows, hillsides and undergrowth in an effort to better understand their behaviour.

Among other things, campus squirrels eat acorns, pine nuts, walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts, not to mention the peanuts that research team members carry around to tempt them closer.

The fox squirrel is the largest species of tree squirrel native to North America, with a range extending throughout the east of the U.S.

They have been artificially introduced into both northern and southern California, hence their presence on the campus as UC Berkeley.

Versatile in their choice of habitat, they are most often found in forest patches of 40 hectares or less with an open understory, or in urban neighbourhoods with trees.

They thrive best among trees such as oak, hickory, walnut, and pine that produce winter-storable foods like nuts.

They are diurnal creatures who don't hibernate and are prey for many animals, including foxes, coyotes, hawks, eagles and owls. They are not social animals, but loners.

The animals hoard nuts because not all
the trees on campus produce food year-round and, since squirrels don't
hibernate, they need to stock up for the winter.

Typically,
a fox squirrel will pick up a nut using its teeth and long-clawed
hands, rotate it, shake its head a couple of times and either peel off
the husk – if there is one – and eat it on the spot, or hop off to find a
place to bury it, often travelling as far as 100 metres to hide it.

To
track this nut-stashing activity, the student researchers are using GPS
technology to record all the burials and, in the process, are creating
an elaborate map showing every campus tree, building and even garbage
can.

'We've compiled a list
of more than 1,000 locations where the nuts are buried,' Ms Delgado said
of work carried out this past summer.

The research team is replicating the caching experiment on humans by timing students as they bury Easter eggs on campus and try to find them. 'We're using humans as a model for squirrel behavior to ask questions that we can't ask squirrels,' Ms Delgado added.

Athletic: The fox squirrel is the largest species of tree squirrel native to North America, with a range extending throughout the east of the U.S.

Professor Jacobs, Ms Delgado's mentor and a leading expert on squirrel cognition, believes the campus squirrels are an ideal example to help improve the understanding of cognition in the wild.

'To understand how their mind has evolved you want to have a species that faces big cognitive problems – like making decisions about thousands of acorns and then remembering where you hid them three months ago,' she said.

Ms Delgado is attempting to build on research by Professor Jacobs which shows how squirrels remember the location of their own buried nuts more so than of nuts buried by other squirrels.

Some scientists have hypothesised that squirrels use their sense of smell to find nuts, but Professor Jacobs' research suggests that they're not just 'sniffing around' but using other techniques to locate their own nuts.

'That is something we are trying to ascertain with the GPS data,' Ms Delgado said. 'They may be using a combination of landmarks and memory to narrow down their search, and then using their sense of smell for a final bit of searching.'

While Ms Delgado hopes to crack the mystery of which cognitive navigation skills squirrels use to find their personal stashes, she is certain of one thing.

'They're saving for the future,' she said, 'and they're really smart about it.'