03.06 – Urban Wildlife: The Eastern Gray Squirrel

Episode description:

Gray squirrels: Cute as beans, clever as crows. These ubiquitous furry little denizens of urban parks are easy to overlook. And to misunderstand. In our latest profile of urban wildlife species, we look here at the eastern gray squirrel (and yes, that’s gray with “A”). It’s squirrel parasols, shrinking testicles, color vision, devious deception, swimming squirrels, and mass migrations. Welcome to the Single Acorn Podcast.

WORKS CITED

• An Etymology of Vermont Vertebrates (link)
• Gray not grey: the ecology of Sciurus carolinensis in their native range in North America (source)
• Predicting the spread of the American grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) in Europe: A call for a co-ordinated European approach (source)
• An elegy to Mungo the Squirrel, written to Georgiana Shipley (source) 
• What’s the story behind the Grey squirrel in Britain?  (source)
• The Use of Climatic Niches in Screening Procedures for Introduced Species to Evaluate Risk of Spread: A Case with the American Eastern Grey Squirrel  (source)
• IUCN’s 100 worst invasive species (source)
• The Urbanization of the Eastern Gray Squirrel in the United States (source)
• Alien Squirrel, story of The Central Park Menagerie releasing squirrels in 1877 (source)
• The Squirrel Census (source)
• Seasonal Food Consumption and Body Weights of Captive Tree Squirrels (source)
  • How Do You Know If an Animal Can See Color? Squirrels are one of only a few animals (e.g. primates) who see in wide range of colors (source)
• Although Sciurus carolinensis feed on as many as 97 plant and 14 animal items, 18 plant species account for 87% of stomach volume (Koprowski 1994).
• Current and future impacts of nest predation and nest-site competition by invasive eastern grey squirrels Sciurus carolinensis on European birds (source)
• Analysis of scientific research about the effect of squirrels on wild birds populations (source)
• Grey squirrels remember the locations of buried nuts  (source)
• Caching for where and what: evidence for a mnemonic strategy in a scatter-hoarder (source)
• Food habits and caching behavior of urban grey squirrels (source)
• Evidence of Social Influences on Cache‐Making by Grey Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) (source)
• Eavesdropping Squirrels Reduce Their Future Value of Food under the Perceived Presence of Cache Robbers (source)
• Seasonal changes in the testes and accessory reproductive organs and seasonal and circadian changes in plasma testosterone concentrations in the male grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) (source)
• Squirrel Breeding Biology – Mating & Copulatory Plugs (source)
• Power Outage game: https://robidev.github.io/CyberSquirrelOne/ 
• The Rare Albino Squirrels of Olney, Illinois (video)
• Interspecies Breeding Is Responsible for Some Squirrels’ Black Coloring (source)
• Interestingly, it seems like >150 ya there were more melanistic squirrels (shadier understory in old growth forests) (source)
• SquirrelMapper A game to test the ability of a predatory to rapidly find gray vs black squirrels
• Citizen scientists wanted: SquirrelMapper project seeks Wisconsin contributors (source)
• Function and underlying mechanisms of seasonal colour moulting in mammals and birds: what keeps them changing in a warming world? (source)
• Heat Sensing Pit Vipers – Deadly Vipers – BBC animals (video)
• Robot Squirrel Confuses a Snake (video)
• Man Dies from Extremely Rare Disease After Eating Squirrel Brains (source)
• A field guide to the squirrels in my backyard, using ear scars to ID individuals (source)
• A biological homage to Mickey Mouse (source)
• Pigeons, Operant Conditioning, and Social Control (source)
• Maybe Rats Aren’t to Blame for the Black Death (source)