Quantcast
ZME Science
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
No Result
View All Result
ZME Science

No Result
View All Result
ZME Science
No Result
View All Result
Home Environment Animals

Ground squirrels use the sun to hide food

Squirrels have two main activities: hiding nuts and finding nuts. But how do they find their way to the delicious hidden stash?

Mihai Andrei by Mihai Andrei
September 14, 2016
in Animals, Biology, News
Reading Time: 2 mins read
A A
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterSubmit to Reddit

Squirrels have two main activities: hiding nuts and finding nuts. But how do they find their way to the delicious hidden stash?

A Cape ground squirrel hiding his food at a cache. Image credits: Brittany Sumner, Kalahari Research Centre.

Jamie Samson and Marta Manser from the University of Zurich took on this mystery of nature, studying colonies of Cape ground squirrels (Xerus inauris) in the wild at the Kalahari Research Center in South Africa. For these furry creatures, hiding and then finding food is extremely important, as their habitat is very arid and resources are scarce. This adds another point of complexity: without trees or bushes, how do you get your reference points?

They found that the squirrels use an interesting technique – they follow the sun.

ADVERTISEMENT

“The squirrels probably use the position of the sun as the most important cue to roughly adjust their direction of movement,” explains Samson.

First of all, the biologists took loads of GPS points around the habitat. Then, they gave the squirrels some nuts to hide and tracked them. They found that the animals moved in an almost straight line either towards or away from the sun to find a suitable hiding place. Every time they hid a nut, the angle of their direction was only slightly deviated.

Sorry to interrupt, but you should really...

...Join the ZME newsletter for amazing science news, features, and exclusive scoops. More than 40,000 subscribers can't be wrong.

   

“Based on this movement pattern,” interprets Samson, “we presume that Cape ground squirrels use the position of the sun at a particular time of day as a rule of thumb to find their bearings when searching for a place to hide their food.”

Next, they wanted to see how they find the hidden food and observed an interesting pattern: the squirrels came back for the food in exactly the same time of day – when the sun was in the same place in the sky. They followed the exact path which they used to hide the nuts. Most of them waited precisely 24 hours to recover it, but some of them went back faster, arguably to find the food before other squirrels

“The squirrels seem to have a certain flexibility regarding when they recover their food. This usually happens before the 24-hour point, if there are more individuals at the group during that time — to prevent the food from being stolen by rivals.”

Using the sun for guidance is not unprecedented in the animal kingdom. We’ve known for quite a while that bees can use the sun to figure out where they are going, as can honeybees and carrier pigeons. Now, Zurich biologists showed another, unlikely creature, using a similar system.

ADVERTISEMENT

Tags: squirrel
ShareTweetShare
Mihai Andrei

Mihai Andrei

Andrei's background is in geophysics, and he's been fascinated by it ever since he was a child. Feeling that there is a gap between scientists and the general audience, he started ZME Science -- and the results are what you see today.

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.