Squirrels are the small, lively mammals that you often see darting around parks, gardens, and forests. Squirrels are known for their bushy tails and for their quick movements. They spend much of their time searching for food like nuts, seeds, fruits, and sometimes even small insects. Squirrels are also excellent climbers, as they use their sharp claws and strong back legs to leap between tree branches with surprising agility. They have interesting habits like gathering and burying food to save and eat it later. They are curious creatures and always observe their surroundings with bright, alert eyes. Squirrels play an important role in nature by spreading seeds, which helps to grow plants and trees in new areas. Even Squirrels are small in size, they show remarkable intelligence and adaptability, managing to live both in the wild and alongside humans in busy towns and cities.
Here are the 11 Little Secrets About Squirrels That Will Make You Smile
- Squirrels are excellent planners as they hide thousands of nuts each year. Sometimes they forget about the hidden nuts, and these forgotten nuts grow into trees. So, squirrels are also helping the nature to expand the forest.
- Squirrels’ teeth never stop growing ,they constantly chew on nuts, wood, and bark to wear them down, otherwise their teeth would become too long to eat properly.
- Squirrels can leap ten times their body length in one jump. Their strong back legs and bushy tails help them balance and land safely from tree to tree.
- Squirrels use their tails as an umbrella and a blanket. A squirrel’s fluffy tail helps to keep them warm in winter and shields from sun.
- Squirrels practise “deceptive caching”. If they think another squirrel is watching, they pretend to bury a nut but hide it somewhere else later to protect their stash.
- Baby squirrels are called kits. They are born blind and hairless and fully depend on their mothers for several weeks until they can climb and gather food themselves.
- Tree squirrels can rotate their ankles 180 degrees. This allows them to climb down trees headfirst.
- In fact, flying squirrels don’t , they glide through the air using a special skin flap between their legs. Sometimes they cover the distances of 150 feet in one glide.
- Squirrels have excellent memory, like easily identifying by its smell and the landmarks to find buried nuts.
- Squirrels are very vocal and expressive. They use chirps, tail flicks, and warning calls to communicate with each other, especially to alert about nearby predators like hawks or cats.
- There are more than 200 species of squirrels living in forests, cities, mountains, and even deserts around the world. They can easily adapt to all types of environments on Earth.
