How to Keep Red-Bellied Squirrels? A Full Guide to Care Methods and Precautions

The red-bellied squirrel, also known as the red-bellied tree squirrel, as everyone's living standards improve, pets play an increasingly important role in people's lives, and many people have started keeping red-bellied squirrels at home. So, how do you keep a red-bellied squirrel?

1. How to Keep a Red-Bellied Squirrel?

The red-bellied squirrel is lively by nature and is best kept in a cage, and it needs a fairly large cage, which should be kept dry. Keep the room temperature at 15-30°C; in summer, when it is hot, pay attention to ventilation and shade, and it does not need strong light. Young squirrels are fed milk in the early stage, and grown squirrels can be fed nuts such as pine nuts, walnuts and hazelnuts, and fruits such as apples and pears. In addition, the feeding utensils need to be disinfected regularly.

2. What Are the Living Habits of the Red-Bellied Squirrel?

1. The red-bellied squirrel mostly lives in trees, using the forked parts of branches and building up and down with small twigs, surrounded by leaves and fine thatch grass as climbing material, so that from the outside it looks like a bird's nest. It also uses rotten holes in tree trunks and burrows such as those made by woodpeckers, rebuilding them into squirrel nests. It also has nests on cliff rocks and under the eaves of rural houses in mountainous areas, and it also builds nests on the branches of pine trees or other tall trees. Sometimes it can also use abandoned bird nests and remodel them, or make nests on the eaves and in the ceilings of houses in settlements near mountainous areas.

2. Its diet is rather varied; it damages chestnuts, hazelnuts, peaches, plums, mountain pears, longans, lychees, loquats, grapes and so on, and it also eats grasses, crops, and animals such as insects, bird eggs, nestlings and lizards. It sits to eat, bringing food to its mouth with its front paws. In addition, red-bellied squirrels living near houses often enter kitchens to steal food.

3. It especially likes to live in forests of plants of the beech family (Fagaceae), and is also active in cliff scrub areas. It is active all day long, generally with more frequent activity in the morning or before dusk, and it follows a certain route when moving. It likes to live in groups, mostly moves in trees, is good at climbing high, and can move across steep cliffs; it is good at jumping, often jumping from one tree to another while searching for food, as far as 5-6 m, hence the names "flying squirrel" or "dart squirrel".

The care methods for red-bellied squirrels and ordinary squirrels are basically the same; since squirrels are all lively and active, the cage chosen for keeping them is best one that prevents escape.