What are the living habits of squirrels? A comprehensive guide
The squirrel's native range is northeastern, northwestern and southeastern China, and Europe; apart from Oceania, it is distributed throughout the world. It is a typical small tree-dwelling animal with a slender body, made to look especially small against its soft, dense, long fur. Most inhabit cold-temperate coniferous forests and mixed coniferous-broadleaf forest areas. Let's take a look together at the living habits of squirrels!
The feeding habits of squirrels
Squirrels like to eat vegetarian food and occasionally eat meat. Their vegetarian diet consists mainly of the dried fruits and seeds of Korean pine, spruce, fir, larch, Scots pine, hazelnut and oak, while their meat diet consists mainly of insects, larvae, ant eggs and other small animals. When food is scarce between seasons, squirrels have other choices. In spring they eat tree buds; in summer they eat mushrooms, raspberries and berries such as lingonberries; by autumn food is extremely abundant and they have no worries about eating and drinking, with whatever they want available, but the most palatable is still Korean pine nuts.
The reproductive habits of squirrels
Squirrels mostly come into heat in spring and summer, with the heat period lasting about two weeks. The suitable breeding age for squirrels is 8-9 weeks for females and 9-10 weeks for males. The gestation period is about 35-40 days, and they can produce about 3 litters per year, with 4-6 young per litter. Newborn squirrels are very small and cannot see; they rely entirely on the mother's milk for all their nutritional needs. Squirrels develop very slowly, only opening their eyes at nearly 30 days after birth. At one and a half months, the young squirrels are only then willing to go outside and move about.
The nesting habits of squirrels
Squirrels build nests on dense branches, or use abandoned nests of crows and magpies, and sometimes make nests in tree holes. Besides eating wild fruits, they also eat tender twigs, young buds, leaves, as well as insects and bird eggs. Once autumn arrives, squirrels begin to store food; a squirrel often stores several kilograms of food in several places, and sometimes squirrels are seen drying food in the trees so that it does not spoil or go moldy.
The natural enemies of squirrels
Although the squirrel is a relatively large type among rodents, since it is not at the top of the food chain, it is still threatened by natural enemies. One type is carnivorous small beasts and birds of prey, such as sable, mountain weasel, yellow-throated marten, least weasel, Siberian weasel and golden eagle, owl, Steller's sea eagle and so on. The other type is mainly magpies and crows, which target young squirrels during the breeding season. The former type of natural enemy, in a sense, is beneficial to the healthy reproduction of the squirrel population, because most of those caught by natural enemies are old, weak and diseased individuals, while the latter type of natural enemy is harmful with no benefit.
Squirrels have a highly developed sense of smell
Squirrels have an extremely developed sense of smell and can accurately distinguish whether pine seeds and kernels are empty or full. Any seeds on the tip of a pine cone that have been abandoned by squirrels have no kernel; although the shell of such a seed has not been bitten open, the squirrel still knows at a single sniff. Squirrels also have the instinct to store food. In autumn, when Korean pine seeds ripen, squirrels run back and forth carrying pine seeds in their mouths to safe places to hide them, in piles of a few or a dozen seeds, buried underground and kept as food for the winter. Although the ground is covered with snow in winter, squirrels can still find the stored food effortlessly, though a few are missed and cannot be found. But it is precisely because they are buried underground and missed that they help the spread and dispersal of Korean pine seeds, promoting natural regeneration.