Squirrels can pretend to bury nuts while hiding the actual nut in their cheeks

24 days ago

This has to be one of the funniest things you'll see an animal do which is a direct evidence of their level of intelligence.

The squirrel as cute as you may see it, are smarter than they even look.

A squirrel can spot a nut, but instead of just burying it like we normally see them do, that crafty, smart little deceiver puts on a beautiful show and the objective is one, to preserve the nut for itself.

The squirrel digs a hole, pretends to drop the nut in and cover it up, and it does that while keeping the nut safely tucked in its cheek.

Scientists term this behavior as deceptive caching or you can say pretend burying.

Why would a squirrel go through all this trouble when it can do what it normally does and actually bury the nut? The answer is survival and the reason is scarcity.

Food for the squirrels and other animals can be quite scarce, especially during the winter, and besides that, there's a lot of competition out there amongst the squirrels.

A squirrel could bury a nut and have another squirrel dig it up and steal it, so by faking a bury, they can deceive a potential thief. It was a hard earned snack, so they might as well ensure security.

There was a research conducted on this behavior that makes it even more interesting. The research suggests that squirrels are more likely to fake bury their nuts when they have other squirrels, animals or human beings around. Perhaps when they spot a researcher or just a regular person watching or even just being around, chances are they're going to fake bury the nuts.

In fact, an estimate was made that about 20% of all squirrel burying behavior is just for show, they're really not burying it, they're just deceiving other potential competitors.

These squirrels don't stop at one fake bury though. They might just repeat the process several times to really throw off the competition.

That's a level of intelligence that amazes

Squirrels are more likely to use this trick with very good food they really like. So if it's a particularly nut that's just very tasty, you can bet they'll pull out all the stops to protect it.

If it's just a regular low value food, then they'll bury it genuinely.

So a question you might ask is how the squirrels keep track of all of this burying at different spots?

This is made possible thanks to their pretty excellent spatial memory. They usually use nearby and distant landmarks to remember where they've actually hidden their food. Come to think of it, they remember every deceptive act they pulled and also the genuine burial of other nuts, that's a powerful use of memory function.

This really complex behavior of the squirrel suggests that they might have what scientists call, theory of mind. This is the ability for an organism to understand that others have different thoughts and intentions. A level of awareness we humans have too.

The fact that a squirrel can know that others might steal their buried nuts is a level of strategic thinking that's shockingly advanced for a creature we usually overlook to be that smart. We mostly think of them as cute.

By performing this fake burying act when observed, it means squirrels are able to anticipate the intentions of potential thieves and go further to act in a way to counteract the potential thief.