My mother was an animal lover. So naturally when I was a child even, I was used to her feeding the birds, etc. I was afraid of the squirrels in our neighborhood at first. But eventually I learned they were actually surprisingly tame. And so I would often feed them raw, unsalted peanuts (never give a squirrel salted peanuts–it just makes them thirsty).
I would sometimes even hand them the raw peanuts directly. One was even trained to come to our kitchen window. And whenever a squirrel wanted a peanut, I noticed a strange phenomenon. They would come up to you, stop, look at you with a pitiful expression on their little rodent face and put their paw on their chest. In other words, they seemed to beg like humans even sometimes do!
Am I right? I am a very rational person. So I know I am not just anthropomorphizing them. (And no, nobody trained these little creatures to do this. It was spontaneous on their own.) Does anyone know what I am talking about? What does it really mean when squirrels do what I just described?
Well the squirrels in Madison Square Park will come right up to you and take a snack from your hand if you call them by making an, um… sucking on your teeth, sort of noise.
What’s interesting is when they hear the noise, they look up first, and give you a measuring look one doesn’t really associate with a squirrel. I think squirrels will go with what works, whether its listening for clucks or holding a paw just so – and possibly teach the behavior to their young (not sure about that last part though!!)
My dad likes to put food out for the critters on the back porch. Everyday he gets a few squirrels, lots of birds, and one little chipmunk. The chipmunk usually shows up late to the party and there are only a couple of seeds out there, so he’ll actually tap on the sliding glass door and wait for my dad to toss some more out. I didn’t believe it until I watched it happen.
The squirrels near the benches on the Washington Mall will come up on the benches and probably into your lap unless you surrender whatever food you have. It’s not really a good idea to let squirrels get that close. They can be rabid. I hate to spoil the fun. At least try to keep them at a distance.
I grew up just a few miles away from white squirrels in Kenton, Tennessee. I don’t know what caused this anomaly. I don’t believe they are albinos.
Rodents including rats and squirrels are virtually never rabid in the wild. Most people associate evil little bastards like rats and squirrels to be natural rabies vectors but they are not. They can probably get it if it is induced in the lab under controlled conditions but they have never transmitted a case of rabies to humans in the U.S.
IANA squirrel expert, but I adopted some turtles and after a few days of feeding, they figured out that me=food and that them swimming desperately against the side of the tank closest to me=me feeling guilty and eventually giving them food. If such begging behavior is so hard wired into reptiles, I would think it would translate to mammals…
One time I was kneeling down, trying to coax one squirrel in front of me to come take a treat, when another one leapt out of the tree onto my back. That was disconcerting for both of us.
Squirrels in the western US can carry bubonic plague, however. I don’t know that it’s ever been transmitted to a human that way, but you’d probably want to avoid deep kissing.
I know research has been done that demonstrates animal behaviour that manifests in a way similar to superstition - that is, rewarding the animal with food may reinforce behaviour that isn’t a specific action in obtaining the food. (I guess it’s kinda obvious - because this is pretty much the basis of most animal training)
So if the squirrel in question just happened to be fed one time when it had its paw pressed against its chest, it might repeat the action again - and the greater the correlation between action and reward, the more deeply entrenched becomes the behaviour.
It’s a bit like an evolutionary scenario really - if you give 100 people a bag of peanuts each and send them out into a park full of squirrels, instructing the people to feed the squirrels that have the cutest personality, they’ll start off rewarding the ones that just randomly happened to do something cute and anthropomorphic, but the squirrels will also tend to repeat the behaviour that got them the reward.
Even without specific instruction, the general public might have a tendency to reward and reinforce those kinds of behaviour, so it could even be that wherever you have humans with food, and squirrels, you tend to end up with squirrels trained to act like little furry people.
C’mon. The squirrels have been radical Maoists since '67. It’s the decline of strong Reaganite ideals among the pigeons that has me worried. They’re all turning into a bunch of damn doves, if you ask me.
I remember one lady in the park told me “Don’t feed the squirrels peanuts you’ll give them hypertention.” I felt like saying “Long before that squirrel develops high blood pressure, some cat’s gonna come along and eat it up.”
When I was a teen, a friend and I managed to tame a squirrel just by feeding it when we saw it. We saw it around the same time everyday, and he quickly became tame, especially when we had food. We named it stupid. And he could beg better than any forlorn puppy.
Some years ago, around 3 AM one late-August night, I was out with my telescope. It was a black night - absolutely great for observing. Alone under the stars, it was also dead quiet (the coolness of the approaching Autumn had put even the crickets asleep). Utter tranquility. With no warning whatsoever, totally without a sound, a squirrel leaped onto my lap. :eek:!:eek:! I thought my heart would explode! It was only by the grace of God that I didn’t send my scope flying as I exploded out of my chair.
My wife has got every animal around learning how to beg.
Even our goldfish… they watch people moving around and do the equivalent of the other poster’s turtle - swimming frantically against the glass to convince you of how truly starving they are.
Squirrels will come up to our back deck and put their paws on the glass and peek in the see if we’re there.
Ducks will come up and quack at us until we feed them. One particular pair returns to our yard every year, though they wander off somewhere else to nest.
The crows and jays know that whenever squirrels and ducks are present, there is also food.
What’s really funny about the ducks and the squirrels is that they can clearly hear us walking around in our house. When we come up to the kitchen and dining room, they head in for their snack. They know there’s no point begging when we’re down in the office working.
I think animals in general are a lot smarter than people give them credit for. I have spent some time the last few years trying to catch the two squirrels that play tag with my dogs.
Just don’t do it with raccoons. Those furry bastards will mercilessly extort you and dismantle your house to do so. “Say, that’s a nice attic. It would be a shame if something…happened…to it.”
I had six squirrels last year hogging all the peanuts thrown out on the deck. Not only do they ‘beg’, they peek in to see if we’re in the kitchen, they sit in the tree outside the window and watch us, and if we don’t feed them fast enough, they will actually fling themselves against the glass to get our attention. Many mornings I’ll sit in the quiet house having coffee and be startled by a couple of loud ‘thunks’…The blue jays also love peanuts and a dozen or so will gather in a tree, screaming their heads off. I’ll throw a handful out and they’ll cautiously land, one at a time, sort through the peanuts to find a ‘good’ one, swallow a small one to store in their crop for later, and fly off with a big peanut. The only problem is, the squirrels are real hogs and if they are out there, the blue jays are damn lucky to get food at the same time…One time we were at a park, sitting on top of a hill overlooking a pond. A white duck slowly and laboriously walked up that hill, it took him about 10 minutes. He walked up to Mr. Sali and stood there a while, putting his head to one side or the other, obviously expecting a handout of some kind. But we didn’t have so much as a granola bar to share. So after a while, he turned around and slowly and laboriously walked down the hill to the pond. I felt bad for that duck! Maybe I should carry peanuts around in my pocket at all times for My Little Friends…
