When Squirrels Were One of America’s Most Popular Pets (2017) | Hacker News Reader

When Squirrels Were One of America’s Most Popular Pets (2017)

atlasobscura.com

59 pointssinghkays50 comments

I have many squirrels roaming around the outside of my house but this article has definitely deterred me from keeping them as pets: https://www.vin.com/vetzinsight/default.aspx?pId=756&id=5454...

I have a good bunch of squirrels I feed outside my home office... I can attest they are delightful creatures when you get to know them. They’re smart, gentle, engaging, and all have a different and developing personality.

Yes, they’re rodents, but rodents are a big family!

Rodents can be extremely friendly and cute indeed. Evidence: capivaras!

> They're [...] gentle [...]

No they're not. They're brutal, vicious killers (a trait they share with lots of others of members of the rodent family, such as rabbits).

Here's just one example:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/red-squirrel...

Rabbits surprisingly not being rodents.

Cats do the same thing sometimes, feral cats and lions, at least. Some cats are still gentle.

Thank you for feeding them, as I occasionally enjoy eating well fed squirrels in my own neighborhood. Keep filling them up with peanuts, please!

My family got roped into fostering some baby squirrels that had lost their nest. They're very cute, but in my experience they were very skittish and frankly their claws are too sharp to make comfortable pets. I wish it were otherwise, since I really admire them as highly capable animals.

We raised them with the intent of releasing them into "the wild" (of Burbank) and eventually did get them to be pretty much independent of us. So that worked pretty well.

If you love a squirrel, set it free.

If it comes back to you, then it is truly your duty to set it free again but in a location further away.

Me and my wife have raised 5 between us (3 together and she's had 2 on her own). They are incredible animals, and playing with a squirrel is something very special.

Groundhogs are wonderful too! I had one for 4 years before she passed away. Best pet I've ever had.

https://instagram.com/winniethewoodchuck

Northern flying squirrel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_flying_squirrel

I had a roommate who raised an orphaned flying squirrel. The squirrel had a lot of personality. At dusk we'd take him out and set him on a tree, walk 50 feet away, and he'd glide down and land on your chest or shoulder, again and again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14481535

Well, people keep rats. Rats have some downsides compared to squirrels: Their ugly tails, the black death, etc.

Rats are apparently also smarter.

A friend of mine kept them as pets. I was there once and watched one eat a piece of spaghetti. It held the noodle with both paws, sitting on its hind legs, and took bites while feeding it into its mouth "hand over hand". I have never really forgotten that. There was something so deliberate and skilled about this. No dumb beast, this, face down in a pile of food. This was an intelligent, fastidious creature enjoying a pasta dinner.

Thanks for that image

Hamsters, on the other hand...

https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/0...

A super-cute rat eating spaghetti more or less this way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp8VapqaCkE

That’s actually a behavioral task used in neuroscience experiments as well. Pasta eating is a surprisingly complex skill involving dexterous manipulation and complexity sensory and motor signaling throughout the brain.

Give them a dish of water and you might see them wash their hands after eating too! They’re very human sometimes.

We used to keep rats, and they are pretty delightful really. I discovered later that they are such sociable creatures, they really need friends of their own kind. Ours got lots of attention, could pretty much run free for most of the day, but they do get lonely.

Rats are pretty clever, they can respond to their names and follow simple verbal instructions.

Back when I was a student I used to keep a couple, and several local friends also had one or two. They make good pets - larger and less fragile than mice, smarter and more interactive than gerbils, and not at all prone to biting you randomly.

I've seen squirrels bait cats and other animals in a playful fashion, facing downwards on a tree doing the undulating tail thing. Maybe rats are smarter, but squirrels are pretty playful and charismatic.

I used to keep a rat, and considered her about as smart and enterprising as my cats.

I regularly feed squirrels coming to my window. Some of them are curious and brave enough to enter the room through the window, and they definitely learned what actions of mine lead to food appearing at the windowsill.

Animals are fun.

I often refer to squirrels as cute, fluffy-tailed arboreal rats...

Better PR too

The fluffy tail makes a surprisingly big difference in the cuteness, although I'm not sure I can explain why.

and pigeons?

pigeons are rats that can fly

TreeRats

Presumably pet squirrels are just as bad as pet rats about defecating everywhere and gnawing on everything.

I admire rodent tenaciousness, but we are not friends.

Some people (like me) find rats and mice to be cute.

And FYI, rats did NOT cause the Black Death. That was the theory at the time, but it hasn't held up to scrutiny. We are now fairly certain it was human lice. Both the outbreak patterns and genetic evidence makes this clear.

Bubonit plaque is still spread by mice and it's still a pfovkt.

I'm not sure what a pfovkt is. Bubonic plague CAN be spread by (fleas on) mice or rats. But historically it was not, at least not in Europe. The most recent outbreaks in Europe in the 19th century were carried by lice. We know this for certain. Looking back at historical outbreaks in the Middle Ages and early modern period, the information about how the plague spread is consistent with lice, not rats as the vector. For example, people sharing the same bed and sheets get sick, but not people in adjoining houses sharing the same walls and garden. The outbreak of the great plague in London is not near the quarantine docks as one would expect, but rather a poor area on the completely other side which was known to be a site of prostitution. It then spread largely along class lines through communities with poor hygiene, largely skipping affluent areas even when there was nothing that would have prevented rats from moving through.

Col. Hans Landa : Yet I assume you don't share the same animosity with squirrels that you do with rats, do you?

Perrier LaPadite : No.

Col. Hans Landa : But they're both rodents, are they not? And except for the tail, they even rather look alike, don't they?

Perrier LaPadite : It's an interesting thought, Herr Colonel.

Col. Hans Landa : Ha! However interesting as the thought may be, it makes not one bit of difference to how you feel. If a rat were to walk in here right now, as I'm talking, would you greet it with a saucer of your delicious milk?

Perrier LaPadite : Probably not.

Col. Hans Landa : I didn't think so. You don't like them. You don't really know why you don't like them; all you know is you find them repulsive.

So is this why they are so wide spread and a pest? Squirrels are much rarer in Europe. Like you only see them in the forest rare and they are orange.

The black/grey squirrels here are a real problem for backyard gardeners. Like they will pretty much steal every fruit tree bare.

Rare in Europe? I'm looking out of my window in central London and there are at least three squirrels arguing about brexit or something. In warmer months, I need to be careful not to kick one of them as I go by on the sidewalk. They are everywhere.

Well, one can hardly generalize to Europe just from London.

To give just one counterexample, I grew up in a very rural/mountainy part of Austria, surrounded by forests everywhere, and I can count the times I have seen a squirrel on one hand.

I saw lots of squirrels in Prague so it's not just London. They also have these massive rodents in the river. They are very tame, can be up to the size of a small dog and have big, red teeth.

I thought you were joking at first, but apparently not!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coypu

The squirrels in London, and most of the UK, are American greys - imported as pets in the 19th century. The rest of Europe has the much more timid red squirrel.

Parent did say Europe. Assuming the UK even wants to be called a part of Europe, it's just a small part...

Europe is a continent.

Which is neither here, nor there. (I'm a European in any case, I know what "Europe" is).

That said, Europe is many things.

There is one (actually several) geographical definition (as a continent), geo-political definitions, cultural, historical, and other...

Even Wikipedia has some of the nuance:

Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia (extending from the Urals to the Iberian Peninsula), the Scandinavian Peninsula, Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland and many smaller surrounding islands in the North Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.

Europe may also refer to:

Continental Europe, the mainland of Europe excluding the islands surrounding it

European Union, a European political supranational entity

What's the prevailing opinion on Brexit among squirrels?

The grey squirrels are an invasive species; even in wild parts of Scotland you'll see them far more often than the native red squirrels.

In most places it's an either/or; you won't see both. I've never seen a grey squirrel north of roughly stirling, but have seen plenty* (well, a handful, 4 or 5) of reds in the area. Meanwhile, near me (Edinburgh), greys are abundant.

At least in Madrid they are not uncommon even in city parks; and there are plenty at the sierra.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com