Squirrels hunting and eating meat | Hacker News Reader

Squirrels hunting and eating meat

gizmodo.com

57 pointsulrischa52 comments

At my parents house, the squirrels often kill and eat bluejays. I'm the winter they hide the wings in snow drifts. When the spring thaw comes there will be dozens of disembodied bird wings scattered around the yard.

I thought it was common knowledge that squirrels are opportunistic. They're rodents. They eat whatever they can get.

There are many different species of squirrel, and different species have different diets.

Knowing nothing about where your parent's house is but guessing it is somewhere in the US if I had to bet I'd bet that the squirrels there are Eastern gray squirrels. They are native to the Eastern US but have taken up residence in much of the rest of the country. One of the reasons they do well outside of their native habitat is that they are not at all picky eaters. So yes it was common knowledge that they will sometimes kill other animals and eat them.

The article is about California ground squirrels. Until recently they were not known to eat meat.

BTW, how the Eastern gray squirrels spread so much is interesting. As cities grew people in them wanted to have some connection to nature, and as part of that a lot of places wanted to have some wild animals in their city parks. Tree squirrels were a common choice.

So how do you get squirrels to take up residence in your park? Your first thought is probably that you send some people out to the nearest wild forest, trap enough squirrels to form a viable breeding population, and release them in the parks.

The problem with that is that in many cities the parks don't have native trees. People want parks to have trees that aren't too tall, with reasonably wide canopies, and that don't grow too close together.

That's great if you are someplace where the native trees are like that. If you are someplace like say Seattle where the native trees are tall narrow Fir trees that close together what they did was import trees from the Eastern US.

The native squirrels wouldn't necessarily eat the nuts from those non-native trees. That was the case in Seattle. Western gray squirrels really only want to eat the nuts from native trees.

And so to get squirrels that would be happy in a park full of trees imported from the Eastern US cities then imported squirrels from the Eastern US. And since Eastern gray squirrels are not picky eaters they are also happy with native nuts, and quickly spread beyond the parks.

In Minneapolis, MN, there is a historical plaque that notes the day and location of the first gray squirrels introduced to the city as a gift from Seattle/Washington. It’s in Loring Park.

So kind of opposite direction.

That's interesting, so I searched for more information.

Does the plaque actually say Seattle or just Washington? What I found [1] suggests the squirrels were introduced around 1909 and came from Washington DC, bought from this guy [2].

Here's a summary, but read the article I linked. I'm leaving out lots of interesting details.

Unlike Seattle, the problem in Minneapolis wasn't that the native squirrels didn't like the trees. The park had plenty of native red squirrels.

The problem was that Theodore Wirth, the park supervisor, hated red squirrels. He thought they killed too many songbirds, and he loved songbirds. Red squirrels did occasionally eat songbird eggs but the actual main threat to songbirds in the park was humans.

Red squirrels are also very territorial and aggressively defend that territory. They are happy to live off the food the trees provide so don't really warm up to humans. Instead they yell at humans to try to drive them away.

Grays love to eat all kind of things, and so quickly come to see humans as friendly bringers of all kinds of food.

To address this perceived red squirrel problem Thomas ordered park police to execute all the red squirrels and brought in the Eastern gray squirrels.

The grays adapted so well that by the 1930s some people were complaining:

> They adapted to city life so eagerly that by 1930, the Tribune was lamenting that Loring Park's squirrels had become spoiled "cream-puff squirrels" that bore little resemblance to their ancestral "true" gray squirrel of the American wilderness.

> "Any day in Loring Park a squirrel may choose between ice cream cones, cake and a dozen kinds of sweetmeats, or enjoy all of them to his capacity," the Tribune reported. "Instinctively they still store acorns from the old oaks. But it is a lackadaisical effort."

[1] https://www2.startribune.com/gray-red-squirrels-theodore-wir...

[2] https://www.ebay.com/itm/395169313155

They're mostly red squirrels.

I've always known squirrels to eat birds. The fact that scientists are new to this fact is what is surprising.

It might just be that the headline is bad and the literature is simply describing vole predation.

Anecdata:

https://www.reddit.com/r/zoology/comments/2bypwd/i_saw_a_gra...

https://www.reddit.com/r/birding/comments/1d1ddnv/birdhouses...

https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/14715zj/squirrel_eatin... (graphic video)

https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/dsws02/a_squirrel_eati... (different graphic video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9F-lnJtkDA (graphic video eating a mouse)

etc.

The really graphic stuff you tend to see when you look for it is the raptors eating the squirrels. Bird eats squirrel eats bird. The circle of life.

> It might just be that the headline is bad and the literature is simply describing vole predation.

Correct!

From the article:

> Any supplementation of their vegetarian diet was historically believed to primarily occur through eating insects or, on occasion, nest predation of eggs or young hatchlings (Bradley and Marzluff 2003).

> Roughly 30 years ago, Callahan (1993) radically altered our perception of squirrels by characterizing as many as 30 species of the family Sciuridae as facultative predators of small vertebrates capable of killing and consuming adult fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals (Table S1).

The study is itself a detailed breakdown of changes in foraging behavior linkedin to "food pulses" (which I guess means the times when various food sources are available, a la acorns in the fall and sprouts in the spring).

In the context of H5N1, this gives some new insight of the likelihood of the virus jumping species. Birds are everywhere, squirrels in urban environments moreso.

> In the context of H5N1, this gives some new insight of the likelihood of the virus jumping species. Birds are everywhere, squirrels in urban environments moreso.

The H5N1 hype is not new. They have just reactivated now. My opinion is that the revenue of pharma giants has decreased after Covid, so they are looking at new sources of revenue.

Maybe the scientists should have done a quick google before declaring nobody has seen this behavior before.

Wow, that's... really gross. The wings, not the hunting.

I knew squirrels would eat meat opportunistically but I wasn't aware that whole populations hunted particular animals systematically.

Probably about 20 years ago, near Boston, I remember noticing a reddish-brown squirrel sitting in a tree gnawing on a fried chicken leg and found the sight mildly absurd.

That must've been Colonel Scampers.

Pizza rat is going to pizza. The most successful animals are generally those that will take calories from anywhere they can, with things like pandas and koalas at the other end of the spectrum.

Everything is an opportunistic carnivore. I once came across a turtle chowing down on a dead frog.

Even trees will take nutrients from animals with a little help from fungal networks:

https://web.uvic.ca/~reimlab/salmonforest.html

https://depts.washington.edu/hortlib/pal/salmon-dna-in-trees... (note, Salmon DNA isn't in the trees, just nutrients, in case you don't read this article).

Apparently cows are happy to eat nestlings if they happen to find a bird's nest while they're grazing.

If you're an animal, there's no food better than meat.

That would only be true if you have the stomach biome to digest and extract the nutrients.

What is the point of eating something that is hard to process and digest and has no nutritional value for you

For herbivores, meat is objectively bad food .

You're wrong. Cows will eat meat, horses will eat meat, pigs will eat meat, chickens will eat meat, deer will eat meat. If they can get it in their mouth, they will eat it.

Mad cow disease didn’t just happen. Though the idea that cows would preferentially eat brain and spinal cord tissue doesn’t seem likely.

Ironically mad cow is one of the rare transmissible diseases that “can just happen” with no external causative agent!

It’s just a misfolding of a protein that starts a chain reaction of similarly misfolded proteins.

Anything can any thing , that is not what I said .

OP implied they like it if they can get it, and is the better food for them , that is not true

It is true. If you prefer grass to birds, you can just go around the birds as you find them. The grass isn't going anywhere.

> pigs will eat meat, chickens will eat meat,

pigs and chicken are omnivorous.

It's plants you need a fancy setup for. Also, the microbiome thing, surprisingly, isn't universal, a lot of animals have no stomach microbiome to speak of.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/04/animals-...

The point of eating meat is that it's easy to digest. This isn't a case where two things are difficult in different ways and you want to do the thing you're specialized in. Meat is easy to digest, and plants are hard to digest, no matter what.

Most herbivores I’m aware of will at least occasionally eat meat or insects. Even grazers.

I would be kind of surprised if there’s any “true and pure” herbivorous vertebrate.

Meat is rich in nutrients that even herbivores need and is difficult to get entirely from plants.

Vegans are the anomaly.

I don't know but I once watched a deer eat a bird so they clearly have some incentive

I recall a study that identified deer as a major predator of bird nests. I don't recall if it was eggs or young that they went after.

I can't find a reference to the study at the moment.

> For herbivores, meat is objectively bad food .

We feed cattle the leftovers from processing meat. It's how we got mad cow disease.

I would guess that a digestive system that can extract adequate nutrition from grass will extract something of value from meat. On the other hand, if the meat content became a significant part of the diet, I can imagine it could become harmful, for example by messing with the digestive process or by delivering toxic levels of certain products.

>What is the point of eating something that is hard to process and digest and has no nutritional value for you

Wouldn't that make it dietary fiber then? What's functionally dietary fiber varies from species to species, but like with humans we eat things exactly like that for GI health. Birds of prey for instance eat casting (fur and feathers) which is functionally like dietary fiber for them where it would be unhealthy if you just gave them a steak without having them also eat the indigestible bits as they wouldn't be able to properly form and regurgitate pellets. Certain animals might not need something that functions like dietary fiber but for at least certain animals - like humans - eating certain indigestible things is important for good health.

Horses snacking chicks. Videos easy to be found.

Everything will eat anything if its hungry enough but to say there is no better food is a broad statement I'm not comfortable agreeing with.

"Better" is kind of a vague term. A more precise and limited statement is that meat has the highest protein quality index. There could be some other disadvantages, depending on your species.

You should try raising cows on a carnivore diet.

The cows would be happy, but that would be significantly more expensive than feeding them plants.

Note that mad cow disease came from feeding cows to cows. Giving them meat isn't exactly an innovation.

> Giving them meat isn't exactly an innovation.

True, but the results were.

It's as deluded as raising cats on a vegan diet.

Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide!

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

Turtles are carnivores, no? They are bitey as hell. All of them. You catch them on cut bait, worms, minnows when fishing. Even the ones without very sharp mouths, like softshell turtles.

> along with Sonja Wild of UC Davis, who also contributed to the study

I love me some nominative determinism.

> I love me some nom…

… said the squirrel

Worth it

At the university squirrels regularly stole our pizzas ( see https://imgur.com/gallery/HBLFoNA ). At my house, they also took avocados.

For a realistic fictional portrayal of this observation, see Tooth And Tail[0]

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/286000/Tooth_and_Tail/

I understand chipmunks will bite the tops off the skulls of baby birds so they can eat the brains.

I knew it.

I was typing the same thing when I saw this comment.

I am not at all shocked squirrels are vicious killers.

...something happened. Growing up, I had cats that ate squirrels. Then, sometime around the early 2000s, I had cats that were being chased by squirrels.

My ex's cat spent a lot of time outdoors and in the barn, and picked up the "chit-chit-chit" noise that angry squirrels make. The cat does it every time she's annoyed.

[flagged]

Reply on news.ycombinator.com