This post: Squirrels Remember Where They Bury Their Nuts Better Than You Think, Research Shows first appeared on Crafting Your Home.
Watching a squirrel bury a nut can look almost random. It digs quickly, pushes the food into the ground, covers the spot, and rushes away. Given how many nuts a squirrel may hide, it is easy to assume the animal forgets most of them and later finds a few by luck or smell.
Squirrels Don’t Rely Only on Smell
For many years, people assumed squirrels mainly rediscovered buried food by detecting its scent. Smell certainly plays a role, but experiments show that memory is also important.
In a classic study of grey squirrels, researchers allowed each animal to bury ten hazelnuts in an outdoor area. The squirrels returned after delays of two, four, or twelve days and were given access to both their own hiding places and locations used by other squirrels.
Their Memories Can Last for Weeks
Later field experiments found that grey squirrels could relocate precise locations after around 20 days. Researchers reported that the animals reached within five centimeters of the target location in 62.5 percent of attempts after that period.
Researchers also found evidence of memory after 43 and 62 days. This suggests that at least some squirrels can retain information about important food locations for weeks.
Squirrels Use Landmarks to Find Their Food
Trees, rocks, logs, pathways, and other visual landmarks can provide clues about a cache’s position. Rather than remembering a hiding place as a simple coordinate, a squirrel may remember its location in relation to familiar objects around it.
They May Organize Their Nuts Like We Organize Information
Chunking is a memory strategy humans use when we group similar information. Instead of remembering many unrelated items separately, we organize them into categories.
Researchers studying wild fox squirrels offered them different types of nuts and tracked where the animals buried them. Under certain conditions, squirrels tended to separate their caches according to nut type, effectively organizing similar foods into different areas.
Not Every Nut Is Treated the Same
Research shows they can distinguish between nuts based on characteristics such as type, weight, and perishability.
More valuable food may receive greater attention. Observations described by squirrel researcher Lucia Jacobs indicate that squirrels may carry higher-value nuts farther before burying them, apparently reducing the chance that another animal will steal them.
Why Do Squirrels Still Lose Some Nuts?
Other animals may steal some caches. Environmental changes may make familiar landmarks harder to recognize, and squirrels may forget certain locations.
Squirrel Memory Is More Sophisticated Than It Looks
Studies show that squirrels can remember individual cache locations, retain some spatial information for weeks, use environmental cues, and even organize caches according to the type of food they contain.
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