96 Fun Facts About Squirrels

Which Founding Father wrote a mock epitaph for Mungo, a pet squirrel he gave an English bishop's daughter?

Benjamin Franklin consoled Georgiana Shipley in 1772 after Mungo escaped his cage and was killed by a dog, offering the rhyme 'Here Skugg lies snug as a bug in a rug' as a joke epitaph.

Besides balance and signalling, a squirrel's bushy tail serves which purpose?

Cooling off by pumping blood through it is one job; the tail also shields against rain and cold, and its fine hairs are prized for tying fishing flies.

Which squirrel, weighing under 20 grams, is usually named the smallest in the world?

African pygmy squirrels average about 16 grams and run along the underside of a branch as easily as along the top.

What is the name for a squirrel's nest made from twigs and leaves, typically found in tree branches?

Drey: the hollow ball of twigs and leaves sits wedged in a high fork, and new ones become obvious each autumn when leaf-fall exposes them.

The word 'squirrel' traces back to the Ancient Greek skiouros, which literally combines 'tail' with what?

Shade: skiouros joins skia, 'shadow', and oura, 'tail', usually read as the animal that sits in its own tail's shade; the borrowed word later replaced the Old English name, ācweorna.

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which child do Wonka's nut-sorting squirrels toss down the rubbish chute?

Veruca Salt demands a trained squirrel of her own and rushes in to snatch one; the squirrels pin her down, judge her a 'bad nut' and send her down the chute, with her parents close behind.

What is special about a squirrel's gnawing incisors, which lets it chew through hard nuts year after year?

They keep growing for life, and constant gnawing wears them to length; behind them sits a wide gap, the diastema, then the grinding cheek teeth.

What do naturalists call the sprawling burrow colonies that prairie dogs live in?

Towns: early explorers coined the name for the dense colonies, which split into wards and family coteries; one in Texas was once estimated to hold 400 million animals.

Olney, Illinois, gives right of way on its streets to a famous colony of squirrels of which colour?

White: Olney's albino eastern gray squirrels have right of way on every street and sidewalk, yet the town's counts since 1997 show them slowly dwindling, with roaming cats the main threat.

A flying squirrel's patagium is which body part?

Its gliding membrane: the furred patagium stretches between the front and hind legs on each side, and the tail acts as a brake just before the squirrel lands on a trunk.

Eastern chipmunks haul seeds and nuts back to their burrows in which part of the body?

Their cheek pouches: a chipmunk stuffs both stretchy cheeks before each trip because it lacks the fat reserves to sleep through winter and must wake to eat from its stored hoard.

What is it called when squirrels bury single nuts in many separate spots for later, rather than in one store?

Scatter hoarding: an eastern gray squirrel makes several thousand caches a season and relies on spatial memory, plus smell, to find them again.

A stocky groundhog may escape a predator by doing what?

Climbing a tree: groundhogs look too heavy for it and are built for digging, yet they climb sizeable trees and swim well too.

Which of these is a collective noun for a group of squirrels?

Scurry: the word is rarely needed, since tree squirrels live mostly alone and bunch together mainly to share a warm nest in cold spells.

Squirrels are native to every inhabited continent but one, where humans introduced them; which is it?

Australia's introduced eastern gray squirrels later died out, so the only squirrels living wild there today are introduced palm squirrels from India.

Besides mountain beavers, which long-hibernating rodents are the squirrel family's closest living relatives?

Dormice and the mountain beaver join squirrels in the suborder Sciuromorpha; the mountain beaver, despite its name, is no beaver but the last member of its own ancient family.

Tree squirrels can climb down a trunk headfirst by rotating which joints 180 degrees?

Their ankles turn a full 180 degrees, letting the hind feet point backward and grip the bark from the opposite direction.

Which tree-dwelling mammal looks like a small flying squirrel but is actually a pouched marsupial?

The sugar glider evolved the ability to glide separately, a textbook case of convergent evolution: it is a possum, closer kin to kangaroos than to any squirrel.

The eastern gray squirrel is the official state mammal of which US state?

North Carolina adopted the eastern gray squirrel as its state mammal in 1969; the species name carolinensis marks the Carolinas as the place where it was first recorded.

Newborn squirrels are described as altricial; what does that mean about how they are born?

Naked, toothless and blind at birth, the young depend entirely on their mother, who in most species feeds and guards them alone in the nest.

In 2005, a pack of black squirrels in Lazo, Russia, reportedly killed and ate what?

A large stray dog: villagers in Lazo, in Russia's far east, said black squirrels bit a barking stray to death in the park in late 2005; locals blamed a pine cone shortage, though scientists doubted it.

What is the term for animals like squirrels and pigeons that thrive by living alongside humans?

Synanthropes are wild species that thrive beside people; in the gradual process called synurbanization, city squirrels lose much of their inborn fear of humans.

Which US city first released squirrels into a city park, in 1847?

Philadelphia released three squirrels into one of its public squares in 1847, the first such release on record, and kept them going with food and nest boxes.

Which film series features Scrat, a sabre-toothed squirrel chasing an acorn?

Ice Age: the wordless Scrat keeps losing his acorn in ever bigger disasters, and his squeaks come from Chris Wedge, who directed the first film in 2002.

The Olympic marmot lives almost entirely inside one national park in which US state?

Washington: the Olympic marmot lives only on the Olympic Peninsula, and in 2009 the state named it its official endemic mammal after a two-year campaign by schoolchildren.

In winter the Eurasian red squirrel grows noticeably longer tufts of fur on which part of its body?

Its ears: the tufts thicken with the darker winter coat between August and November, and they are one quick way to tell a red squirrel from a grey, which has none.

Alvin and Simon are two singing Chipmunks; which brother completes the trio?

Theodore: Ross Bagdasarian voiced all three brothers himself, speeding up his own singing on a tape recorder he had bought with almost the last of the family savings.

Gray squirrels were first brought to Britain in the 1870s for what reason?

As fashionable additions to estates: landowners released them as novelties, and on mainland Britain they have since largely displaced the native red squirrel.

Besides Britain and Ireland, which European country had an established invasive population of eastern gray squirrels as of 2025?

Italy: grey squirrels released at Stupinigi near Turin in 1948 kept spreading, and the EU has since banned importing, breeding or releasing the species anywhere in the Union.

Gray squirrels pretending to bury food when they know they are being watched is taken as evidence of what?

Theory of mind: the fake burials imply a squirrel models what a watcher knows; they also use smell to raid rivals' caches and landmarks to recall their own.

In 2019, researchers noticed by chance that flying squirrels do what under ultraviolet light?

Glow pink: after the chance sighting, biologists at Northland College in Wisconsin found that all three North American flying squirrels fluoresce, while non-flying squirrels do not.

Which animated film features Dug, a talking golden retriever who breaks off mid-sentence to shout 'Squirrel!'?

Up: Dug's collar turns his thoughts into speech, so every distraction comes out aloud; the gag stuck, and 'Squirrel!' became the title of the first episode of his own series, Dug Days.

At which site just outside Punxsutawney does Phil the groundhog deliver his forecast each February?

Gobbler's Knob: the first official trek there came in 1887, and the top-hatted Inner Circle still claims to translate Phil's verdict from 'Groundhogese'.

Which actor plays the weatherman stuck reliving February 2 in the 1993 film Groundhog Day?

Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a cynical TV weatherman; the 1992 shoot was soured by bitter cold and by a running feud between Murray and director Harold Ramis.

The nickname 'whistle-pig' for the groundhog comes from what behaviour?

Whistling to warn the colony of danger: an alarmed groundhog gives a shrill whistle before bolting for its burrow, and its other warnings include hisses, growls and chattering teeth.

The prairie dog genus name Cynomys translates from Greek as what?

Dog mouse: Cynomys joins the Greek kyon, 'dog', and mys, 'mouse', though the animal is neither one: it is a stocky, burrowing member of the squirrel family.

What is the 'jump-yip' of the black-tailed prairie dog?

A territorial call that spreads: one prairie dog rears up, flings its forepaws skyward and yips, neighbours copy it in a wave, and the starter appears to use that wave to gauge how watchful the colony is.

Prairie dog alarm calls even change with which detail of a human intruder?

Shirt colour: Con Slobodchikoff sent the same volunteers through a colony in shirts of different colours, and the recorded alarm calls sorted into groups by colour.

Grey squirrels carry which kind of virus that rarely harms them but often kills Britain's red squirrels?

A pox virus: squirrelpox leaves grey carriers unharmed but gives reds ulcers and scabs around the eyes, mouth and feet, and an outbreak can wipe out a local red population.

Which island is the largest remaining haven for red squirrels in England?

The Isle of Wight has no grey squirrels to compete with, so its reds still flourish, and islanders are asked to report any grey that turns up.

In Norse myth, the squirrel Ratatoskr carries messages between an eagle and which creature?

The dragon Níðhöggr, who gnaws at Yggdrasil's roots: Ratatoskr, whose name is usually read as 'drill-tooth', runs up and down the tree relaying slanderous gossip between him and the unnamed eagle at its top.

Every chipmunk species lives in North America except one, found mainly in Asia; which is it?

The Siberian chipmunk is the only chipmunk found outside North America; brought to Europe as a pet in the 1960s, it has since founded wild colonies there from escaped animals.

In which holiday comedy does a squirrel burst out of the Christmas tree and wreck the house?

Christmas Vacation: the squirrel tears through the house, and when the frightened relatives start to leave, Clark Griswold snaps that nobody is walking out on his family Christmas.

Which baseball team adopted the 'Rally Squirrel' during the 2011 playoffs?

St. Louis Cardinals: the squirrel crossed the plate at Busch Stadium just as a Phillies pitch was thrown, and the Cardinals went on to win that year's World Series.

Which South African city received eastern gray squirrels around 1900, reputedly via Cecil Rhodes?

Cape Town: Cecil Rhodes is credited with importing them, and they have stayed in the far south-west because they live on the acorns and pine seeds of planted trees and cannot feed in the native fynbos.

Flying squirrels steer in mid-air using a cartilage projection from which body part?

The wrist: a rod of cartilage jutting from each wrist props up the front edge of the gliding skin and helps steer; Africa's look-alike anomalures evolved the same kind of strut from the elbow instead.

The Old World flying squirrel genus Pteromys takes its name from the Greek for what?

Winged mouse: Pteromys joins the Greek pteron, 'wing', and mys, 'mouse', yet its two species have no wings and are not mice: they are squirrels that glide on a furred flap of skin.

What is the scientific name of the Eurasian red squirrel?

Sciurus vulgaris, named by Linnaeus in 1758, means 'common squirrel', yet in Britain the species has vanished from much of its former range; the American red squirrel belongs to another genus.

The Indian giant squirrel, or shekaru, is the state animal of which western Indian state?

Maharashtra adopted the Indian giant squirrel, the shekaru, as its state animal; the squirrel weighs around 2 kg, can leap 6 metres between trees and often freezes flat against a trunk rather than fleeing.

By tradition, what does it mean if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow on February 2?

Six more weeks of winter, by Groundhog Day lore; checks of Phil's record against the weather put him right half the time at best, no better than a coin toss.

Groundhog Day grew from a German Candlemas tradition usually built around which animal?

The badger: German speakers knew Candlemas as 'Badger Day' and watched the animal as a weather prophet; in Pennsylvania their descendants handed the job to the native groundhog.

The 1993 film Groundhog Day was shot not in Punxsutawney but in which Illinois town?

Woodstock stood in for Punxsutawney during the 1992 shoot, and the town has held its own Groundhog Day festival ever since, complete with a forecasting groundhog called Woodstock Willie.

The groundhog's species name, monax, comes from an Algonquian word meaning what?

Digger: monax comes from an Algonquian name for the animal meaning 'the digger'; 'woodchuck' is probably another Algonquian word reshaped by English ears, and has nothing to do with wood.

How low does a hibernating Arctic ground squirrel's core body temperature fall?

To below freezing: its core dips to about −2.9 °C, colder than any other hibernating mammal, yet the blood stays liquid, apparently because the squirrel clears out the particles ice crystals form around.

In hibernation, a thirteen-lined ground squirrel slows its breathing to roughly what rate?

One breath every five minutes, down from 100 to 200 a minute when awake: the squirrel rolls into a stiff ball in October and can last more than six months without food or water.

North Dakota's nickname, the Flickertail State, honours which animal?

Richardson's ground squirrel, whose tail trembles constantly, gave North Dakota the Flickertail nickname; around Minot Air Force Base it goes by 'dakrat', short for Dakota rat.

Cape ground squirrels in southern Africa share their burrow clusters with which animal?

Meerkats: the squirrels dig the burrows and the meerkats move in, and in return the squirrels get early warning from the meerkats' alarm calls; yellow mongooses lodge there too.

Why do California ground squirrel mothers chew shed rattlesnake skin and lick their pups?

To mask their scent from snakes: pups have no resistance to venom in their first month, so the mother smears them with the snake's own smell; adults in some populations are partly resistant.

California ground squirrels swish their tails at rattlesnakes to play on which snake sense?

Infrared detection: the squirrel heats up its tail before waving it, because rattlesnakes hunt largely by heat-sensing pit organs and a hot tail makes it seem too big and quick to be worth a strike.

Meriwether Lewis described the black-tailed prairie dog under what name?

Barking squirrel: Lewis's journals call the black-tailed prairie dog the 'barking squirrel' for its yelping alarm call; the Lakota name for the animal is pispíza.

Which endangered predator depends heavily on prairie dogs for its diet?

The black-footed ferret gets around 90% of its diet from prairie dogs and lives in their burrows; burrowing owls and mountain plovers use the colonies too, which is why the rodent is treated as a keystone species.

The Siberian flying squirrel, Europe's only one, lives in which two EU countries?

Estonia and Finland: the Siberian flying squirrel needs old forest full of hollow trees to nest in, and it has already vanished from Latvia, where it was last seen in 2001.

Flying squirrels are common prey for which threatened owl of the Pacific Northwest?

Spotted owl: flying squirrels are a staple of its diet, and because it needs old-growth forest it became the emblem of the Northwest's long fights over logging.

Contact with southern flying squirrels has been linked to which disease, better known from lice-ridden wartime armies?

Typhus: the CDC logged 39 US cases of 'sylvatic typhus' between 1976 and 2001 in people who had no contact with body lice; the squirrels' own fleas and lice are the suspected carriers.

Humboldt's flying squirrel of the Pacific coast was mistaken until 2017 for which other flying squirrel?

Northern: genetic tests in 2017 split the flying squirrels of the Pacific coast, from British Columbia to California, from the northern species, reviving a name first coined for them in 1839.

Tommy Tucker, a pet squirrel celebrated in 1940s America, was famous for what?

Wearing tailor-made dresses: his owner, a Mrs Bullis, kept 30 specially made costumes for him, among them a silk pleated dress for company and a Red Cross uniform for visiting the hospital.

The white-tailed Kaibab squirrel is confined to the ponderosa forest above which canyon?

The Grand Canyon: the Kaibab squirrel is confined to the North Rim's Kaibab Plateau, a 20-by-40-mile patch of ponderosa pine, 200,000 acres of which became a National Natural Landmark in 1965.

Which New York City mayor was bitten by the groundhog Staten Island Chuck?

Michael Bloomberg was bitten on the hand in 2009; five years later his successor, Bill de Blasio, let the zoo's groundhog squirm out of his grip and fall to the ground.

Mukmuk, the 2010 Winter Olympics mascots' sidekick, was modelled on which marmot?

Vancouver Island marmot: the chocolate-brown animal, found only on that island, inspired Mukmuk, who was never an official mascot yet proved very popular with the public.

The ski resort of Whistler, British Columbia, was renamed after which animal?

The hoary marmot is nicknamed 'the whistler' for its piercing call; the peak had been London Mountain, a name dropped for its fog-and-rain image when the ski resort needed selling.

Which composer set Goethe's 'Marmotte', the song of a wandering Savoyard boy and his marmot?

Beethoven set Goethe's 'Marmotte' as Op. 52 No. 7, a song of a wandering Savoyard boy and his marmot; such showmen carried trained alpine marmots in boxes and had them dance to the hurdy-gurdy.

Alpine marmots have claws on most digits, but what do they have on their thumbs?

Nails: an alpine marmot's thumbs carry flat nails rather than claws; they are formidable diggers all the same, able to work soil that defeats a pickaxe, and they seal their burrow for winter with earth and their own droppings.

Yellow-bellied marmots hitch rides out of the Sierra Nevada in engine bays, drawn by what?

Radiator fluid: sweet-tasting antifreeze draws marmots into engine bays, where they chew hoses and occasionally ride out of the mountains, which is how a Sierra animal turned up in the San Francisco Bay Area.

'Chipmunk' probably comes from an Ojibwe word that literally means what?

One who descends trees headlong: the word apparently first named the red squirrel, for the way it comes down a trunk headfirst, and English speakers bent it from 'chitmunk' into chipmunk.

What was Rocky the Flying Squirrel's most frequent catchphrase?

'Hokey smoke!' was Rocky's stock exclamation in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show; he learned to fly at the Cedar Yorpantz Flying School, a pun on 'seat of your pants'.

SpongeBob's squirrel friend Sandy Cheeks hails from which US state?

Texas: Sandy Cheeks is a Texan squirrel who lives under the sea in an air-filled dome and wears a diving suit outside it, the reverse of every other resident of Bikini Bottom.

Which sidekick assisted Hanna-Barbera's spy parody Secret Squirrel, also known as Agent 000?

Morocco Mole, in fez and spectacles, drove Secret Squirrel around in a send-up of James Bond; Paul Frees voiced him as an impression of the actor Peter Lorre.

In Beatrix Potter's tale, Squirrel Nutkin loses part of what to the owl Old Brown?

His tail: Old Brown finally seizes Nutkin, who escapes only by leaving most of his tail behind after six days of taunting the owl with riddles; ever after, a riddle makes him throw sticks and shout.

The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903) was the follow-up to which Beatrix Potter hit?

Peter Rabbit: after that first hit Potter built Squirrel Nutkin from a story-and-picture letter she had sent to Norah Moore, her former governess's daughter, while on holiday in the Lake District.

Squirrel Girl's 1991 comics debut ended with the teenage hero defeating which major Marvel villain?

Doctor Doom: in a story drawn by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko she set a swarm of squirrels on him and forced him to flee, which started the running joke that she is unbeatable.

Tufty Fluffytail, the UK's red squirrel puppet of the 1950s-70s, taught children what?

Road safety: RoSPA's Tufty Club used the squirrel to teach kerb drill and crossing rules, with nearly 25,000 branches and two million members by the early 1970s and Bernard Cribbins narrating the films.

Conker the Squirrel made his playable debut in which 1997 Nintendo 64 title?

Diddy Kong Racing, Rare's 1997 kart game, gave Conker his first playable role as a family-friendly racer; four years later Rare recast him as the foul-mouthed star of Conker's Bad Fur Day.

Disney's chipmunks Chip 'n' Dale made their 1943 debut squabbling with which Disney dog?

Pluto: in the wartime short Private Pluto the pair fight him for the right to store nuts in an army cannon, and their names are a pun on the furniture maker Thomas Chippendale.

In 1987 a squirrel knocked which stock exchange's trading computer offline for over an hour?

Nasdaq: in December 1987 a squirrel chewed through a power line in Trumbull, Connecticut, halting Nasdaq trading for 82 minutes, and another squirrel did it again in 1994.

Ground squirrels at Montana's Malmstrom Air Force Base have interfered with what?

Missile silos: the squirrels tunnel under the security fences and trip the intruder sensors, sending guards out on false alarms, and their burrows undermine the sites as well.

Brunswick stew, originally a squirrel dish, is claimed by Georgia and which other state?

Virginia: Brunswick County credits Jimmy Matthews, a hunting-camp cook, with first stewing squirrels there in 1828, while Brunswick, Georgia, displays the iron pot it says held the first batch in 1898.

Britain's 2006 'Save Our Squirrels' campaign urged the public to 'Save a red' and do what?

Eat a grey: the campaign tried to put grey squirrel meat back on British menus, with celebrity chefs promoting it and the Forestry Commission supplying the meat.

Which native predator's comeback in Ireland is credited with pushing back invasive grey squirrels?

The pine marten: where recovering martens meet grey squirrels the greys quickly retreat and reds return, since greys spend more time on the ground and so cross the marten's path more often.

The medieval red squirrel fur trade has been proposed as a route for which disease?

Leprosy: a pre-Norman skull dug up at Hoxne in Suffolk carried a strain of the leprosy bacterium closely matching the one found in today's red squirrels on Brownsea Island.

Black fur in gray squirrels comes from a missing stretch of which gene, better known for red hair in humans?

MC1R: a 24-base-pair deletion in the melanocortin-1 receptor gene produces the black morph, probably introduced from black fox squirrels by interbreeding; one copy gives a brown-black coat, two copies jet black.

Washington, D.C.'s black squirrels descend from 18 animals from which Canadian province?

Ontario: 18 black squirrels from Rondeau Provincial Park were released at the National Zoo in 1902 and 1906, and by 2005 their descendants made up 5 to 25 percent of the gray squirrels across the area.

Why do gray squirrels often bite out the embryo of an acorn before burying it?

To stop it sprouting: a germinating acorn burns through the stored nutrients the squirrel is saving for winter, so the embryo is nipped out before the nut goes into the ground.

US physicians have warned against eating squirrel brains over the risk of which illness?

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: in 1997 Kentucky doctors reported a cluster of CJD cases among people who had eaten squirrel brains, a regional delicacy, and warned against the dish in The Lancet.

What is the name of Punxsutawney Phil's mate?

Phyllis: in March 2024 the Inner Circle announced that she and Phil had produced two babies, a surprise to club members who had assumed groundhogs do not breed in captivity.

What is the name for a squirrel lying belly-down on a cool surface in hot weather?

Splooting: a hot squirrel presses its belly flat against a cool surface to dump body heat, a pose shared by dogs and bears.

Which species is the largest tree squirrel native to North America?

Fox squirrel: it can top a kilogram, and although its scientific name means 'black squirrel', the species comes in three regional colour forms and many are not black at all.