Not only are they cute, but they are smart too.
Squirrels have been shown to use different strategies and tactics in their quest for food, an experiment conducted by researchers at the University of Exeter proves.
The researchers found gray squirrels to be quick learners, and say that they are capable of adapting tactics in order to improve efficiency to reap rewards.
"This was only a small study but the results are quite remarkable," said University of Exeter's Pizza Ka Yee Chow from the Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour and the study's lead author.
In the experiment, the researchers devised a sort of hazelnut hunt maze for five squirrels to test their intelligence and mental flexibility. Before releasing them into the maze, the researchers trained the squirrels and made sure the animals were proficient enough in using their paws and teeth to peel off a layer of paper that, in the maze, would cover the rewards they needed to look for.
The researchers laid out a box that had 12 sunken wells in it, four of which were hollow. Hazelnuts were hidden in two of the four hollow wells.
The rewards, or the hazelnuts, were strategically placed in such a way that the squirrels would have to check each well in clockwise or counterclockwise sequences. The hazelnuts were placed in wells diagonally across each other. For the researchers, an integrative approach would make the squirrels ignore the empty wells, and go straight for the wells containing the hazelnuts.
"The squirrels learned to pick the diagonally opposite well if the first one they picked contained a nut," confirmed Chow. In the repeated activity, the squirrels committed fewer errors, progressively learning and changing tactics to more quickly find the rewards.
This simple experiment made the researchers more interested in further investigating how animals, in general, learn about environmental changes and adapt to these changes. This could lead them to finding out more about invasive species. In a flexible environment, certain species like the squirrels may become successful invaders. The study aims to further learn about this quality of the species.
Findings of the experiment involving the five smart rewards-reaping squirrels Arnold, Leonard, Sarah, Simon and Suzy are published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition.
