The feel good thread

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Shady Bill

Your european squirrels do seem much prettier. Mine have very bushy tails and thick coats, but they are very rat like in looks. They also seem to be very husky and muscular, but that might be the nuts... I will have to take some pictures. They are so tame from the feeding that I can come within feet of them even when walking my cat on her leash.

You have several different tree squirrel species in Americ, we have just one. The one you describe, grey, big, strong, is probably the American grey squirrel, sciurus virginensis. They are bigger, more robust, they form social groups and thus are probably more intelligent and more courageous, they live longer, and they can eat some more different stuff without getting problems that would put our red ones (sciurus vulgaris) in serious danger (many peanuts, or too many acorns). Peanuts with shells practically always have microfunghi on the shell whcih can put our squirrels in danger, the poor little things are extremely sensitve, they also cannot digest them well , since peanuts are not nuts, but legumes. Ameicna squirrel shave th eneded encymes, European squirrels have them not. If they eat only acorn, they starve to death.

The American red squirrel and the European red squirrel are not the same, they are quite different in fact, the US boys are way more aggressive, for exmaple, and can be very noisy. The Japanese red squirrel (sciurus lis) however is very close, genetically, to the European one.

Your grey squirrels even pick fights with rattlesnakes - and win! They also have partial immunity to the poison.

We have two populations of US greys in Europe, in britain, and northern Italy and now Switzerland, Austria. The british population carries a virus to which the grey ones are immune but that is absolutely lethal for European squirrels, also, the grey ones are stronger and more aggressive and push back red populations where they meet. There is no chance of coexistence, where the species meet, the red ones go MIA. The Italian population is apparently free of the virus, but it spreads, the alps are no more a natural containment barrier. I fear in the long run, over the next decades, this and the climate drama will let the red squirrel go extinct in most of Europe. Yes, they are cuter, very much so. But also weaker, smaller, fleeing from meeting other squirrels, and more vulnerable. Too many of them die early. Only in forests with dense vegetations of firs and spruces they can outlast the grey ones, which prefer decidious and mixed forests. Also, the presence of tree martens kill red squirrels, but kill even more grey squirrels since they do not know our tree martrens and thus are not evolutionary adapted. Where grey and red squirrels and martens come together its good for the red and not good for the greys.

Life expectancy varies widely between squirele species. We have only one tree squirrel, and one ground squirrel species: alpine marmots.