Squirrels do not hibernate during the Winter, so they have to keep a buried cache of nuts dispersed around the area, which they dig up later to eat. And although the squirrels do find the majority of the nuts (tests have found that grey squirrels find at least 90% of the cache on average), they still do forget where some the nuts are, which grow to become trees. With the amount of squirrels in the world, the small amount of nuts each squirrel forgets about can really add up. In addition, squirrels are crucial to the survival of nut-bearing trees such as walnut, acorn, and hickory trees. This is because those nuts are so heavy that they don't really blow with the wind, and therefore without something to carry them away and plant them in the soil, they would just land on the forest floor and degrade rather than grow into trees. Hetzler, Paul. “Forgetful Squirrels, Agents of Reforestation.” NCPR, North County Public Radio, 12 Nov. 2017, blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org/allin/2017/11/12/forgetful-squirrels-agents-of-reforestation/.
2 Comments
Wade
8/15/2020 04:25:26 pm
Cool!
Reply
Lisa Kitchen
8/15/2020 06:51:14 pm
Love it!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |