By Ryan DiSanto, Jeffrey Gonzalez and James Cellum
Scaredy Urban Squirrels learning to tolerate humans. Global upheaval imminent! All hail our new fluffy overlords!
The fear of humans is a learned behavior, some animals just don’t learn. Few animals are more synonymous with urban ecosystems as squirrels. Any New Yorker will tell you that in some places a squirrel will crawl right up to you and eat the food out of your hand. But what about good old fashion country squirrels? Have they kept their fear of humans? A group of young enterprising researchers from SUNY Purchase’s Environmental Science Program with nothing better to do decided to find out!
After establishing a complex system in which they ran at squirrels and measured how far they had to run it before it ran away, they wanted to test their hypothesis. So they ran at squirrels they found in the woods and in central campus to see which ones are more afraid. They scared 20 squirrels in total which is more than I can say I have! After putting the squirrels into an excel spreadsheet it became apparent that “rural squirrels” really are more afraid of humans than “urban” ones.
