California ground squirrels and rock squirrels chew on discarded rattlesnake skin, then smear it on their fur. The result is that they smell like rattlesnake instead of squirrels, which may protect them from snake attack. The journal Animal Behavior published a new study from a team led by Barbara Clucas.
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Clucas, a graduate student in animal behavior at the University of California, Davis, said she first noted this behavior in 2002.
She saw rock squirrels at Caballo Lake State Park in New Mexico licking themselves to apply chewed snake skin to their flanks, tails, and rear ends, which gave them the pungent, musky scent of a rattlesnake.
In 2003 she saw California ground squirrels at Lake Solano County Park in California doing the same thing.
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Look on the bright side, the smarter critters (like Magpies and Squirrels) have learned that the death zone only extends about 400 yards in all directions around my pond, and after that, they're pretty safe (except when I walk the dogs out in the woods and take a pistol or a shotgun just to keep them on their toes...)
These squirrels are very smart to figure that trick out.
Believe me, squirrels have nothing on us.
Actually I saw a pigeon punch a squirrel out yesterday because it was "in it's space"....so I don't know where that puts them in the whole "city co-inhabitation" thing.
then again, now that I think about how our parks are just open terrain for the selfish lil critters, and how we all have seen them licking their cute lil paws to brush and clean their cute lil head, we share our lunches and take snapshots of the cutsy moment when grandma has her dentures stolen and the dumb lil squirrel munches through winter's nuts.I probably could go on, but this has gotten stupid.
Stealing money from Jimmy Durante