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Squirrels and birds seem to have a selected desire to horde nuts in a similar way to people hoarding extra resources for lean times. Cache Spacing or having var

Squirrels and birds seem to have a selected desire to horde nuts in a similar way to people hoarding extra resources for lean times. Cache Spacing or having various hordes of food spaced around in hidden locations seems like a rough analogy for having various Swiss bank accounts and the like. Ravens in particular are clever and will deceive potential raiders by moving caches, and raiders will try and appear disinterested. As an aside cats are slightly odd for domestic animals as they're arguably semi-domesticated versus dogs or farm animals. African Wildcats look and act a lot like house cats in videos and are genetically similar, which I think is part of what makes them fun as pets. https://www.livescience.com/53571-suspicious-ravens-detect-thieves.html https://www.livescience.com/53571-suspicious-ravens-detect-t... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4260561/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4260561/

gerbilly 7y ago
Most squirrels are scatter hoarders: almost everyone's seen a squirrel bury a nut in a lawn. They bury their nuts all over their territory and remember the locations and retrieve them later. What you might not know, is that in old growth oak forests, most trees were accidentally planted by squirrels. The acorns that they forgot and didn't retrieve, sprouted and grew into oak trees. So the analogy of a squirrel as ruthless acquisitor is not quite apt, because their manner of caching their hoard actually helps to plant the next generation of trees. (Acorns do not sprout as well when the just fall to the ground.)