4 ms·
Chipmunks and Squirrels.
by tomrod 1y ago
Chipmunks and Squirrels.
- kelnos 1y agoDo they hoard unnecessarily, or do they hoard what they need to get through winter months, without much surplus?
- SoftTalker 1y agoThey hoard instinctively. They can't count; they don't have a sense of "this is enough." They hoard until it gets too cold, then they hibernate/hunker down until it gets warm.
- formerly_proven 1y agoSquirrels don't really hoard in the sense trillionaires do ("gathering a great quantity for one's own private collection"), they take seeds and bury them all over the place, which is meaning #2 in the dictionary ("save in one's mind for a future need or use"). The squirrel and other animals eat them later, the 50+% nobody finds to eat can take root. That way, squirrels play an important role in seed dispersal for many species of tree. I suppose the trillionaire analogy would be they themselves investing money.
- MattPalmer1086 1y agoI remember reading recently that it had been disproved that squirrels can actually remember where they bury all their nuts and seeds. Maybe some, but quite a lot they cannot. They end up eating food buried by other squirrels as well as their own.
- fruitworks 1y agoyou're splitting hairs. Squirrels evolve to save more food for themselves, everything else is an accident
- formerly_proven 1y agoIn my view the effects on the ecosystem are way more important than whatever pressure creates a behavior. For both squirrels and trillionaires.
- fruitworks 11mo agowhat political and social pressures are squirrels under that trigger them to gather food for other animals?
- tomrod 11mo agoNo, you're ascribing will to a blind and undirected process. Squirrels that survive in recent years and decades bury more food than they ever eat, whether that specifically helped them against certain selection pressures or whether it vestigially remains as a non-impacting behavior.
- mcmoor 1y agoI've heard that a lot of trees are grown from forgotten squirrel seed stashes. So at the very least they do store more than they eat.
- MonkeyClub 1y agoAnd over the long term it compounds to more food for their descendants through the buy and forget investments (the trees that sprout out of the stashes).
- tomrod 11mo agoVery much the former.