So I'm watching this nature show about squirrels. And I'm amazed at how these biologists actually drill tiny holes in hundreds of nuts to see what the squirrels do with them (bury them, forget them, etc). I mean....do I have to have a degree to do that? Can I make a decent living? Where do I sign up?
[pbs.org]
I watched this as well. Very interesting indeed! I learned that squirrel brains enlarge during the autumn months (nut storage memory) and then decreases in size during the summer months (don’t have to find nuts).
The little buggers are extremely intelligent. There was a two show series on them I watched one time where they set up obstacle course for them to get through to food. Each time they would solve a part of the course, the next time through, they would remember how they did it and go right to the next one. I have a "squirrel proof" feeder out front and one day there was a squirrel eating out of it. I made a bunch of noise and he dropped of, but minutes later he was up again. So the next time I chased him down I waited to see how he did it. I would not have believed it if I hadn't been watching.
I think she was a professor or in charge of a department. It didn't look very complicated what she was doing, just like geocaching using nuts buried by squirrels. The narrator said she used non-toxic paint on the nuts but what did she use to seal the holes for the micro-chips?
Nontoxic glue.
@AstralSmoke Didn't think of Elmer's. lol
Best use of elastic EVER!
Why?
I read that they forget where they put most of them.
The study said they had a 90% recovery rate for the buried nuts, wonder which author is right?