Social Aspects

Squirrels generally live by themselves, however during severe cold spells they will share a home with a friend to conserve body heat.

            The grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) spends most of its life in trees.  It comes to the ground to feed or cache food with great mobility and can reach speeds of up to 25 km/h.  In climbing or descending a tree trunk it moves head-first and when danger threatens it climbs obscurely around the tree trunk, keeping out of sight from the predator at all times.  Another safety strategy is to remain motionless on the tree trunk, which makes it difficult to notice.  Its alarm call is a series of rapid clicking sounds – kuk, kuk, kuk – which can reach squirrels in the surrounding area of danger.  Sometimes squirrels join together to taunt a predator with a chorus of scolding accompanied by agitated twitches of the tail.

            This species is mostly active during the day although sometimes feeds by the light of a full moon.  In the summer, activity is greatest early in the morning and in mid-afternoon.  Grey squirrels do not hibernate and so in the winter, they are most active in midday, perhaps to take advantage of the warmest temperatures.

The grey squirrel is a tolerant species and exhibits little aggressive behaviour.  Squirrels have a social hierarchy determined by physical stature.  When feeding, you can often see this occur as two squirrels size each other up to determine who gets the nut. The dominance hierarchy in both females and males is maintained by a bluffing show of force or chasing away.  In an aggressive encounter between two squirrels, tooth chattering is often heard. However, this rarely leads to actual fighting.  More dominant squirrels will also frequently chase off other squirrels when eating.  One exception is pregnant and lactating females.  They nest alone and are especially aggressive and avoided by others.

Each squirrel usually has a home range where it does most of its foraging for food, makes its nest and rears its young.  Males have larger home ranges than females.  Squirrels are not very territorial as many home ranges overlap.  It is common to see squirrels feeding close to each other without any aggressive activity.

Both Belding’s and Richardson’s squirrels are ground squirrels which differ from the tree-dwelling grey squirrel, however all are from the subfamily sciurinae and therefore comparable.

Belding’s ground squirrels (Spermophilus beldingi), are shown to influence their young’s litter-mate preferences.  Social relationships of adult female Belding’s ground squirrels typically differ as a function of genetic relatedness.  For example, adult female littermates cooperate more frequently with each other in the context of territorial defense than do unrelated adult females.  This may seem obvious but kin favouritism is common but not universal in ground squirrels.

Richardson’s ground squirrels (Spermoplilus ricardsonii), interactions are mainly with kin and they are more amicable and less antagonistic than interactions between unfamiliar non-kin.  Juvenile siblings play together and may even sleep communally for a time, but these amicable interactions decline, as the juveniles get older.  However juvenile females remain physically close to and amicable with sisters and mother throughout their lives.  Male ground squirrels form no social associations, either with other males or with females, and take no part in raising offspring.

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