Squirrel came: as red rodents are taking over the city
MOSCOW, 2 Jun — RIA Novosti, Alfia Enikeeva. Squirrels have sharp mind and good memory. From personal experience, they are able to quickly find the hidden nuts. Skillfully predict human behavior and adapt quickly to life in the big cities. As proteins are gaining cities and why it’s better there than in the woods — in the material RIA Novosti.
Watching for two years, from June 2012 to April 2014, as proteins make caches of food, scientists from the University of California at Berkeley came to the conclusion that these animals are able to group the nuts on grades and remember what and where. Researchers have a protein equipped with GPS transmitters and were fed with four varieties of nuts. The animals were spread out different types of nuts in different caches and always return to where they were given a free meal.
So good to navigate and find their caches proteins allows developed spatial memory. Long-term memory, which, incidentally, is not at all animals, they are also fine. As found zoopsychologists from Exeter University, the proteins do remember a good past experience and can be successfully reproduced in similar circumstances.
Scientists have taught five rodents to solve puzzles to get the hazelnut, they had to press the lever of a special device. Training a lot of time not taken, and if the first proteins were spent on the job for eight seconds, then — just two seconds.
A Guinea was left alone for 22 months and again suggested to click on the lever to get a nut. Trained squirrels after hesitating extracted meal in three seconds. If the device changing shape (from a square turned into a triangle), the animals would quickly coped with the task.
Bleed birds to steal food from the man
In other words, proteins are not only capable of rather quickly figure out how to get to the food (especially if it is a feast for birds are specially protected in the trough), but remember that you need to do in such situations. According to British scientists, the rodents are stealing up to half of the food in the bird feeders, forcing birds to change feeding behavior.
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Researchers from the Institute of systematics and ecology of animals SB RAS, watching the squirrel population in residential and College areas of Novosibirsk Akademgorodok for forty years, note that the number of rodents living there was significantly increased in the presence of winter feeding birds. When food and feeders became less, and the squirrel population declined sharply — sometimes twenty times.
“Squirrels living in the big cities, the behavior is completely different than the inmate of the forests. They interact with humans and can adjust its behavior accordingly. But they are physiologically different from the forest relatives. They have more food — eating more, however in the diet of virtually no nuts. Roughly speaking, in the forest the squirrel can’t get white bread with butter, and in the city and people treat you, and the garbage you can find,” explains Viktor Panov, candidate of biological Sciences, a zoologist from Novosibirsk specialized on small rodents and insectivorous mammals.
The scientist notes that several decades ago, when refrigerators were not in all families and in winter, many stored the food outside the window, squirrels were often devastated these impromptu freezer.Urban squirrels-naughtyNews
So squirrels have adapted to life in the big cities that have become much more successful forest relatives, say the researchers from the University of John cartina. Rodents are able to correctly interpret human behavior in his pose and facial expression.
Proteins try to avoid people with Pets and young children, but absolutely not afraid of ordinary passers-by. According to zoologists, they understand when and where you can obtain food without any risk. So it seems that urban squirrels by hand.