Scientists Say They Are Stunned by Vole-Hunting, Predatory Squirrels

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Squirrels are not critters to be taken lightly.

While we tend to think of our bushy-tailed neighbors as cute but otherwise inconsequential little animals, there is a lot more to them. They are living fossils; the family Sciuridae has been around since the Miocene and hasn’t changed much in all this time. They are quick and alert, and occupy a wide variety of habitats. They are also adaptable when it comes to foraging. Folks think of squirrels subsisting mostly on seeds and nuts, but they won’t turn down other food sources.

So it’s curious that some researchers were surprised to find that some California ground squirrels were preying on voles.

Have the squirrels gone nuts?

Killer squirrels might seem like sci-fi, but squirrels in California have been observed hunting and eating voles for the first time, leading scientists to believe that they have a wider diet than once thought. This seemingly species-defying behavior was described in a study published in the Journal Of Ethology.

“We had never seen this behavior before,” exclaimed head author Jennifer E. Smith, an associate professor of biology at UW-Eau Claire, which conducted the study in collaboration with UC Davis.

If they had asked me, I could have told them. When I was a kid back in northeast Iowa I hunted squirrels every fall and observed their behavior year-round – the better to get within .22 rifle range when the season opened. I’ve seen squirrels rob nests, as noted above. I’ve seen them feast on frogs and insects; I’ve even seen them snack around the offal left behind where a deer has been field-dressed.

Squirrels are nuts about extra protein and don’t much worry about humans crittercizing them about hunting down and eating their fellow rodents. In fact, tree squirrels are nutorious for this kind of behavior. And, let’s face it, these are voles – short-tailed mice – and it’s unlikely that predation by squirrels will make a nuticeable dent in their numbers.

It seems that, in this study, as the NY Post story linked above reported, ground squirrels of all ages and sizes were hunting voles:

The striking observations occurred between June and July 2024 during the Long-term Behavioral Ecology of California Ground Squirrels Project at Briones Regional Park in Martinez California.

Of the 74 interactions between ground squirrels and voles observed during that time, 42% involved the nut-crunchers hunting the latter.

This didn’t seem to be an outlier either. Videos and photos showed ground squirrels of all ages and genders hunting, eating and competing over voles during the period.

Being adaptable, and being able to exploit a wide range of food sources, is a good survival strategy. Meat, despite the claims of vegan activists, is high-quality food; proteins and fats in an easily digested form. Meat allowed our ancestors to achieve apex predator status, after all, as well as allowing us to migrate around the globe.

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Most animals, in fact, will exploit a surprising variety of food sources – from wolves eating berries to deer eating snakes–yes, deer will kill and eat snakes.

It’s amazing what you can find on the internut.

You can see the entire Journal of Ethology paper on the carnivorous squirrels here.