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Do squirrels remember where they bury nuts?

If you have squirrels that live around your property, then you have probably watched them spend their spring, summer, and early fall months scurrying around your yard or the neighborhood gathering up as many nuts and berries as they can to prepare for winter. It is the annual ritual that these rodents go through each year, where they gather up food that can be all year long, and store them in specific locations all around the area to prepare themselves for winter.



You may not be aware of this, but a squirrel will actually have several different spots where it is buried food. This is to ensure that if something happens to their primary food supply, usually located in the place where they are going to spend the winter, then they have an alternate location to go to retrieve food. A squirrel is smart enough to consider that their location where they intend to live a be compromised in some way, and so it pays to have alternate locations. To not do so could easily lead to death.

The question then becomes due squirrels really remember where they buried their nuts? After all, these are not animals with an incredibly large brain and they don’t have a computerized system or a series of maps that displays where their food is located, so how do they rediscover where they buried their food?

First of all, they say that the easiest way to learn something is through repetition. From the squirrel standpoint that is exactly what they do.

These animals spend seven or eight months bearing food at various locations around your property or the neighborhood in which you live in. They have likely returned to those spots at least a dozen times if not dozens of times. It has become ingrained into their brains exactly where they went to very their food, and so relocating it is not difficult for them to do it all. They have been there many times and so they know how to return.

Now, you may question that if there is a large amount of snow that has fallen are they still able to find every one of their locations. Snow changes the terrain and makes things significantly different looking than when the squirrel was actually bearing its food. How is it located in this case?

The answer to that question is that sometimes it doesn’t. If the conditions around the area have drastically changed so that things don’t look enough like they did before, then the squirrel may have challenges in finding its food. This is especially true if one of its burial spots is being used as a location for snow to be piled up. They not only can’t locate it but, even if they did, they would be unable to reach it because of the massive pile of snow.

However, the vast majority of the time they are still able to locate where they buried their food. This keeps them well fed during the long winter months. Read more: Squirrel Control, How to Get Rid of Squirrels, how to get squirrels out of your attic, Squirrel Feces, How to Keep Squirrels Away from House, How to Kill Squirrels.


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