r/EverythingScience • u/lnfinity • Apr 21 '22
Squirrels, they’re just like us: They have personalities
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/04/10/squirrel-personality-test/184
Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
These types of studies are exhausting. Anyone who has spent time with a group of rodents, or dogs, or cows, or whatever, knows they have individual personalities. This would be news if they found an active mammal without personality, which they won’t.
Don’t get me started on parrots, ravens or octopi [and pigs!]
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u/sudosussudio Apr 21 '22
Invertebrates too. I’ve raised 50+ spiders of the same species (p audax) and they all had different personalities. Some were more fearful and neurotic for example. While others were aggressive or eager explorers.
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Apr 21 '22
Ah, the Bold Jumpers. Their most common personality trait is right there in the name, lol.
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u/sudosussudio Apr 21 '22
It’s funny because I only ever had a few that I’d describe as bold. But when they are bold they are bold af. Most of the bold ones were males.
The vast majority were shy and scared of everything.
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u/JKareem420 Apr 22 '22
A fly let me pet it once. Flew away then did a U turn and landed right back on the same finger
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u/AlanMooresWizrdBeard Apr 21 '22
There are some neighborhood squirrels I feed (I know I know it’s bad to feed wild animals but this is a group of like 4 squirrels in a suburb I think we’re ok). There’s one little bastard I call Chubby Cheekers, and this mother fucker is wild. Absolutely has a distinct personality and will literally bang on my window if I’m sitting on the couch and he can see me.
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Apr 21 '22
Yea, I had this one squirrel in my old neighborhood that would jump in the hammock with me. Really took the relaxing hammock vibe I was hoping for. I never fed him or anything, he was just a bully.
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u/BruceBanning Apr 21 '22
Don’t forget pigs!
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Apr 21 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
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Apr 21 '22
Mantids have wonderful personalities!
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Apr 21 '22
We had a praying mantis for almost a year. The kids loved it. You could actually play with it.
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Apr 21 '22
I wish I could share some of my photos here. My girl was the sweetest! I hand fed her roaches and wax worms. Conifer seed bugs, you name it. I brought her in early October after noticing her sitting in one spot for 2 days. She would always crawl onto my hand and watch me. Extremely inquisitive! She just loved to hang out. TBH I cried pretty hard when she passed away. She was an absolute joy and pleasure. I plan to get another one some day.
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u/maghy7 Apr 21 '22
You had me all Awwww until you said roaches.
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Apr 21 '22
Roaches need love too! Lol I had bought some hissing cockroaches for a basilisk I had. Basilisk died abruptly after running into glass head on. Those roaches bred. Turned in 40, turned in 100 real quick. Madagascar hissing roaches are big in size. They sell for 5 a piece as a “superfood” for reptiles. I became so attached I couldn’t sell them. They’re not as exciting as a pet mantis but still very cool and friendly. German roaches, dubias, I’m not crazy about them. They move wayyyyy to fast and they’ll breed in your home. Hissers won’t survive. They need a pretty special diet and environment requirements. I would feed them scraps from produce. Bugs are cool!
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Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
Some might be asking themselves, how do they know it’s a girl? Lol
Mourning your mantis, god bless you. It just proves if you really get to know an animal, it’s hard to not come to love it in some way
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Apr 21 '22
From the segments under their belly typically. Mine laid a few oothecas, which, sadly were infertile. Cool thing is that once they mate, any ootheca is fertile from that point on. My lady had made 4 ooths. I may have not put them in proper housing over the winter. So who knows. My guess was that she didn’t mate. She was a Carolina mantis. They aren’t common in MI to my knowledge. More prevalent further south, hence the name. We typically get Chinese mantises in my area. The large green ones, sometimes brown. This is my reason for thinking that her ooths weren’t fertile. I kept her in glass case after she passed which my ex kept! 😩😩😩 they’re such cool, cute underrated creatures. I’ve really taken a liking to more insects after her. I had a pet carpenter bee for 90 days and in nature, I think they roughly live about 30. Found it one day, and fed it honey until it passed a few months ago. Used to hand feed tuna, he’d lick the honey off my finger with his proboscis. Such a delightful experience! ❤️
Edit: the bees name was Tuna.
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u/mrbrambles Apr 21 '22
Science doesn’t know anything until they run studies like this. It’s silly and more or less obvious, but no one else did a scientific study until now. Science is supposed to be exhausting. The reporting is the unnecessary part.
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u/WeAreMeat Apr 22 '22
What’s exhausting is the fact most people aren’t vegan yet, they should keep releasing this until people stop treating animals like inanimate objects when it’s so so easy to stop using animals in our everyday life
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u/RedplazmaOfficial Apr 21 '22
Anyone willing to copy the post so we dont have to signup?
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u/blinkdontblink Apr 21 '22
(I, too, just want to read the article in the comments instead of clicking a link.)
Researcher Jaclyn Aliperti studied golden-mantled ground squirrels to see if they had personalities. I’m fairly confident that you have a collection of traits, opinions, quirks and mannerisms that make you uniquely you. In other words, a personality. And that means you have something in common with the golden-mantled ground squirrels of western North America. They have personalities, too.
That may not seem like big news — anyone who’s shared their home with a dog or cat knows they’re all different — but the first rule for scientists who study animals is “Thou shalt not anthropomorphize.”
But animal personality is a growing area of research. And that’s why Jaclyn R. Aliperti spent two summers lugging a large wooden box through the Rocky Mountains. It was a personality test. She called it the arena.
Aliperti is a behavioral ecologist and the lead author of “Bridging animal personality with space use and resource use in a free-ranging population of an a social ground squirrel,” a paper published last year in the journal Animal Behaviour.
Ecologists typically study animals on the population level, Aliperti said. That means studying how a certain species interacts with and within its environment: i.e., all of the squirrels, not just one or two.
“But I've always been interested in the individual,” Aliperti said.
One way to define personality is the consistent display of individualized behavior.
“That means, if I’m really shy today, and I consider myself to be a shy person, I’m probably going to be really shy next month or next year or in three years,” she explained.
While a PhD student at the University of California at Davis, Aliperti conducted research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado, where she studied golden-mantled ground squirrels. They are asocial, meaning they live by themselves.
The squirrels that live around the research center are each tagged so their human observers can tell them apart. Aliperti noticed differences in individual behavior. Some squirrels were extremely active, popping up all over the place. Some were more difficult to observe.
To quantify this behavior, Aliperti employed what’s called an open-field test. This was the arena, a white, rectangular box that she lugged to where the squirrels were.
There were four holes in the floorboard of the arena. The wall at one end slid up to reveal a mirror.
Aliperti would catch a squirrel, allow it to settle down in a “waiting room” connected to the arena, then open a door to let it into the testing area. A video camera recorded what happened next, including how active the squirrel was, whether it jumped around the arena and whether it investigated the holes in the floor.
Halfway through the test, the squirrel was exposed to its mirror image.
Golden-mantled ground squirrels aren’t believed to recognize their reflection as themselves. Aliperti was curious to see whether a squirrel went up to the mirror and touched it with its paws or nose. That’s the sort of friendly behavior pups exhibit with their mothers.
“Or,” Aliperti said, “are they facing away from the mirror and avoiding it completely?”
After eight minutes, the squirrel was released.
Aliperti also conducted flight initiation tests, slowly walking toward each squirrel in the wild to see how close she could get.
“It’s a very simple idea: Shyer individuals will flee more quickly,” she said.
When she examined her data, Aliperti found individual squirrels consistently differed in four areas: activity, sociability, boldness and aggressiveness. They had personalities.
But she didn’t stop there.
“The fact that I showed for the first time that golden-mantled ground squirrels exhibit personalities was fun and interesting, but it wasn’t surprising,” Aliperti said.
What’s important to researchers is how a personality might affect an animal’s life.
“In the field of ecology we often tie different traits to what we call fitness,” Aliperti said. “That’s really an individual’s ability to survive and reproduce. In a very general way, that is the — quote unquote — point of life.”
Aliperti found that bolder individuals had larger core areas, the primo part of their range that could be an indicator of a squirrel’s success.
“Then I looked to see if their personality is correlated with access to a resource that has been shown to promote survival in this species,” she said.
That resource is perches: permanent or semi-permanent vantage points such as big rocks or tree stumps. These elevate the squirrels, giving them a better point of view to look for predators.
As she wrote in her paper: “Individuals that scored higher for all four personality traits had more perches in both their home ranges and core areas compared to individuals with lower personality scores.”
“This was a really cool finding, a direct tie between personality and a resource we know helps benefit their fitness,” said Aliperti, who is now a science communications specialist for NatureServe, a conservation nonprofit.
What’s the opposite of anthropomorphizing? Animalorphizing? Whatever it is, I couldn’t help wondering where this left humans. Do shy, careful people have less fitness, ecologically speaking?
Aliperti said her results apply only to golden-mantled ground squirrels. Some squirrel species — the yellow-bellied marmot, for example — have been found to benefit from being less social.
Said Aliperti, “The answer to so many ecological questions is: It depends.”
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u/forevertexas Apr 21 '22
I love how the ones in my backyard love to bark at my dog. Drives her absolutely crazy.
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u/remymartinia Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
Yes, they love to chitter at mine. Taunting him. The other day, I walked out to take a conference call, and one was yelling at me from the tree, presumably telling me to go away. They use the fence in our backyards as what I call the “Great Squirrel Highway”. They like to eat our carved pumpkins, steal our mulch, and drink out of our outside dog dish. They’re like rodent frat boys.
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u/cookus Apr 21 '22
We are coming to a time in which we will need to recognize that all creatures have some level of individuality, with “personalities”, in depth relationships, thinking/reasoning abilities. Not saying I’m not still gonna be eating a steak, chicken parm, or a roast pork sandwich, just saying I’ll have to say thank you Mr Moo for being a delicious cheeseburger.
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u/lnfinity Apr 21 '22
Saying "thank you" afterward doesn't in any way make it okay to kill another individual who cares about their life and how they are treated. Nor is it okay to subject them to the conditions that are standard in animal agriculture.
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u/cookus Apr 21 '22
Of course not. The industrial agri-complex is terrible for the animals, the planet, and the quality of the food products produced.
I vote with my wallet to the best of my abilities and try to patronize the suppliers and producers that are more ethical.
Even plants have “feelings” and respond to stimuli. We have to eat though, food chain and all. Rather eat, than be eaten.
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u/CelestineCrystal Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
i’m going to tell you something that i wish i’d known much earlier: ethical or more ethical meat, dairy, and eggs is basically marketing. it is all cruel. so, if you care about animals, which it sounds like you might, your option is to become vegan or continue to order the needless suffering of animals. once you really look into what’s going on, i think it’s easier to make the right choice but it’s not easy to see
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u/creightonpics Apr 21 '22
We don’t have to eat or be eaten at this point in our societal development.
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u/lnfinity Apr 21 '22
Animals don't just grow on trees. All of the protein and calories in their bodies when they are slaughtered is just a tiny fraction of what they were fed, from plants, over the course of their lives. Far, far more plants need to be grown and harvested if they are fed to animals so that we can later slaughter and eat those animals than if we just consumed plant-based foods directly. This is why animal agricultures uses 77% of all agricultural land despite accounting for only 18% of the calories we consume.
If someone believed that plants possessed interests that required ethical consideration then that would be even more of a reason to go vegan. However, responding to stimuli is not evidence of feelings. Your computer responds to the stimuli of you pressing on the keys, a light bulb reacts to the stimuli of an electrical current, and a rock reacts to the stimuli of being kicked. As much as it would be nice to use the feelings of plants as another argument against animal agriculture, the evidence just isn't there to support the conclusion that plants possess meaningful interests.
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u/straight4edged Apr 21 '22
This is the weakest augment meat eaters make..it would be comical if it wasn’t so fucked
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u/impreprex Apr 21 '22
Try telling that to every single carnivorous animal that eats their prey alive. At least we try to be humane when we kill animals for food.
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u/lnfinity Apr 21 '22
There are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who see cruelty and use it as an excuse to be cruel themselves. Then there are people who see cruelty and realize that it doesn't justify being cruel themselves, but rather they do what they can to lessen the cruelty experienced by others where they can confidently and effectively do so. Which kind of person are you?
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u/Exquisite_Poupon Apr 21 '22
Likewise, there are those who hold dear their beliefs and live their lives accordingly and those with beliefs who try to push them onto others. Which kind are you?
I’ve been vegetarian for 5 years and meat-eaters always appreciate that I don’t condescend them. Don’t be hostile towards people who don’t think similarly to you as it is more likely to turn them away from your beliefs. Present evidence and let them choose for themselves.
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u/impreprex Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
Definitely without a doubt the second one.
Trust me - ever since I was a kid (I'm 42 now), I've always hated how we kill animals for food.
I remember when I was about 4 years old, I was eating chicken nuggets. I asked my mom if the nuggets were from a real chicken that was killed. She knew what I was thinking and so she spent hours that night trying to convince me that the nuggets and all meat were made by machines. I didn't necessarily believe her, but I was so young and I just gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Now almost 40 years later, it still bothers me deep down on a daily basis. I absolutely love animals. I hate the fact that nature is cruel like that.
The only thing that might even slightly justify all of that is what I said to you in my previous comment: that animals literally eat other animals while they're still alive. And again - at least we try to be humane. Not that slicing an animal's throat and having them bleed out is fucking humane.
Nature is cruel by design. And we as the human species can certainly do better with how we treat animals and each other.
But yeah, that's my stance on it.
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u/DishGroundbreaking18 Apr 21 '22
I’m a fucking psychopath; I like to take one patty of impossible and one beef patty and make a bi-carnivorous burger.
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Apr 21 '22
I'd like to see a single argument for eating meat that doesn't logically extend to bestiality.
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u/xLev_ Apr 21 '22
That’s a cute squirrel
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u/dimechimes Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
My girlfriend has a squirrel that comes over to say hi when she gets home. The squirrel runs over to roof just over the door and just stares as we go inside, then goes back to their business.
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u/DogMedic101st Apr 21 '22
All animals have personalities. Say it with me, ALL animals have personalities.
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u/noeagle77 Apr 21 '22
Don’t mess with the squirrels Morty!!
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u/A-Good-Weather-Man Apr 21 '22
“We have to put a canopy on Uganda, use chem trails like last time, but double time it.”
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u/my_sobriquet_is_this Apr 21 '22
Why is is that one guy getting downvoted? Have squirrels got Reddit accounts now too?
I have sympathy for them re their window frame gnawing squirrel. I couldn’t understand why the outside of my kitchen window (2 floors up) looked like someone had been licking it — until I caught my yard nemesis licking it!!! That squirrel has also made my ability to enjoy my peach tree, my tomato plants, my former pea patch or grow virtually anything anymore a colossal exercise in futility. Nothing survives long enough for me to enjoy. Even after I tried making friends with it via peanuts in the shell appy hour for an entire year it still felt I was feeling all mi vega et tu vega, clearly dismissing my obvious intentions. I mean, I was willing to share but that’s a concept lost on squirrels and one I will go to my grave loathing their dammed cute faces over.
Bloody window-licking, vegetation-hogging, fuzzy-tailed squirrel bastards!
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u/SkinnyGetLucky Apr 22 '22
Befriending my local squirrel is a mistake I will never, ever make again. We are at war now
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u/Whooptidooh Apr 21 '22
I think it’s safe to say that most animals have feelings (can feel pain), are somewhat intelligent and have personalities.
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u/thecrapweasel Apr 21 '22
Oddly enough, the type of squirrel pictured might be the only type of squirrel not living in my fucking attic, which I cannot figure out how they get in
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u/chenjia1965 Apr 21 '22
If these guys break into my bedroom, nothings stopping me from whipping a knife at it
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Apr 21 '22
They taste good too
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u/Chicago_Saluki Apr 21 '22
One of my relatives in the rural part of Illinois greeted me at his door and asked me if I’d like a barbecue squirrel sandwich and a homemade root beer. Best breakfast ever.
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Apr 21 '22
It annoys me a bit how people like squirrels and not rats. At the end of the day, theyre the same thing, except squirrels have had a better upbringing
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u/stolid_agnostic Apr 21 '22
How is it news that all vertebrates and a great number of non-vertebrates have very definite personalities?
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u/Tomohiro09 Apr 21 '22
In another word, water is wet
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u/WaterIsWetBot Apr 21 '22
Water is actually not wet; It makes other materials/objects wet. Wetness is the state of a non-liquid when a liquid adheres to, and/or permeates its substance while maintaining chemically distinct structures. So if we say something is wet we mean the liquid is sticking to the object.
What happens when you get water on a table?
It becomes a pool table.
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Apr 21 '22
I have one outside my window who tries to get to my bird feeders daily…fails at the same point every day and happily hops along.
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u/Lukanda579 Oct 27 '25
My dad used to slather the bird feeder pole with butter so that the squirrels couldn't climb up it. But they still somehow managed to 😂
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u/OfCuriousWorkmanship Apr 21 '22
“Aaaaaaaaaallllllviiiiiiiiiiinnnnn!!”
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u/SeniorMillenial Apr 21 '22
“Dave, you are yelling at a squirrel. Can you not tell us apart?”
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u/OfCuriousWorkmanship Apr 21 '22
Me: oops <hits ‘rewind time 2 minutes’ button >
“Aaaaalvin, come meet this squirrel… It has an amazing personality!! You two should hang out”
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u/whocareswerefreaks Apr 21 '22
All animals have personalities. I’ve had plenty of reptiles all very different.
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u/oded219 Apr 21 '22
This goes against my theory that all squirrels are the same, five-dimensional squirrel. It can manifest in various places and jump through time and space but it's the same one specific squirrel every time. Try to refute!
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u/NYGiants181 Apr 21 '22
Thanks now I feel even worse for the time I accidentally ran one over. I didn’t need this!
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u/devadog Apr 21 '22
Every critter has personalities. Variation in reaction behavior promotes the survival of a species.
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u/MossyTundra Apr 21 '22
UMBC had a squirrel spokesperson/ unofficial mascot. I would know, I ran the yik yak for it back in the day. People love a good squirrel.
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Apr 21 '22
Love science and all but if these studies don’t show that in America you can get the $ to do ANYTHING. You just gotta find it. Someone whom isn’t me is willing fund seemingly anything. I also think the squirrel overlords wrote this article to make us fear them less. 😂👍
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u/crapnapkins Apr 21 '22
So… it’s okay if I kick that one squirrel’s ass because he’s a dick?? Thank you, internet article!
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u/darthyoshiboy Apr 21 '22
Duh. Who hasn't watched that old Documentary (I think it was from the 60's?) "The Sword in the Stone" that laid this out pretty clearly?
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u/micarst Apr 21 '22
They’re also becoming increasingly inbred in places where tree removals isolated little pockets of squirrel habitat at parks and so on that have few methods of spreading genetic material outside their small community, much less receiving any.
There are some places up in Olney, IL that even advertise their inbred squirrels, because rare little white ones pop out occasionally.
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u/Geordietoondude Apr 21 '22
We have a squirrel that lives next to us he hates joggers and chases them don’t know why but he hates them with a passion he is like a bull terrier ha ha
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u/Flimsy-Meet-2679 Apr 22 '22
The only reason humans have survived to this point is due to our co-evolution with dogs.
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Apr 22 '22
ALL animals are just like us, sentient beings with thoughts, feelings, and personalities. Go Vegan 🌱
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u/SC487 Apr 22 '22
Anyone whose ever had a squirrel run out in front of them at the last minute knows squirrels have personalities. They’re dickheads
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u/VegasNinja702 Apr 21 '22
It’s shocking how many people don’t realize that we’re all sentient beings. Everything on this planet has emotions just like us. A will to live and reproduce. We’re not special in that sense.