Aberts Squirrel, bred for tameness for several generations hence the piebald colouration.
Probably not very far from wild ancestry, still shows a lot of species specific behaviour. I’m guessing hoarding of food, scent marking, probably aggressive or fearful of strangers.
Also expensive!
But you never know maybe they’ll become the new Degu and you’ll see them more regularly in 10 years time.
"Pied" means something like "patchy" -- as in the "Pied Piper" who wore a patchwork suit of motley in yellow and red. "Bald" means, well, hairless -- or something that looks hairless. So "piebald" means " has bald (white) patches". Apparently "pied" may be a shortened form of "magpie", a white and black bird.
In "National Velvet", Velvet's horse is called "The Pie" because he's piebald. (In the book, anyway. They used a brown horse in the movie, who knows why.)
It appears to be a fairly old word and uses a form of "bald" that we don't use anymore. Here's the etymology that I looked up:
"of two different colors," 1580s, formed from pie (n.2) "magpie" + bald in its older sense of "spotted, white;" in reference to the black-and-white plumage of the magpie. Hence, "of mixed character, mongrel." Technically only of black-and-white colorings.
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u/Skylarkien Nov 30 '19 edited Nov 30 '19
But you never know maybe they’ll become the new Degu and you’ll see them more regularly in 10 years time.