The Where, The Why, and The How

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First annotation on Apr 29th, 2025.

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BECAUSE OF THEIR ACUTE sense of smell, it was long thought that squirrels simply sniff out buried nuts. But captive studies found that squirrels create a mental map of their caches and can accurately retrieve them using just this memory. Yet squirrels such as the eastern gray and the fox squirrel may cache over 5,000 nuts each fall—do they remember all these locations? We don't know, though the fact that the gray squirrel's brain actually grows in size during the caching season may show increased memory. On the other hand, recent studies have shown that when one squirrel buries a nut, it is almost impossible for another squirrel to detect it unless it actually watched the nut being buried. Paradoxically, if a human buries a nut at exactly the same depth (about 1 inch), a squirrel has no trouble detecting and pilfering the cache. So this suggests that a squirrel makes caches less detectable by odor in some way that we haven't yet identified—and for this reason, it is critical for each squirrel to have a precise memory for the locations of its buried nuts.

Like humans, ants have well-defined roles that are designed to keep their society functioning. Consider that ant colonies wage war against other colonies and even enslave other ants. Ants are also the only other species to employ agricultural tactics, as do the leaf cutter "gardener" ants; the "dairymaid" ants that milk aphids for a sweet, honey-like liquid that the aphids produce; and the recently discovered "ranchers" who are hypothesized to raise their insect herds for meat. Furthermore, not only are ant colonies considered to have personalities, ranging from docile to aggressive (much like human societies throughout history), but the idea that individuals within colonies have unique personalities is increasingly gaining acceptance.