I have seen them kill and eat snakes, even rattlesnakes. One day last year, as I was interpreting the Saguaro kit at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a small drama was taking place just below the Vista Ramada. A rattlesnake was being attacked by two ground squirrels.
Professional museum staff had to rescue the snake, only because it posed a hazard to visitors. Upon encountering a snake, a rock squirrel will stamp its feet and wave its tail from side to side while facing the snake. This behavior is called mobbing.
Researchers in California note that rock squirrels can distinguish between venomous and non-venomous snakes, and change their mobbing behavior accordingly. Apparently, adult rock squirrels can at least partially neutralize rattlesnake venom. Rattlesnakes have heat-sensing organs which can detect a difference in temperature as little as 0. There is some research that suggests that rock squirrels take advantage of this.
The squirrel can pump extra blood into its tail to make the tail warmer than its body, thereby fooling the snake into striking at the tail rather than the body.
Rock squirrels dig burrows and may be colonial or solitary. They can be very territorial. Arizona Gray Squirrel Sciurus arizonensis. The Arizona gray squirrel is a native species.
Arizona gray squirrels prefer forests of large trees such as ponderosa pine, oak, and walnut. However, in the Rincon Mountains, they are now only found in areas with large oak trees. They are distinguished by the prominent stripe along their side. They are active during the daytime and can be seen foraging during some of the hottest summer days.
When their body temperatures get too warm, they dash into their burrows or a shady location to sprawl on their stomachs and cool off. When a rock squirrel encounters a snake, it stamps its feet and waves its tail from side to side while facing the snake. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please read our privacy policy.
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Become a Member! Adopt a friend! Green Initiatives. Gift a Virtual Program! Share your photos! Ground Squirrels The ground squirrels belong to the rodent order — small, gnawing, mammals that many predators depend on for food. Habitat Rock squirrel. Round-tailed ground squirrel. After a lengthy chase, the female comes into estrus for only one day.
She will later give birth to a single litter of from two to four young in a nest made of pine boughs. Throughout the summer, the squirrels feed on the seeds of developing cones as well as on underground fungi or truffles that grow under mature pine trees.
These foods are the most nutritious for the squirrel, and only when they are exhausted does the animal resort to feeding on the inner bark of pine twigs-the discarded terminals of which are often seen littering the forest floor. These "clippings" of inner bark are only an emergency food, however, and if deep snow-cover or other factors force the squirrel to rely entirely on this food source, the animal will eventually go into shock and die. Only after years of research was it learned that the periods of tassel-eared squirrel scarcity and abundance were related to the amount of snow-cover and the availability of underground fungi.
Most squirrel mortality is during the late winter, and when snow covers the ground for 80 or more days, the mortality rate exceeds the squirrel's rather modest recruitment rate.
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