Post #3678929

2026-07-08 18:51 UTC

@Gabriel@floss.social @Anomnomnomaly@beige.party squirrels are experts at spatial contextual awareness, remembering all of their nut caches and if they screw up, and forget a cache, the "negative" effect of that is the nuts germinate, and you get a tree so you're talking about a species whose worst personal failure is a great benefit. i'd like to to be thought of that way. i'd like to be known as a squirrel

Replies (2)

@evdelen@mstdn.ca 2026-07-08 19:12

@benroyce@mastodon.social @Gabriel@floss.social @Anomnomnomaly@beige.party Squirrels, in fact, are very bad at remembering where they cached their nuts, regularly uncovering other squirrels caches. That forgetfulness has been harnessed by trees which have developed Mast Seeding behaviour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast_seeding In short, trees in an area will coordinate and will have regular years where they all produce lots of nuts and fruits, specifically so that squirrels (among other animals) will cache their seeds and forget about them. Nature is awesome!

Open ##3678928
@ianturton@mapstodon.space 2026-07-08 18:56

@benroyce@mastodon.social @Gabriel@floss.social @Anomnomnomaly@beige.party says a man who's never had to mow oak trees out of his lawn because there's a squirrel with Alzheimer's in the neighbouring woodland

Open ##3685617