Squirrels

THE SCIENCE OF SQUIRRELS

	Natalie Angier’s Nut? What Nut? is a short fascinating science essay on squirrels. Readers learn, for example, that squirrels have yellow-tinted eye lenses that act as natural sunglasses, and find out a bit about squirrel robots.
	From Science Netlinks, Squirrel Hoarding compares the nut-saving behaviors of red and gray squirrels with a short list of follow-up questions for kids.
	Find out why squirrels have bushy tails.
	Robosquirrels! See Robosquirrels versus Rattlesnakes, a short account of experiments using snakes and robot squirrels.
	National Geographic: Squirrel has fast facts on squirrels and an infographic comparing the size of a squirrel to a teacup.
	Find out how flying squirrels fly in How Squirrels Fly from Smithsonian magazine. (Scientists tested the squirrels in a wind tunnel.)
	With help from ancient squirrels, Russian scientists have managed to regenerate 30,000-year-old plants. Find out about it in Scientists and Squirrels Regenerate a Plant.
	Hibernating squirrels are teaching scientists about the workings of the brain. Find out how (and learn about the frigid winters of arctic ground squirrels) here.
	A 100-million-year-old saber-toothed squirrel probably looked much like Scrat from the Ice Age movies. Really. Check it out at LiveScience’s Saber-Toothed Squirrel.

HISTORIC SQUIRRELS

	For information and period artwork (with squirrels), see When Squirrels Were One of America’s Most Popular Pets.
	For more on the popular pet squirrel (often seen with gold-chain leashes and collars) see Wild Colonial American Pets.
	Ben Franklin’s famous epitaph for a departed pet squirrel (“Here SKUGG/Lies snug/As a bug in a rug”) is found in a letter to Georgiana Shipley, written in 1772. Read Franklin’s letter here.
	For more resources, see Ben Franklin.
	Squirrels in High Places discusses the relationships of U.S. presidents to squirrels. Ronald Reagan fed them; Harry Truman appointed an official White House squirrel feeder; Dwight Eisenhower attempted to ban them from the White House lawn because they dug holes in his putting green. The George W. Bush family dog, Millie, chased them.
	Tommy Tucker – a very fashionable squirrel – was a national sensation in the 1940s. Check out this gallery of Tommy photos from the Life magazine archive.
	Runner-up to Tommy may be the 2009 Banff Crasher Squirrel, who sneaked into a Canadian couple’s vacation photo and promptly became an Internet sensation. See Crasher Squirrel in the original photo – and with Vladimir Putin, Abraham Lincoln, the cast of Star Trek, and on the moon.

I NEVER SAW A PURPLE SQUIRREL

There’s a wide range of color in squirrels. Gray squirrels, for example, can be black, brown, or tan; and red squirrels can range from black to brown to red (with white bellies). But…purple squirrels?

	There are pockets of pure-white squirrels scattered across North America, which is why so many towns claim to be the “Home of the White Squirrels.” For information and a white-squirrel map, see White Squirrels.
	Learn about black squirrels. (They’re really gray.)
	For more on white and black squirrels, see Roadside America’s White Squirrel Wars and Black Squirrel Squabbles.
	Check out this (real) bright-purple squirrel from Pennsylvania. Learn all about it and the theories of what made it purple.
	Pink squirrels? Flying squirrels glow pink in the dark. Really. Find out about it here.