Squirrels put their groceries away just like we do!

September 13, 2017

Do you keep your vegetables on one shelf in your fridge, and eggs and meat on another?

A new study shows that humans aren't the only species that organizes things like this - squirrels do it too.

Fox squirrels organize their stashes of nuts by variety, quality and possibly even preferences - evidence of a cognitive strategy called chunking.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, is the first to show evidence of squirrels arranging their finds using 'chunking,' a cognitive strategy in which humans and other animals organize spatial, linguistic, numeric or other information into smaller more manageable collections, such as subfolders on a computer.

Fox squirrels stockpile at least 3,000 to 10,000 nuts a year and, under certain conditions, separate each cache into 'subfolders', one for each type of nut.

Read more from Daily Mail | September 13th, 2017