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Thousands of hiding places

How Does a Squirrel Find Its Buried Nuts?

A squirrel buries nuts in thousands of separate spots and then finds most of them again months later.

1 Buries one nutin one spot2 Repeats it athousand timesover3 Finds most, andforgets therest
Forgetting is part of how the plan works.

  1. Step 1 of 5

    One nut per hole, on purpose.

    One big store A thief findseverythingA thousand small ones A thief finds one nut

    A squirrel almost never makes one big store. It scatters nuts one at a time over a huge area, so a thief that finds a hiding place has found exactly one nut and nothing more.

  2. Step 2 of 5

    Memory gets it close, smell does the rest.

    1 Memory oflandmarks getsit near2 Smell finds theexact spot3 It digsstraight down

    It remembers the general place using trees and rocks as landmarks. Standing there, it sniffs — and it can smell a nut through several centimetres of soil, as long as the soil is damp.

  3. Step 3 of 5

    Dry ground makes it much harder.

    Damp soil The smell rises — foundDry soil Nothing comes up —missed

    Smell needs moisture to carry. In dry weather a squirrel can be standing right on top of a nut and get nothing, which is one reason so many stay buried.

  4. Step 4 of 5

    It sorts the nuts as it buries them.

    1 Shakes andweighs the nut2 A poor one iseaten straightaway3 A good one iscarried off andburied

    A squirrel spends time turning a nut over and shaking it. A bad or light one gets eaten now; the good heavy ones get buried, and often get buried further away where they are safer.

  5. Step 5 of 5

    The forgotten nuts become trees.

    An oak drops its acorns A squirrelburies themfar away Some are never dug up Those growinto new oaks

    Every nut left in the ground is a seed already planted at the right depth, away from its parent tree. Oaks and squirrels have been in this arrangement for a very long time.

    Squirrels will dig a hole, pretend to bury nothing, and pat the soil down — a decoy performed when they think they are being watched.

The short version

A squirrel remembers roughly where each nut is and sniffs out the exact spot — and the nuts it never finds grow into trees.

Try it yourself

Hide ten small things around a room, wait a day, and find them. Ten is hard. A squirrel manages thousands.

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