Leaping squirrels!

August 11, 2021 6:34 AM

Parkour is one of their many feats of agility (from UC Berkeley/Berkeley News): Their claws are so failproof, Hunt said, that none of the squirrels ever fell, despite wobbly leaps and over- or undershot landings..

"They’re not always going to have their best performance — they just have to be good enough,” he said. “They have redundancy. So, if they miss, they don’t hit their center of mass right on the landing perch, they’re amazing at being able to grab onto it. They’ll swing underneath, they’ll swing over the top. They just don’t fall.”

posted by RobinofFrocksley (17 comments total)

Reminds me of these Mark Rober videos:

Backyard Squirrel Maze 1.0- Ninja Warrior Course
Backyard Squirrel Maze 2.0- The Walnut Heist
posted by Pendragon at 6:37 AM on August 11, 2021 [10 favorites]

If the researchers have never seen a squirrel fall, they haven't spent enough time watching squirrels. There have been more than a few times around here when everybody's attention has been on the motionless squirrel laying flat on the ground after it has fallen out of a tree while attempting to do something (usually it involves an altercation with another squirrel). There is always a big sigh of relief once the squirrel starts moving again and eventually gets up and makes its way to another tree--in large part, I'll admit, because then nobody has to go and deal with the remains of a dead squirrel. I can't say no squirrel has ever died from a fall--for I all I know, they just crawl far enough away to die under cover--but there have been a few times when an easily identifiable squirrel has taken a nasty tumble and has been sighted in the days and weeks after the fall.
posted by sardonyx at 6:50 AM on August 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

Jut what we need. Squirrel robots!
posted by greenhornet at 6:57 AM on August 11, 2021

If the researchers have never seen a squirrel fall, they haven't spent enough time watching squirrels.

Concur. Last year I was almost smacked on the head by a squirrel that fell out of a tree I was passing under. Hit the ground like six inches in front of me.
posted by aramaic at 7:23 AM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

I looked up some pics of squirrels falling and came across a load of stuff that says squirrels have a slow enough terminal velocity that its not usually terminal. See here for example.
posted by biffa at 8:01 AM on August 11, 2021

I too have seen a squirrel fall recently. I was running on a paved park trail amongst trees. I heard a loud plop ahead of me so I looked further up the path. About 50 feet ahead there was a slightly-stunned squirrel hauling up in the middle of the path before quickly scamping off hoping I hadn't seen him. But I had.
posted by glonous keming at 8:33 AM on August 11, 2021

Long ago a friend recounted to a group of us a story of watching squirrels high up in the trees chasing each other and then one took a spectacular, multi-story fall to the ground. It lay stunned for a few minutes and then got up and scampered off.

A second person chimed in that they had seen the same thing, only the squirrel hit concrete rather than dirt and did not get up.
posted by lab.beetle at 8:34 AM on August 11, 2021

Note, though, that they're studying squirrels to build fucking robots. Do we need weaponized squirrel-like fucking robots?

In late spring, when the latest batch of squirrels has just reached enough strength while retaining enough foolhardiness to try it, we get trains of squirrel siblings doing daft things for what appears to be purely fun. I've seen them run up wooden poles, swarm along the cable, leap into a tree, dash down to the ground and back up the pole: repeat for 30 minutes of dizzying squirrel centrifuge. Also I've seen them test their claws by running parallel to a wooden fence and hopping on and off, zigzag style.

I've also seen a squirrel nip off an entire sunflower head, run along a fence, then comically misjudge the leap to a tree and tumble to the ground in an embarrassed heap. Only squirrel pride was hurt that day.
posted by scruss at 9:00 AM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Though I am a known squirrel hater, the squirrel behaviour I find the funniest and perhaps the most interesting to emulate is not their leaping but their habit of lying along the top of my fence completely spread out on very hot days. They look very hot but very chill (for a squirrel).
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:05 AM on August 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

I've got a cable between my shed and a tree in the backyard that I hang a birdfeeder off of and also use to hang laundry on. The birdfeeder hasn't had any seeds in it for a while but sometimes the squirrels will decide they'd like to run across the cable to get from the shed to the tree instead of going down to the ground. I have never seen them fall but it gets pretty close at the end where they tend to save themselves by making a desperation leap onto the tree. I love watching the squirrels even if they do dig up my plants and totally destroyed a cute bird feeder a couple of years ago.

Strangely enough my kids and I made a squirrel feeder last year and birds end up using it more than the squirrels do. They're pretty good about sharing it really.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:28 PM on August 11, 2021

Hey, they're teaching robots how to Spider-Man already. Only a matter of time before they move on to the art of squirrelage.
posted by bartleby at 12:33 PM on August 11, 2021

ahh yes, someone studies squirrels and thinks "let's make robots like that"

this is garbage-islands-in-the-ocean level folly
posted by elkevelvet at 2:21 PM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

The full paper in the journal Science is paywalled, but the video in the FPP press release is certainly interesting.

Thanks for posting!
posted by cynical pinnacle at 3:10 PM on August 11, 2021

The Saveafox rescue in US/MN has a regular visitor who enjoys periodically taunting the residents
posted by zaixfeep at 3:48 PM on August 11, 2021

>There have been more than a few times around here when everybody's attention has been on the motionless squirrel laying flat on the ground after it has fallen out of a tree

Yup. Last summer I saw a squirrel fall about 50-60ft from an enormous old maple. Onto asphalt. It make a very painful sounding splat that I could hear from across the street. It was not moving and I assumed it was messy dead. Aaaand then in under 10 seconds it came back to life and scampered away.

Further reading:
Why a squirrel would never die from falling, no matter how high it falls: An aerospace engineering student explains it

Also, this reminded me of the question of the safety of throwing frogs. It turns out there has been research conducted on the matter.

Both links above quote biologist J.B.S. Haldane, who observed that "you can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.”
posted by Kabanos at 7:02 PM on August 11, 2021 [5 favorites]

Also, this reminded me of the question of the safety of throwing frogs. It turns out there has been research conducted on the matter.
posted by hippybear at 8:57 PM on August 11, 2021

Had a kid/baby squirrel fall out of a tree front of me, I happened to be with someone who was basically from a family of vets with decent wildlife experience. Little guy stayed down for a few and no caretaker we could see, also wasn't cowering or running away so it had progressed to picking him up to take a look and figure out what we were going to do. He didn't seem to have any broken bones, just a bit stunned.

At this point, Momma squirrel saw us. I have never before and never after seen a squirrel charge a human but I can tell you I felt fear. Squirrel was carefully (albiet very quickly) returned to the ground and momma squirrel whisked him off.
posted by AlexiaSky at 10:32 PM on August 11, 2021 [2 favorites]