49 Fun Facts About Squirrels Trivia for Kids

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which child do Willy Wonka's nut-sorting squirrels throw down the rubbish chute?

Veruca Salt. She marches in to grab a squirrel for a pet, but the animals pin her down, judge her a 'bad nut' and send her down the chute.

The word 'squirrel' comes from the Greek 'skiouros', usually explained as meaning what?

Shadow tail. The Greek name joins skia, shadow, and oura, tail, perhaps because a squirrel sitting up to eat seems to shade itself with its own bushy tail.

Squirrels live wild on most continents, but which one had none until people brought them?

Australia. Its look-alike possums only resemble flying squirrels: they are marsupials, more closely related to kangaroos than to any squirrel.

Which squirrel is the world's smallest, only about 13 centimetres from nose to tail tip?

The African pygmy. Unlike most squirrels it never stores food: it forages non-stop, running along rainforest branches upside down as easily as the right way up.

A gray squirrel that thinks it is being watched may do what with a nut?

Pretend to bury it. The squirrel digs a hole, mimes dropping the nut in and covers the empty spot, with the nut still tucked in its mouth to hide somewhere else.

Unlike most mammals, tree squirrels can climb down a tree in what way?

Head first. Their ankles swivel right round, so the back claws point up the trunk and hook into the bark like climbing spikes.

A squirrel's big front teeth, its incisors, do what?

Grow throughout its life. Hard enamel on the front and softer dentine behind mean that gnawing grinds each tooth into a chisel edge that keeps itself sharp.

Squirrels mostly eat seeds and nuts, but many will also eat what?

Insects. Squirrels are not strict vegetarians: when food runs short they turn hunter and will raid nests for birds' eggs and even chicks.

The Nutty Narrows in Longview, Washington, was built in 1963 so squirrels could do what?

Cross a busy road safely. A local builder found a dead squirrel with a nut still in its mouth, so he and his friends strung a 60-foot bridge of aluminium and old fire hose above the traffic.

Two kinds of flying squirrel carve grooves into nuts so they can do what?

Wedge them tightly between twigs. The groove grips a forked twig like a carpenter's joint, and the nuts hang well away from the tree that dropped them, where other animals are less likely to look.

What becomes of many nuts that gray squirrels bury and never dig up?

They grow into trees. Squirrels even try to prevent it: before burying the kind of oak seed that sprouts quickly, they bite out its embryo so that it cannot grow.

How do gray squirrels find the nuts they buried months earlier?

Sharp memory for landmarks. Smell helps at close range, but squirrels raid one another's stores, so knowing exactly where its own nuts lie is what keeps a squirrel fed.

A squirrel's leafy nest built in the fork of a tree is called what?

A drey. Squirrels usually keep several at once and move between them, so a nest that gets damaged or disturbed is never their only home.

Gray squirrels flick their tails and make a 'kuk' call to do what?

Warn others about a predator. The alarm is meant for the hunter too: once a stalking cat hears it, it gives up, knowing it has lost the element of surprise.

In Britain, the eastern gray squirrel has largely pushed out which native squirrel?

Red. Grays are bigger and carry squirrelpox, a virus that leaves them unharmed but is usually fatal to the native squirrels they meet.

Which winter feature marks out Europe's native squirrel from the gray squirrel, which never has it?

Tufted ears. Colour alone can fool you, because the native squirrel's winter coat is often tinged with grey, but a gray squirrel never grows ear tufts.

The chickaree, a small tree squirrel of North America's northern forests, mostly eats the seeds of what?

Conifer cones. It stockpiles them in one big hoard and guards that patch of forest all year, chasing off any intruder that comes close.

Which is the largest tree squirrel native to North America?

Fox. It can top a kilogram, and people have since released it in western cities such as Los Angeles, far outside its native range.

How do flying squirrels move from tree to tree?

They glide on a furry skin flap. Small leg movements steer the glide, and just before landing the squirrel pulls upward so that all four feet meet the trunk together.

Scientists found by chance that North American flying squirrels glow which colour under ultraviolet light?

Pink. All three North American species glow while ordinary squirrels stay dark, and chemists who tested their coats found nothing in them that plain squirrel hair lacks, so the cause is still a puzzle.

Flying squirrels are mostly active at what time?

Night. Because they come out only after dark, few people ever see one, even in forests where they are common.

Chipmunks carry food back to their burrows in what?

Cheek pouches. Rather than fattening up for winter, a chipmunk stocks an underground larder and wakes now and then to snack from it.

Only one chipmunk species lives wild outside North America; which region is it named after?

Siberia. The Siberian chipmunk ranges from Russia to Korea and northern Japan, and escaped pets have since founded wild colonies in Europe.

A groundhog is a large ground squirrel also known by which other name?

Woodchuck. The name has nothing to do with wood or chucking: settlers bent an Algonquian word into something that sounded English.

Groundhogs fatten up all summer because they spend the winter doing what?

Hibernating in a burrow. Males wake before the females do, so that they can stake out territories and start looking for mates.

On Groundhog Day, if the groundhog sees its shadow, what is supposed to happen?

Six more weeks of winter. German settlers brought the belief to America, but back in Germany the animal doing the forecasting was usually a badger.

Punxsutawney Phil, the most famous weather-forecasting groundhog, lives in which state?

Pennsylvania. His handlers insist he has never been wrong, yet the records show his forecasts come true less than 40 percent of the time.

Prairie dogs live in huge underground colonies that are known as what?

Towns. Inside one, members of a family greet each other with a 'kiss', a nuzzle they never offer to prairie dogs from other families.

Which members of the squirrel family are the heaviest and largest?

Marmots. When one spots danger it gives a sharp, piercing whistle that sends the whole colony running for cover.

The Malabar giant squirrel, famous for its bright multi-coloured coat, lives only in which country?

India. It rarely comes down from the treetops, crossing the gaps between trees with leaps of six metres.

Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel from the Ice Age movies, is forever chasing what?

An acorn. Scrat never says a word: every squeak and scream is performed by Chris Wedge, the man who directed the first film.

Sandy Cheeks, the squirrel in SpongeBob SquarePants, comes from which state?

Texas. As a land animal on the sea floor she lives inside an air-filled dome and has to put on a diving suit whenever she steps outside.

Rocky the Flying Squirrel starred in a 1959 cartoon alongside which animal friend?

Bullwinkle the moose. Both friends were given the middle initial J as a nod to Jay Ward, the producer who created them.

Which author wrote The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin in 1903?

Beatrix Potter. Her squirrels cross the lake to Owl Island on rafts made of twigs, each one spreading out its tail for a sail.

Secret Squirrel, the 1965 cartoon spy, has a fez-wearing sidekick called Morocco, who is what animal?

A mole. Morocco Mole and his boss were a spoof of the James Bond craze, which is why Secret Squirrel goes by the code name Agent 000.

In her very first comic in 1991, Marvel's Squirrel Girl defeated which famous villain?

Doctor Doom. When he trapped her and Iron Man aboard his ship, she set a swarm of squirrels on him and sent him fleeing.

Disney's chipmunks Chip and Dale were named after a famous maker of what?

Furniture. Say the two names together and you get Chippendale, the famous English cabinet-maker: a pun suggested by one of the studio's animators.

On hot days squirrels are often seen 'splooting', which means doing what?

Lying flat on their bellies. Stretched out spread-legged on cool stone or shaded ground, a squirrel lets its body heat drain away, and dogs cool off the same way.

In Norse mythology, the squirrel Ratatoskr runs up and down the world tree carrying what?

Messages. Ratatoskr ferries spiteful gossip between the eagle at the top of the world tree and the dragon gnawing at its roots, keeping the two enemies stirred up.

Black squirrels are commonest in the colder north; how is their dark coat thought to help there?

It keeps them warmer. Black and gray squirrels belong to the same species, and in cold-weather tests the black ones lost less of their body heat.

Twiggy, a famous animal performer, is a gray squirrel who does what?

Water-skis around a pool. The act began as a joke in 1979: teased for playing with his daughter's remote-controlled boat, her owner claimed he was training the pet squirrel to ski behind it.

What do gray squirrels line their leafy nests with to keep warm?

Moss, grass and feathers. In the hardest cold spells even that is not enough, and squirrels that normally live alone squeeze into one nest to share body heat.

A squirrel's front paw has four long digits and a mere stub for which one?

Thumb. That is why a squirrel's tracks in snow show four toes on each front foot but five on each back foot.

California ground squirrels chew up shed rattlesnake skin and then lick themselves to do what?

Smell like a snake. In tests, rattlesnakes were less drawn to squirrel scent once it was mixed with their own, and the females and young most at risk from snakes apply it the most.

A newborn gray squirrel cannot see or hear and is born without which of these?

Fur. A newborn is bare-skinned except for its whiskers, the one kind of hair it is born with, and its eyes stay shut for three weeks or more.

Which squirrel, voiced by Steve Carell, joins the food raids in the film Over the Hedge?

Hammy. After a whole film spent stealing human snacks, he saves the animals' winter by finally finding the nuts he had stored the year before.

Alvin and Simon are two of the singing Chipmunks; who is their third brother?

Theodore. All three were named after bosses at the record company that released their first song, and their creator made the squeaky voices by speeding up his own.

What is a baby squirrel usually called?

A kit. Hungry kits beg their mother for a feed with a soft 'muk-muk' call that sounds like a stifled sneeze.

The town of Olney, Illinois, is famous for its colony of squirrels of which unusual colour?

White. The colony goes back to a pair of albino squirrels that a saloon keeper showed off in his window before they were set free, and volunteers still count their descendants every October.