Grey Squirrels
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40 free Grey Squirrels trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The eastern gray squirrel is the animal most people picture when they hear the word squirrel. It raids bird feeders, buries food all over the garden and somehow finds most of it again. Known simply as the grey squirrel in Britain and Ireland, it is also one of the best-studied invasive mammals anywhere. This quiz turns the best fun facts about grey squirrels into multiple-choice questions: how they climb, nest and communicate, what they really eat, why some are black or white, and how a North American native ended up in woods and gardens across the Atlantic. A few famous individual squirrels make an appearance too. It suits backyard wildlife watchers, students, teachers planning a nature lesson and anyone who has ever lost a staring contest with a squirrel on a fence. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Twiggy, an eastern gray squirrel act that debuted in Florida in 1979, is famous for which stunt?
Water-skiing
Water-skiing made Twiggy world news after a Florida couple who ran a roller rink trained their orphaned pet behind a remote-controlled boat. A string of successor squirrels has kept the act going for decades.
Q 02What trick does an eastern gray squirrel use when it senses another animal watching it hide food?
Pretend to bury it
Pretend to bury it is the ruse: the squirrel digs a hole, mimes dropping the nut in and covers the spot, all with the food still tucked in its mouth.
Q 03The eastern gray squirrel can climb down a tree head-first by rotating which body part to point backward?
Hind feet
Hind feet that swivel until the claws point backward let the eastern gray squirrel hang on while facing the ground, a trick very few mammals can manage.
Q 04A 2006 British campaign to save red squirrels urged the public to do what with grey squirrels?
Eat them
Eat them was the message: the Save Our Squirrels campaign pushed grey squirrel meat to restaurants and butchers, with celebrity chefs and new cookbook recipes behind it.
Q 05The eastern gray squirrel's genus name, Sciurus, comes from two Greek words that together mean what?
Shadow tail
Shadow tail is the usual reading of Sciurus, from the Greek skia and oura, thought to picture a squirrel sitting in the shade of its own raised tail.
Q 06Tommy Tucker, an eastern gray squirrel who sold war bonds on 1940s tours, was famous for wearing what?
Women's clothing
Women's clothing was Tommy Tucker's trademark because his owner found dresses easier to fit around a bushy tail. At the height of his fame his fan club had some 30,000 members.
Q 07US doctors have warned against eating which part of a squirrel for fear of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease?
The brain
The brain is the one part doctors flagged, even though gray squirrel meat has been eaten since Native American times and is still popular with hunters across North America.
Q 08Peanut, an eastern gray squirrel and Instagram star, was seized and euthanized in 2024 by which US state?
New York
New York wildlife officers took Peanut for rabies testing, which came back negative. The outcry that followed led lawmakers to introduce a bill aimed at preventing a repeat.
Q 09Eastern gray squirrels often remove an acorn's embryo before burying it, to stop the nut from doing what?
Sprouting
Sprouting would use up the acorn's stored nutrients, so the squirrel disables the seed first and keeps its buried meal intact for months.
Q 10What is the name for the leaf-and-twig nest an eastern gray squirrel builds in a tree fork?
Drey
Drey is the word for a squirrel's leaf nest, which is lined with moss, dried grass and feathers to hold in heat.
Q 11Why do eastern gray squirrels gnaw on bones, antlers and turtle shells?
To get minerals
To get minerals is the likely reason, since bone, antler and shell supply nutrients that a diet of nuts, seeds and buds is short of.
Q 12An eastern gray squirrel flicking its tail while giving a sharp kuk call is usually signalling what?
A predator nearby
A predator nearby is the usual message, and the same tail flicks and calls also announce when the danger is leaving the area.
Q 13Which winter survival strategy, used by many other squirrels, does the eastern gray squirrel skip?
Hibernation
Hibernation is not part of the eastern gray squirrel's year: it stays active, living on buried food and sometimes huddling with others in one nest during cold spells.
Q 21The eastern gray squirrel's species name honors which American region, where it was first recorded?
The Carolinas
The Carolinas give the species its Latin name, carolinensis, and the animal is still extremely common there.
Q 22Black squirrels common around the Great Lakes are usually eastern gray squirrels showing which genetic trait?
Melanism
Melanism comes from a variant pigment gene: one copy gives a brown-black coat, two copies a jet-black one, and two gray parents cannot produce black offspring.
Q 23Compared with gray-coated ones, black eastern gray squirrels show what advantage in freezing weather?
Lower heat loss
Q 14Which teeth of the eastern gray squirrel, as in all rodents, keep growing throughout its life?
Incisors
Incisors never stop growing in any rodent, a trait called indeterminate growth. The eastern gray squirrel's other teeth are low-crowned cheek teeth, for 22 in all.
Q 15A newborn eastern gray squirrel, born blind, pink and hairless, is known by which name?
Kit
Kit is one name for a newborn squirrel, alongside kitten and pup. Its eyes stay shut for at least three weeks after birth.
Q 16Eastern gray squirrels may help spread the spores of which prized fungi by digging them up and eating them?
Truffles
Truffles are among the forest fungi eastern gray squirrels dig up and eat, and the spores they carry off may help the fungus reach new ground.
Q 17Grey squirrels damage British woodland by stripping what from beech and sycamore trees?
Bark
Bark is torn away so the squirrel can eat the soft tissue underneath, which weakens branches and lets infections into the tree.
Q 18Grey squirrels harm Britain's red squirrels partly by carrying what, which rarely hurts them but kills the reds?
A pox virus
A pox virus called squirrelpox rides along harmlessly in most greys, but red squirrels have no immunity and usually die within two weeks of infection.
Q 19Which native predator's comeback in Ireland has been credited with reducing invasive grey squirrel numbers?
Pine marten
Pine marten numbers are recovering in Ireland, and where they return the greys retreat while red squirrels, which evolved alongside the hunter, bounce back.
Q 20Eastern gray squirrels are often confused with which larger relative that has a brownish-orange belly?
Fox squirrel
Fox squirrel territory overlaps much of the gray's native range, and it is the largest tree squirrel native to North America.
Lower heat loss, about 18 percent less in tests at −10 °C, may help explain why the black coat is most common in the colder north of the species' range.
Q 24Washington, D.C.'s black squirrels descend from eighteen animals brought in the early 1900s from which country?
Canada
Canada supplied them: eighteen black squirrels sent from Ontario were set loose in the grounds of the National Zoo in 1902 and 1906.
Q 25Which cereal pioneer reportedly released some 400 eastern gray squirrels in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1915?
John Harvey Kellogg
John Harvey Kellogg wanted to restock a town whose squirrels had been wiped out by predators and hunters, and the black ones among his imports still color Battle Creek's population.
Q 26Grey squirrels were first brought to Britain in the 1870s to serve what purpose?
Estate ornaments
Estate ornaments were the idea: the American squirrels arrived as fashionable additions to grand country grounds, then spread rapidly across England and into Wales.
Q 27Which country received continental Europe's first grey squirrels, released at Stupinigi in 1948?
Italy
Italy still hosts that growing population, and ecologists fear it could cross the Alps into France and Switzerland and open the rest of the continent to the species.
Q 28Which country once had introduced eastern gray squirrels but saw them vanish completely by 1973?
Australia
Australia is the rare place where the eastern gray squirrel failed: populations introduced around the turn of the 20th century were extirpated by 1973.
Q 29Seven pairs of eastern gray squirrels were released in 1925 into Woodland Park in which West Coast city?
Seattle
Seattle's squirrels spread from the park around Green Lake to Lake Washington and then across the state, where they are linked to declines in the native western gray squirrel.
Q 30Which Ohio university holds an annual festival honoring the black squirrels released on its campus in 1961?
Kent State
Kent State began with just ten black squirrels, a number reported to have reached 150 within three years, and a statue of one now stands on campus.