What squirrels can teach us about leaving a legacy

Hidden jackpots of foods left by elders is a key to success in life, study says

CALGARY— There comes a time in every young red squirrel’s life when they have to strike out on their own — but according to a new study from the University of Alberta, those that inherit food stores from their elders grow up to be much more successful.

In fact, the lucky ones that find stores of pine cones have 50 per cent more offspring than those that don’t.

“It’s just another example that if you can get a bit of a silver spoon … kick or jolt when you first get started in your life, that has big implications for your success in the future,” said Stan Boutin, a University of Alberta biological scientist, and co-author of the study, who has researched red squirrels in the Yukon for more than 35 years. He works on the Kluane Red Squirrel Project, a large-scale field experiment in southwest Yukon that tests the importance of food abundance to the evolution of red squirrels.

The food stores usually come from male, middle-aged squirrels that worked tirelessly to develop these caches before dying. New young squirrels moving into their territory then find them, and defend the stash from interlopers, allowing them time and energy to have more offspring.

Boutin said it’s similar to a person renovating a house, ripping the walls open and finding a stash of money they could use to pay off a mortgage or buy a new car. Once red squirrels hit the pine cone jackpots, it’s nearly impossible to kick them off the territory.

Boutin was surprised at how the work done by squirrels to hoard away food would benefit future generations they’d never meet over and over. Boutin’s study examined food caches that contained an average of about 20,000 cones. One of these supplies was used by 13 different squirrels over 31 years.

The long-term influence of these rodents on their larger red squirrel communities and future generations is just another way their communities can be looked at as parallels to human society, Boutin said.

“People often ask, ‘Well, why squirrels?’ And, really, they’re a great study organism to answer questions about characteristics of individuals who live in northern environments,” he said. “What makes winners and losers in these systems? What is it about the different characteristics that they have that make them do better than their colleagues in the system? Squirrels are perfect for that.”