Finally research worth doing

[greenlake]

Like trick-or-treaters sorting their Halloween candy haul, fox squirrels apparently organize their stashes of nuts by variety, quality and possibly even preference, according to new UC Berkeley research.

The study, published today in the Royal Society Open Science journal, is the first to show evidence of squirrels arranging their bounty using “chunking,” a cognitive strategy in which humans and other animals organize spatial, linguistic, numeric or other information into smaller more manageable collections, such as subfolders on a computer.

Fox squirrels stockpile at least 3,000 to 10,000 nuts a year and, under certain conditions, separate each cache into quasi “subfolders,” one for each type of nut, researchers said.

Fox squirrels use ‘chunking’ to organize their favorite nuts | Berkeley News

[greenlake]

How do squirrels think? This Berkeley lab is studying the revered campus rodent to find out

Sounds marginally more useful than one of UC Berkeley's earlier studies....



Berkeley Cares: Squirrels at UC Berkeley appear to have larger than normal balls

[barrydidit]

I thought this was covered off years ago

[shaunbhoy]

That's just nuts..........

[AtW]

How do squirrels think? This Berkeley lab is studying the revered campus rodent to find out



"Squirrels are so ubiquitous, they’re easy to ignore. But Delgado and others at the Jacobs Lab for Cognitive Biology say they’re more than bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; they’re brainy enough to deserve a close look.

The rodents have figured out how to survive for millions of years, adapting on five continents to diverse terrain including tropical rainforests and semiarid deserts. They like nuts and seeds, but they’ll eat bird eggs, tree bark, insects — and, at Berkeley anyway, French fries and chocolate."

How do squirrels think? This Berkeley lab is studying the revered campus rodent to find out - LA Times