It’s scary being a little, tasty squirrel, but some species of the rodents have come up with an intimidating camouflage — snake smells.<\/p>\n
California ground squirrels and rock squirrels chew up rattlesnake skin and smear it on their fur to mask their scent, a team at the University of California Davis reported.<\/p>\n
“They’re turning the tables on the snake,” Donald Owings, a professor of psychology who helped lead the research, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Barbara Clucas, a graduate student in animal behavior, watched ground squirrels and rock squirrels chewing up pieces of skin shed by snakes and then licking their fur.<\/p>\n
The scent probably helps to mask the squirrel’s own scent, especially when the animals are asleep in their burrows, they wrote in the journal Animal Behavior.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Maggie Fox: Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and David Wiessler)<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t \t\t \t\t \t\t Copyright \u00a9 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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