Posted on 08/17/2019 10:39:20 AM PDT by Daffynition
snip...
Like many animals with unusual color schemes, black squirrels are the result of a genetic detour. Researchers at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge University, and the Virginia Museum of Natural History collaborated on a project that tested squirrel DNA. Their findings, which were published in BMC Evolutionary Biology, demonstrated that the black squirrel is the product of interspecies breeding between the common gray squirrel and the fox squirrel. The black squirrel is actually a gray squirrel with a faulty pigment gene carried over from the fox squirrel that turns their fur a darker shade. (Some fox squirrels, which are usually reddish-brown, are also black.)
(Excerpt) Read more at mentalfloss.com ...
We have a few white squirrels around here. Had some black ones a few years back but they disappeared. Saw them playing near the road and think they got squashed.
I wonder how much this research cost us?
Says the black squirrel at the Gates of Heaven:
“Just one question. Is I a grey squirrel with black pigmentation,
Or is I a black squirrel?”
SAITH THE LORD:
“You are a Black Squirrel.”
There are both black and gray squirrels out here-the gray ones are the more common and hang out in trees. The black ones are a little smaller and live among the scrub, small caves and rocks on limestone cliffs around rivers and lakes, and they are called rock squirrels-the black ones don’t do a lot of tree climbing, and the gray ones don’t hang out on cliffs-I can see where the black squirrels would be uncommon in a city, or any other place without cliffs-it isn’t their preferred habitat...
Aw, Nuts!
orange squirrels WITH purple polka dots GOOD, however
The authors certainly haven't been to SE Michigan. We have thousands of black squirrels. I see them most every day. They've been here quite a while, too. I remember telling my young daughter (now 40) bedtime stories about black squirrels.
They obviously have never been to S.E. Michigan.........
Because they’re getting state aid?
squirrels of privilege
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=UZaVzzaWLMQ
There was a red squirrel (we don’t have red ones) who had man problems. He’d go from laying sprawled out on the top of a metal swing set. Then he’d sprawl on the cooler stair handrail - eww. He was around a couple years. Died of old age or whatever was wrong with his, uh, nuts.
We feed the birds and squirrels by our house in WI and there are several black squirrels that hang around. They didn’t show up here until a few years ago, but I did see one in town about thirty years ago. At the time it was remarkable.
In our little area, we have the dominant grays, their smaller cousins the red fox, and the browns hated by other squirrels and home owners.
The browns travel via the tv/internet thick cables. Once they hit the road or ground the other squirrels go anti-fa against them and even the crows go after them.
About every ten years, we get a black pair. They are very aggressive and territorial. They disappear in 3-4 months.
Did they vote for Buttgeig?
The ones around my yard are golden brown but I saw a dark chocolate colored one recently. So there goes the neighborhood!
Well, I’m not reading the article, but years ago in NYC we said that some of the squirrels were black because they got resinated from the pot we were smoking!
We have tons of black squirrels in my neighborhood here in Sunnyvale, CA.
Here in northern Michigan they are everywhere. It is unusual here to see a gray squirrel.
Fake research. Black squirrels are really gray squirrels. Black is a recessive gene. White squirrels are also gray squirrels. Where I travel for work there are quite a few black squirrels, and now and then a white squirrel. There is a kind of brownish squirrel that is probably a cross between a gray and a red squirrel.
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