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 ...
Or northern Mi. They are everywhere here.
We have predominately grey squirrels in Queens, but we have been seeing black squirrels for the past couple of years. The first black squirrels I ever saw were in Toronto, about 20 years ago.
We have white squirrels in my neighborhood..should I feel guilty? Our Black Lab recently chased a white squirrel...is that a hate crime?
We have several black squirrels about here. First one I saw... i thought it was a cat... until it ran up a phone pole and down the wires.
I wanted to do a video of my yorkie terrorists morphing into mini werewolves. I got the vision, just not the talent.
Squirrels are super territorial.
Orange squirrel bad.
Yes. But orange squirrel with purple polka dots.....good
That’s the famous pit pull black squirrel.
The only black squirrels I’ve ever seen are the rock squirrels, and only out in the country-the few times I’ve lived in a city, I’ve only seen the gray ones-I live in a remote rural area and there are both gray and black squirrels-the black ones only live on the cliffs over the river-they don’t get grabbed by the hawks as much as the gray squirrels do-probably because they live under the cliffs and tree canopy and are harder for birds of prey to spot and dive down on-hawks like to hunt prey on open ground...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.