Male squirrels caught napping in new study that finds their female counterparts do most of the work

The males may spend time above ground ‘simply to loaf or bask in the sun’

Ian Johnston Science Correspondent

Tuesday 4 October 2016

The males appear to spend hours loafing around in the sun, while the females rush about, gathering supplies and looking after the kids.

Try as you might, it’s hard not to draw comparisons between a new study about the lives of Arctic ground squirrels and human beings.

Researchers fitted tracking devices to the squirrels to monitor their activity and found that the females tended to be significantly more active than the males – although the squirrel with the highest average activity level was male.

But he appears to have been very much out of step with most of his male friends, who were about half as energetic.

Writing in the Royal Society Open Science journal, the US researchers said: “For much of our study, we found that both sexes spent similar amounts of time above ground, but females were consistently more active.

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Braving the cold to understand what makes squirrels tick

Date:

January 5, 2015

Source:

Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB)

Summary:

The circadian clock of arctic ground squirrels works differently during the cold of hibernation, new research shows. Many mammal species in colder climates spend the winter months in torpor, commonly known as hibernation. During this period of torpor, many bodily functions are suppressed to conserve energy, including the daily clock known as the circadian clock. A new study asks the question, do circadian clocks persist throughout torpor?

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Arctic ground squirrels unlock permafrost carbon

17 December 2014 Last updated at 01:22

By Rebecca Morelle Science Correspondent, BBC News, San Francisco

Arctic ground squirrels could play a greater role in climate change than was previously thought.

Scientists have found that the animals are hastening the release of greenhouse gases from the permafrost - a vast, frozen store of carbon.

The researchers say it suggests the impact of wildlife on this area has been underplayed.

The findings are being presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Dr Sue Natali, from Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, US, said: "We know wildlife impacts vegetation, and we know vegetation impacts thaw and soil carbon.

"It certainly has a bigger impact than we've considered and it's something we will be considering more and more going into the future."

The Arctic permafrost, where deep layers of soil remain frozen all year round, covers nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere and contains a great deal of carbon.

Dr Natali explained: "Carbon has been accumulating in permafrost for tens of thousands of years. The temperature is very cold, the soils are saturated, so that when plants and animals die, rather than decompose, the carbon has been slowly, slowly building up.

"Right now the carbon storage is about 1,500 petagrams (1,500 billion tonnes). To put that in perspective, that's about twice as much as is contained in the atmosphere."

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