Eastern Gray Squirrel

MK

8-27-11

Eastern Gray Squirrel

The eastern gray squirrel is the most common squirrel on the east coast, numerically. Gray squirrels are also known as black squirrels, Carolina gray squirrels, cat squirrels, migratory squirrels, silvertails or timber squirrels. Gray squirrels tend to be larger in the north than in the south. While not as large as the fox squirrel, the gray can weigh up to two pounds in weight and be as long as twenty-one inches in the north. In the South, they would normally be half of that weight. Gray squirrels in the North grow heavy fur on their ears and the bottoms of their feet during winter to help them stay warm. A gray squirrel has a coat made up of two type of hair. The fur is curly, fine and short and used to keep it warm in the cold winter. While the guard hairs are long, white and protect the fur. Their colors are a mixture of black, gray, and light-to-dark brown in a salt and pepper pattern. Their bellies and under legs are white to light gray light in color as is their tail. Individual specimens can be all black, all gray or all white. The long, white guard hair on the tail gives some of them a frosty or silver appearance and the name of silvertail.

Gray squirrels are more agile in trees than fox squirrels. They have several adaptations for living in the forests. They have parallax vision which is the slight distance that the eyes are separated and allows a squirrel to judge distances when jumping and squirrels can jump eighteen feet with their strong rear legs. Squirrels have color vision but are blue and yellow colorblind. They can see details very well and have the ability to recognize individual squirrels several yards away. The gray squirrel’s toes, which are longer and more flexible than a fox squirrel’s toes, are better for clinging to vertical surfaces. Some animals can only climb trees that they can get their limbs around but a squirrel can climb any tree no matter how large and when descending, the back legs can rotate one hundred and eighty degrees to allow the sharp, rear claws to hook into the bark. This allows the squirrel to be quite agile and move very rapidly in the trees even going down a tree headfirst. The gray squirrel develop habits, they will use the same trails on a regular basis to run rapidly through the trees.

A gray’s tail is not as plush or as long as a fox squirrels tail. The gray squirrel uses its tail as a shield when fighting, steering and balancing when running in the trees, as a blanket when cold or for shade when it’s hot. The movement and position of a squirrel’s tail can signal anger, curiosity, excitement, fear, and playfulness. If a gray squirrel’s tail has stripes it means that the squirrel is still young, adult gray squirrels don’t have stripes.

The Grey Squirrels have grown adapt at surviving in the eastern forests and will live longer than other squirrels that are not as adapted as them.