From an early age, we are all familiar with illustrations for children's books, which depict a squirrel, usually against the background of a hollow, holding a nut or mushroom in its paws. Well, illustrators are partly right - this is really their favorite food. But is it the only one? So where do the squirrels live and what do they eat?
Squirrels are distributed almost throughout Russia, where forests grow. They live both in the taiga, where conifers mainly grow, and in mixed or broad-leaved forests, trying to arrange their homes in old massifs, since there is more food there. They can also settle in city parks and squares, close to a person, where they are happy to take food from their hands. Most of us are convinced that eating protein is exclusively plant-based. Actually this is not true. In addition to seeds of tree species that make up the main diet of their diet (in coniferous forests these are cone seeds and pine nuts, and in deciduous forests they are beech and hazel nuts, acorns), they eat mushrooms and berries, fruits, and flower buds. They also eat various beetles and butterflies, and, on occasion, can destroy bird nests, while drinking eggs and eating chicks.
Squirrels arrange their homes only on trees. In deciduous forests, they prefer to live in hollows, in which they arrange a soft litter of grass, dry moss, foliage. Animals living in coniferous forests build nests of spherical shape from dry branches, called nests, which are also lined with soft improvised material from the inside. Usually squirrels build up to 15 nests in which they live for 2-3 days, after which they move to a new one, with males and females living separately. In winter cold squirrel rarely leaves its shelter, being there in a state of drowsiness.
In summer and autumn, squirrels build up reserves for the winter by folding food in hollows of trees, cracks in the bark, digging in the roots, and hanging mushrooms on branches. True, they quickly forget about their reserves, finding them later in the winter by accident, by smell, breaking through a tunnel in the snow. It is noted that squirrels usually eat quality products, only inexperienced youth can make a mistake and pick up a worm or rotten nut or mushroom. These unusually mobile animals are remarkable for their striking industriousness regarding harvesting supplies for the winter, producing kilograms of mushrooms, nuts and berries, trying to collect as much as possible as much as possible. Squirrel per day consumes from 80 g of food in spring and summer and up to 35 g in winter.
Squirrels can live in captivity, and due to their cleanliness, they do not require particularly careful care. It is enough to clean the cage three times a week, including removing food supplies. Keep homemade squirrel in a spacious cage or aviary, which must have a wheel. From time to time, an animal can be released by first closing the windows and removing objects that could harm it. Prisoners living in captivity eat nuts (you can’t feed them with almonds!), Acorns, fruits, berries. To make food look like what proteins eat in nature, sometimes they need to be treated with quail eggs and flour worms. Also, vitamins and minerals must be present in the diet.
With good care, a protein living in captivity can live up to 12 years. Under natural conditions, the average life expectancy of these animals is 3.5 years.
