A Taste for Flesh

Here’s a new idea for a horror movie: Flesh-eating squirrels.

California ground squirrels, long considered harmless nut-hoarders, have shocked scientists who have recently discovered the arboreal rodents’ carnivorous tendencies.

A research team recently documented these rodents hunting, killing, and feasting on voles, a behavior previously unseen in this species.

“This was shocking,” said lead author Jennifer Smith of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in a statement. “Squirrels are one of the most familiar animals to people.”

Smith and her colleagues conducted their study at Briones Regional Park in California during the summer of 2024. They recorded 74 squirrel-vole interactions, writing that 42 percent of them involved active hunting. Observations peaked in early July, coinciding with a population explosion of voles, suggesting that the squirrels seized the opportunity for a protein-packed feast.

“From then, we saw that behavior almost every day,” co-author Sonja Wild noted. “Once we started looking, we saw it everywhere.”

The squirrels employed surprising hunting tactics, such as chasing, pouncing, and killing by biting the voles’ necks.

And they weren’t picky when it came to what they ate: The squirrels consumed their prey’s flesh, organs, and cartilage, the Washington Post noted.

Such dietary flexibility, experts believe, could help the squirrels adapt to rapidly changing environments.

“The fact that California ground squirrels are behaviorally flexible and can respond to changes in food availability might help them persist in environments rapidly changing due to the presence of humans,” Wild explained in the same statement.

While squirrels have occasionally scavenged or preyed on small animals in the past, this level of active hunting was unprecedented. The findings raise questions about whether hunting behavior is learned or instinctual and its potential ecological impacts.

“Because it’s so foreign to us, it seems, like, super crazy,” Cory Williams, a Colorado State University biologist uninvolved in the study, told the Post. “But it’s one of those things when you’ve got a species out there that can take advantage of something like this, you know, they will do so.”

With plans to return to the field next summer, the authors are eager to discover whether this behavior is a one-time response or the start of a carnivorous trend among squirrels.