An international team of scientists from the UK and Japan studied the differences in mental abilities of squirrels living in the wild and in cities. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Animal Ecology (AniEco).
The team observed Eurasian red squirrels, a species that thrives in urban environments, in 11 neighborhoods of the city of Obihiro on the Japanese island of Hokkaido.
The study involved 38 rodents, who were studied to see if they could solve the task of obtaining food from a transparent container.
The researchers found that urban environments in many cases affected squirrels’ performance on generalization and memory tasks at both the population and individual levels, with performance decreasing or increasing depending on the combination of traits.
For example, increased direct and indirect human exposure resulted in decreased performance on generalization or memory tasks at the population level. Increased direct human intervention resulted in faster problem solving at the individual level.
In practical terms, this meant that city squirrels either quickly gave up and abandoned the task or quickly found a solution. The scientists explained this effect by the animals experiencing more stress in the city.
Therefore, some individuals give up more quickly and start looking for food elsewhere, but their relatives show more ingenuity and quickly solve the problems assigned to them.
Earlier scientists First created a mouse with human immunity.