As part of an ongoing 12-year study of California ground squirrels at Briones Regional Park in Contra Costa County, researchers last summer watched as squirrels began to chase — and eat — voles, a cousin of field mice.
This suggests squirrels are much more opportunistic in their diets than previously realized, wrote the authors of the study, published Wednesday in the Journal of Ethology. Squirrels typically eat acorns, seeds, nuts and fruit, but are known to occasionally eat fresh carrion or roadkill, insects, eggs or other discarded food…
A video released by researchers shows a ground squirrel grabbing a vole by the neck and shaking it — clear predatory behavior meant to quickly kill prey… A boom in the local vole population — tracked by the crowdsourcing website iNaturalist — might have led the squirrels to take advantage of an available source of prey.
DB2