whether viewed in person, on flat screen, or computer? Please post. I'm in dire need of an ethology fix.
Dunno which aspects you’re leaning toward but there’s a large swath of ecologists who study the communication of squirrels via their tails. Perhaps that’s of interest to you?
That's the idea but it's disappointing that the scientists didn't offer preliminary opinions: involuntary twitches vis-a-vis actual communication. When the dog barked, the tail was motionless.
That was just something I pulled up on the spur of the moment but whilst I sit on my porch I do watch and listen to the squirrels communicating. I have no doubt that they are indeed communicating with each other but the question remains as to whether said “sign language” is taught or instinctual or a little bit of both. If totally or even partially instinctual then of course we have a case for genetic entanglement but with such a wide variety of signals one does have to wonder how much of it is genetically imprinted and how much of it is taught.
When I first moved here, I would get up at 4:30AM to sit on my deck for an hour or so before getting ready for work. As often as not, he and his friends would stroll by, yapping their heads off for each other. I have night shots of a pair of them eating out of that same ground bird feeder. Here's another resident:
Yeah, but who is the 1st guy. Coyote? Doesn't look like any of the red foxes we have here. (Forgive my ethological ignorance.)
I gotcha. You are likely more knowledgeable on this stuff than I. I just happen to live among them. It's an eastern gray fox. Here's a pic from the web of one taken in a county not far from me:: Here's a slide show that pic was taken from. I've not seen a red fox here, although I've seen them establish a presence in the suburbs. I grabbed this from out state's wildlife website: I can attest to the yapping at dawn, but have never seen a fox climb a tree.
I didn't realize that there was any fox in the east other than the reds. Interesting. But sure enough, they're around here as well as the reds per further research shows.
They look like scruffy red fox, huh? I understand that there are plenty of coyote here, but I had half a dozen game cameras set up for the first few years I was here and never got a single pic of one. Just once around dusk I saw one at the waayyyy far end of the yard at the edge of the woods, and that sucker saw me inside my house through the patio doors (and I was 6 feet inside the house), and it bolted. Others here claim to have seen their share of them. I've seen cell phone vids of bobcat playing at the base of a tree while the guy was in a tree stand hunting deer, but I've never seen one myself. Regarding the fox: here's a pair at night eating from that bird feeder. Someone got lucky on my dime I read that they only dine together when they're mating. Make of that what you will. Keep in mind that this is right at the front of my house...maybe 10 feet from the front porch. I set this up to try to catch ground feeding birds that might be too skittish to be around when I was home. (I got plenty of bird pics.)