Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!lll-tis!mordor!amid!lip
From: lip@amid..ARPA (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Squirrel Questions
Message-ID: <22811@mordor.s1.gov>
Date: 28 Sep 88 19:40:27 GMT
Sender: news@mordor.s1.gov
Reply-To: lip@s1-amid.UUCP ()
Organization: Supercomputer R&D Project, LLNL
Lines: 22


	Some questions for anyone knowledgeable:

	I have sometimes seen (back East, in Ithaca) pairs of
squirrels, one chasing the other around. I wonder what this activity
is. Is it one squirrel chasing another one off its territory? I doubt
that, since I have never seen two squirrels confronting each other (do
they actually do that?). Or is it some sort of mating dance? Could it
be that the female squirrel gets into heat, and the male squirrel
smells her pheromones and starts pursuing her, with the two mating
when they finish their peculiar "courtship ritual"?

	I once saw a squirrel jump with a drop of over six feet (onto
a carpeted floor, I might add), and run off as if nothing had
happened. Is such durability typical of small animals? If so, then it
would be an outcome of the square-cube law, in which smaller animals
have a larger drag force (~area~length^2) per unit mass
(~volume~length^3).

-------------
Loren Petrich
lip@and.s1.gov