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