Differences between the Actions of Squirrels in an Urban and a Natural Environment
Introduction: In this research project the actions of the Easter Grey Squirrel () was observed in two different environments. The Eastern Grey Squirrel was chosen to be observed because it is one of the most common types of Squirrels in the Midwest. The Eastern Grey Squirrel has a number of predators including humans, foxes, hawks, and even owls. This is why it remains vigilant during the day, keeping a close eye on everything that moves and scurries off when something gets too close. A close eye was also kept on the other, everyday activities of the squirrel. These activities included scavenging for food and playing.
Vigilance is defined as “Head is above …show more content…
This was done between the hours of 7 and 10 am because this was a period of the day where they were very active. During these periods there where several things that were observed and written down. The first thing that was recorded was the amount of time each squirrel assumed to be vigilant, playing, or foraging. The second thing that was recorded was the amount of squirrels seen each day. Some pictures were taken, and after our three day period was complete, we ran our data through excel to find out the statistics and a graph was constructed to represent the data.
Results: After all of the data had been collected we realized that we did not have a very large sample size. The sample size consisted of thirteen squirrels total, seven being on campus and six being in the park. Another part of our data collection that fell a little short was the actual time the squirrels were observed, for each squirrel was supposed to be observed for thirty minutes, but that proved a very difficult task while trying to remain as low profile as …show more content…
So this shows that squirrels have, in a way, adapted to living in urban environments and closer to people in that they are slightly less afraid and tend to spend less time vigilant. An experiment conducted by Christopher A. Cooper had very similar trends: “Alert distance in the habitat with higher levels of human activity was significantly shorter than the alert distance in the habitat with lower levels of human activity”(Cooper et al., 2008). His research was conducted at a campus as well and three different locations were used, with varying levels of human activity and trees. An ANOVA test was used in that experiment because there was three sources of data, but he also calculated some p-values to go along with it which were greater than 0.05 as well. This shows that it is difficult to perform this research on a campus and come out with a p-value in the respected range. This is believed to be because of the limited area and high levels of human interaction with the
Introduction: In this research project the actions of the Easter Grey Squirrel () was observed in two different environments. The Eastern Grey Squirrel was chosen to be observed because it is one of the most common types of Squirrels in the Midwest. The Eastern Grey Squirrel has a number of predators including humans, foxes, hawks, and even owls. This is why it remains vigilant during the day, keeping a close eye on everything that moves and scurries off when something gets too close. A close eye was also kept on the other, everyday activities of the squirrel. These activities included scavenging for food and playing.
Vigilance is defined as “Head is above …show more content…
This was done between the hours of 7 and 10 am because this was a period of the day where they were very active. During these periods there where several things that were observed and written down. The first thing that was recorded was the amount of time each squirrel assumed to be vigilant, playing, or foraging. The second thing that was recorded was the amount of squirrels seen each day. Some pictures were taken, and after our three day period was complete, we ran our data through excel to find out the statistics and a graph was constructed to represent the data.
Results: After all of the data had been collected we realized that we did not have a very large sample size. The sample size consisted of thirteen squirrels total, seven being on campus and six being in the park. Another part of our data collection that fell a little short was the actual time the squirrels were observed, for each squirrel was supposed to be observed for thirty minutes, but that proved a very difficult task while trying to remain as low profile as …show more content…
So this shows that squirrels have, in a way, adapted to living in urban environments and closer to people in that they are slightly less afraid and tend to spend less time vigilant. An experiment conducted by Christopher A. Cooper had very similar trends: “Alert distance in the habitat with higher levels of human activity was significantly shorter than the alert distance in the habitat with lower levels of human activity”(Cooper et al., 2008). His research was conducted at a campus as well and three different locations were used, with varying levels of human activity and trees. An ANOVA test was used in that experiment because there was three sources of data, but he also calculated some p-values to go along with it which were greater than 0.05 as well. This shows that it is difficult to perform this research on a campus and come out with a p-value in the respected range. This is believed to be because of the limited area and high levels of human interaction with the