Exploring the Secret Underground Life of California Ground Squirrels!

​California grounds squirrels are super cool for so many reasons! 🐿Here are two of my favorite fun facts about  this species:

(1.) They are semi-fossorial, this means that they live both above and below ground.

(2.) They are ecosystem engineers, this is a special title given to species that make changes to their habitats that can have large impacts on other species. The burrows ground squirrels dig provide homes  for  lots of other California native wildlife like burrowing owls and rattle snakes. 🦉🐍

​Scientists know a lot about how the burrows created by ground squirrels help improve the lives of the other species of mammals, birds, and insects that call these burrows home or use them to find food. 

However, we know a lot less about what these underground burrow networks look like and if there are differences between how squirrels build and use this secretive space. 

Over the summer I paired up with expert Squirrel Gazer Dr. Jennifer Smith 🐿👀 to track the underground pathways taken by California ground squirrels using motion sensing collars. 

Dr. Smith is a professor at Mills College in Oakland, California. She has established a long-term study population of wild ground squirrels at Briones Regional Park. Check out her website to learn more about her amazing squirrel science and team of undergraduate squirrel gazers 🎓🐿!

We outfitted squirrels with small motion sensing collars that collected data as squirrels moved through their environment. 

​These collars used accelerometers, magnetometers, and gyroscopes to measure different aspects of a squirrel's motion. These sensors are similar to the ones in our cell phones and smart watches that help us measure how far and fast we have traveled or flip the orientation of our screens when we turn our phone from vertical to horizontal. 
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Here is Diva the California ground squirrel modeling her collar for
​Dr. Smith during our data collection in July. 

Each morning a squirrel would get equipped with a collar and released back into the park. A researcher would then follow the squirrel for 3 hours and record each behavior the squirrel performed! In Squirrel Gazing Science 🐿🔬 this is called a "Focal Follow".
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Some observed behaviors included: 

​Climbing

Socializing

Foraging

Sleeping

Now back in the lab we can use the data collected by the collars and the researchers in the field during the focal follows to build computer models that can use the distance traveled by a squirrel, its speed, and direction to create 3D maps of the underground pathways taken by squirrels! 
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To find out more about this project check out this super awesome blog post from the
​Save the Mount Diablo Foundation!  ⛰

​Save the Mount Diablo Foundation is an amazing conservation organization whose financial support allowed us to purchase the squirrel monitoring collars.