Red Squirrel eating seeds from a spruce cone
- Seeds of Sitka spruce are small, averaging 210,000 per pound. Seeds ripen in southeast Alaska during late August or early September, and dispersal usually begins in October.
- The seeds of Sitka spruce are a favorite food of red squirrels.
- This video shows a red squirrel extracting and eating the tiny seeds from a Sitka spruce cone.
- Each seed has an outer covering that the squirrel removes before eating the seed.
- This squirrel puts the seed with its covering on top of the cone it is holding (actually it is the bottom of the cone)
- It then extracts the seed from its covering before eating it.
- Usually a squirrel can extract and eat all the seeds from a spruce cone in around 3.5 minutes. This one took a little longer because it wanted to show us its technique.
- Why do red squirrels go to all this trouble to extract and eat these tiny seeds?
- Specific caloric value of spruce seed kernels averages about 27 kJ/g dry weight so I suspect eating a large number of these seeds provides them with sufficient calories.
- To see what a Sitka spruce seed looks like up close and its size go to photos and in the search box type spruce seeds.
Red Squirrel eating seeds from a spruce cone from Bob Armstrong on Vimeo.
Sub Category:
Squirrels