Eurasian Red Squirrel.
In a rapidly changing world, it may not take much for a species to find itself being pushed over the edge.
Look at the Red Squirrel in the U.K., for example.
This is a gorgeous little animal, but it lives almost exclusively on pine nuts, hazels nuts, beech nuts and chestnuts.
It never eats acorns.
No problem so long as it has no direct competitor vying for its ecological niche.
But competition arrived in the 19th Century, when a few Gray Squirrels were imported from North America.
Suddenly, the Red Squirrel had a competitor, but a competitor with a difference.
You see, Gray Squirrels will not only eat pine nuts, hazelnuts, beech nuts, and chestnuts, but they also love acorns as well.
And so in years when pine nuts are in decline, Gray Squirrels have prevailed over the Red, and in those years when acorns are in decline, Gray Squirrel have competed head-to-head with Red Squirrels for pine nuts, but from a slightly higher numerical base than in years before, and with a bit more of the forest under their control.
And so, inexorably, a tipping point has occurred, and the Red Squirrel is now in steep decline all over Great Britain except for Scotland, where pines trees still prevail and oaks are relatively rare.
North American Gray Squirrel
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5 comments:
There are more than 100,000 reds in Scotland now, so NO they are not going to go extinct.
On mainland Europe, however, look for their numbers to begin slowly falling in those areas with deciduous forest, as Gray Squirrels are now in Italy and slowly expanding their range as they as did in the UK. There are some reports of Gray Squirrel introduction in Spain as well.
P.
The first I heard of this was on Gordon Ramsey's program "The F Word". They were trying to launch a movement to popularize the eating of grey squirrels because of the dominance over the native red. Though they took to the streets with tiny grey squirrel drumsticks (cooked!) in hand, I'm not certain it was catching on. They are having a similar problem with our crayfish taking over their creek banks, since ours are larger and more aggressive than the native species.
Seahorse
There has to be a T-shirt in there somewhere:
"Americans are eating our nuts and robbing our banks"
.... or something like that.
We definitely need more provoctive invasive species T-shirts.
P
LOL, I'd buy one! I refrained from implying that the Brit species were wussies, in part because their Squirrel Nutkin is cuter than our little scourge, and eating crayfish is ridiculous when we have the fabulous Maryland Blue Crab. Hmmmm...maybe we should market a pro-Maryland t-shirt that says "Kiss me, I have crabs!"
Seahorse---> silly ;)
It's the opposite here in California- the red squirrels (which here do eat acorns) are squeezing out the native grey squirrels. My dogs like either...
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