Friday, 16 April 2010

Black Squirrel, Brown Tail

Ark In Space reader Kathleen Connell of East Moline Illinois recently snapped this little guy a black squirrel – with a brown tail.

Out of the squirrel population of the United States and Canada  perhaps only one in ten thousand is black.  However, this is not a separate species in itself.  It is in fact a sub-group of the grey squirrel and, little by little their numbers are growing.  In fact in some areas they outnumber the greys.  However, this black coloring is not a recent trend among the squirrel community – research indicates that in the days before the European settlement of the America the black squirrel was probably much more numerous than the grey.

The question is – how did it get like this?  Does anyone know?  It seems to be a combination of both colour. Answers in the comment section please!

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