All the squirrels that I am featuring today are Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis). Although my focus is going to be on unusually colored squirrels, lets start by taking a look at some normally colored ones. I believe that these squirrels look gray because their fur includes a random mixture of black and white hairs. There are brown hairs, too, but the amount of brown varies greatly among individuals. Nonetheless you can count on the underside of a gray squirrel being white.
The squirrel below is also a normally colored eastern gray squirrel, but it has a lot more brown hairs in its coat.
Although the ring-tailed squirrel shown in the topmost photo may look like the illicit love child of a raccoon and a squirrel, it is an eastern gray squirrel. Apparently the black and white hairs in its tail aren’t mixed together in the random fashion that is typical of gray squirrels; instead it looks like the white hairs are lined up with other white hairs and the black hairs are lined up with other black hairs, hence the rings. This little guy was a regular visitor to my bird feeder for a while. Interestingly the ring-tailed effect depended on the point of view. When seen from one angle the rings appeared distinctly, but when seen from other angles they seemed to fade away. I can only guess that the rings were part of this squirrel’s genetic make-up. Here’s another look at this odd coloration.
Some gray squirrels lack the white hairs that make the gray squirrel look gray. These are melanistic squirrels and they come in two varieties: pure black vs. black and brown. The pure black squirrels only occur when there is a mutation present in two genes, so it would seem to be a recessive trait. The black-brown varieties have the same mutation, but it’s only present on a single gene. The black coloration appears to offer these squirrels a survival advantage for in cold climates. According to the University of Michigan, black squirrels lose 18% less of their body heat when temperature fall below -10 degrees centigrade.
Although I never see black squirrels where I live in Central Ohio, these squirrels are plentiful around Kent State University (located near Akron, Ohio). According to KentOhio.net, with the permission of American and Canadian Customs, individuals at Kent State University imported a number of black squirrels from Canada in the early 1960s. Today these black squirrels are the dominant squirrels in Kent, and their population has spread to the greater northeastern region of Ohio. The following photos of black squirrels were taken at Kent State University.
The people of Kent State University love their distinctive, black squirrels. The campus has celebrated them by erecting a statue in their honor.
And that brings up to our last color variant: white eastern gray squirrels. Although people often assume that any white squirrel is an albino, most of these white squirrels lack the pink eyes essential to albinism. These dark-eyed, white squirrels are actually leucistic. Note the dark eyes in the squirrel below.
The following squirrel has pink eyes, so it is an albino. It’s a bit hard to see against the snow; click on the photo if you’d like to see a close-up of the squirrel.
Although the white coloration camouflages the squirrel during the winter, the same white makes the squirrel stick out like a sore thumb once the snow melts. I was standing on a hill when I spotted the following white squirrel in the valley below.
Naturalists believe that white squirrels are more prevalent near urban areas since fewer predators mean that their easy visibility doesn’t endanger them as it would in a wilder area. In Central Ohio I have seen them at two Columbus Metro Parks (Inniswood and Chestnut Ridge). I’ve also seen them in Delaware County at Hogback Ridge Preservation Park.
Here’s a nice contrast between two differently colored, eastern gray squirrels. Below the photo is a short video of this same white squirrel scavenging for food hidden in the mulch.
- Tree squirrel, published at Wikipedia (includes a discussion of white and albino squirrels)
- Eastern Gray Squirrels, published at Wikipedia
- Black squirrel, published at Wikipedia
- We’re Nuts About Black Squirrels, published by KentOhio.net
- Sciurus carolinensis, published by the University of Michigan under their “Animal Diversity Web”
- Leucism, published at Wikipedia (animals who are white, or partially white, but don’t have pink eyes)
- Albinism, published at Wikipedia