RODENT – Small but mighty, discover the world of rodents with us.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Gray squirrels’ damage to Britain’s forests

Invasive gray squirrels are physically stronger than red squirrels and have greater adaptability and foraging ability. Once gray squirrels are present in an area, the red squirrels in that area will slowly disappear. Take acorns for example, in North America gray squirrels in the digestive system, there is a special enzyme, able to directly digest those hard green nuts; but red squirrels cannot, they must wait until the acorns become soft, from green to fully mature brown, before eating.

This means: as soon as there are more gray squirrels, the red squirrels have nothing to eat. They even steal the red squirrels’ food stash. Those stockpiles that the red squirrels have buried will be plowed out without mercy by the sniffing intruders.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Gray squirrels digging for treasure

It’s a real tragedy that not only do they have nothing to eat, but the food they have stored will also be stolen, and all the red squirrels can do is move on. But the threat to the gray squirrels doesn’t stop there. They carry a squirrel parapoxvirus, a disease that has little effect on them but is fatal to the red squirrels.

This type of transmitted disease is enough to “wipe out” the red squirrel family. Gray squirrels are able to transmit the virus from their scent glands to red squirrels via feces, urine, scent markers, and even fleas. In the days that follow, the red squirrels will begin to weep profusely until they develop fluid sores on their feet and face. After several weeks of infection, the organism dies and the virus continues to spread through the colony.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: The Almond Butter Thief

By the time the British realized the seriousness of the invasive gray squirrel problem, it was a little too late. Since January 2006, the British government has been hunting the huge numbers of gray squirrels. But the actual efficiency has not matched the rate at which they are breeding. Often, within weeks of doing the removals, the gray squirrel population returns to pre-hunting levels.

When physical hunting failed, British experts took a different direction and began urging people to “eat” their way out of the problem. This reasonable sounding approach was echoed by many Britons, who came up with the slogan: “Eat a grey, save red.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Squirrel meat in British supermarkets

But the era of face value is justice has not yet passed, “Gray squirrel is so cute, how can you eat it?” The invasive species gray squirrels have attracted a large number of fans and supporters because of their cute and cuddly appearance. When experts suggested eating them, it was even more controversial, with protests being sent letter after letter to the government.

BBC TV, under pressure and in an effort to make squirrel meat acceptable for consumption in the UK, even cooked the squirrels live on its evening program. The result was that the controversy not only didn’t stop, but became even bigger, and people started cursing the BBC along with it. Brits who can’t eat end up overestimating their ability to create food.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Controversial program on BBC TV

This red squirrel vs gray squirrel war continues, but the red squirrel is in a big way. According to the Red Squirrel Survival Trust, which predicts that if the red squirrel population doesn’t rebound as expected within the next 10 years, the species could become completely extinct in the UK. Flame tail, where to go from here?

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: The Knights of the Red Pine

Fortunately, in this Terra Grande, the red squirrels, in addition to waiting for extinction, there exists another survival option: leave. As described in the game plot, under the indirect effect of the gray millimeter family, Flame tail infected with ore disease, she chose to leave her hometown.

Flame tail has taken it upon herself to form an order of infected knights: the Red Pines. Why are they called “Red Pines”? There may be two answers: red squirrels and red pine trees. The Red Squirrels, as I’m sure I don’t need to explain any further, are Flame tail’s way of honoring the people who belonged to her tribe, the tribe that was on the verge of extinction and was forced to leave their homeland. Here we will mainly talk about the second imagery, the red squirrel tree.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Red squirrels storing food

Red squirrels, their favorite food, pine nuts. As mentioned above, they can’t eat acorns like gray squirrels, so pine nuts are their favorite. In the fall, after filling their stomachs, they bury the collected pine nuts in a mud pit and cover it with soil. This is their little “treasure”.

At the same time, the red squirrels have another characteristic: poor memory. After they have happily hidden their treasures, they basically cannot find their buried winter pine nuts the next spring. The squirrels forget the “treasure”, soon after the growth of red pine seedlings. Therefore, the red squirrels inadvertently become the forest’s “seeder”, promoting the renewal of the red pine forest.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Red squirrels feeding on pine nuts

This storage behavior is of great importance to the forest ecosystem, as the seeds that are not found by the squirrels become new plants in the forest, especially in the red pines, whose only natural regeneration depends on the squirrels and other animals burying and spreading them. Therefore, the name of her order is “Red Pine”, a symbol of the beauty and resilience of the magnificent plants on which she has built her life and on which she has built each other.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Red Squirrel’s Mansion

In the real world, British parks protect red squirrels by giving them their own “mansions”. The large-scale introduction of pine martens may have brought a silver lining to the war between red and gray. Hopefully, the Flame tail on Terra will do the same and make Rhode Island its new home and become the new “Red Pine”.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel

Today, we’re going to talk about two members of Casimir’s camp at the same time, Flame tail and Gray Squirrel. Neither of them directly reveals the spirit behind them, cutting off our first clue. However, the first thing you notice in their drawings are their large, fluffy tails. This external feature is not surprising if it is on a Rupert Dryad like Provence or Red, but it is worth drawing our attention to here.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Zarak’s large tail

Since the race of both Flame Tail and Gray Hair: Zarak, this becomes our biggest clue. Corresponding to the real-life Zarak cadres of the Rodent Purpose, the tails are almost always long and thin, including not only Kada, Scavenger, and Gravel, but also Lin Yuxia and the Rat King in the episode.

The only exception is Fade, who is the only one with a big fluffy tail like these two newer Dryads. By following up on this clue, we can narrow it down further from the rodent order derived from Zarak to: the squirrel family. Combine this with the code names “Flame tail” and “Grey Hair”, the color of their tails, and their various connections in the game, and the answer is clear: Red Squirrels and Grey Squirrels are their archetypal counterparts.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Grey Hair

The “Grey Hair” Knight, Grenadier, is based on the North American Grey Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis). The cadre code name “Gray Hair” refers to the gray fur, which is the most distinctive appearance of the gray squirrel. A squirrel native to the eastern and midwestern United States, they are plump and agile. They often scurry up and down trees. The fur is mainly gray in color, and the tail is large and hairy, which matches the image of the Gray Hair in the isograph.

North American Gray Squirrel

Gray squirrels were originally loved by the world as “little cute”. However, people’s love for animals must be based on the premise that there are not many of them. Once the population starts to overflow, this love will turn into disgust and eventually into a threat. Today, gray squirrels are everywhere on the west coast and in cities across North America. On tree branches, in the streets, on garbage cans, and even stealing peanut butter from your home.

Sona, the “flame tail” rider, is based on the Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris). If you want to be more specific, it belongs to the British subspecies, which gets its name from its beautiful red fur. Their large, bright red, fluffy tails resemble a flaming flame, hence Sona’s moniker, “Flaming Tail”.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Flaming Tail

A red squirrel’s tail is more than just a decoration. It’s almost as long as their bodies, and it helps them keep their balance even as they run quickly through the trees. Also, at the end of the fall season, Eurasian red squirrels develop a tuft of long hair on the tip of their ears called an ear tuft, which is unique to Eurasian red squirrels. If we take a closer look at Flame tail’s sketch, we can also find her “ear tufts”:

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Flame tail’s ear tufts

Red squirrels have a great face value. Depending on the season and where they are, their fur is different colors, not just bright red. The color of the head and back evolves from light red and brown to bright red, dark red, and even black, with the exception of the chest and abdomen, which remain creamy white.

Creamy white belly of the red squirrel

As a tree-dwelling omnivorous rodent, the red squirrel is not uncommon in Eurasia, and can even be said to be widely distributed throughout the cold temperate forests therein. In the UK, however, the situation is not encouraging. Their numbers, which are indigenous to the original inhabitants, have been declining inexorably in recent years.

This time it’s not because of poaching, not because of human greed, but a threat from another species: the gray squirrel. In just over a hundred years since the gray squirrel appeared in Britain, the entire population of red squirrels has gone from being a thriving population to one that is struggling to keep the race alive.

The war between red squirrel vs grey squirrel

This is a war between furry. As early as in the archives of the Flame Tail, we detected a hint of it. One of them is a description from a member of the “Red Pine Knights”, Wild Mane, which conveys a lot of information: “I can sense something between them, but when they talk about the past, it’s just about Grenadier’s former knight family’s shame to Sona, and so on, and I’ve never heard them say anything more than that. “Grey Hair Grenadier’s family was once ashamed of Flame Tail Sona.

Red Squirrel vs Gray Squirrel: Flame tail’s archives

The story implied here is the reality of this very feud: the invasion of England by gray squirrel creatures that put the survival of the indigenous red squirrels in jeopardy. In the 1870s, the gray squirrels were introduced to Britain as decorative garden pets. In the ensuing decades, the reproducing animals quickly took over the UK.

The population of gray squirrels grew from a few dozen to 2 million today, while the population of the native Eurasian red squirrels fell from over 1 million to around 100,000 today. The change can be seen in the picture below: what was once a bright red color representing the red squirrel is now all gray and very little red. In the south of the island, in England and Wales, the gray squirrels have taken over and are even expanding in Scotland, while the red squirrels are losing ground.

Changes in the distribution of red squirrel vs grey squirrel

These active outsiders are not as honest as the red squirrels. Gray squirrels destroy natural woodlands, damaging the shoots and buds of small trees; stripping bark, digging up flowers, and spoiling the bushes and berries in their gardens; and even attacking bird nests, killing small birds and frogs. The bark they eat and the trees they blight have so far caused more than £100 million of economic damage, and continue to grow at a rate of £6-10 million a year.

Furry Wars: Red Squirrel vs Grey Squirrel

Autumn in the UK is a time of occasional rain, but the layered mountains and forests are as picturesque and dreamlike as a brilliantly colored painting. If you come to the UK during this season, you will definitely have the experience of being molested by squirrels to molesting squirrels.

In the autumn of England, although there is rain from time to time, the layers of forests and mountains are like a colorful painting, like a poem, like a dream. If you come to England in this season, you will definitely have the experience of being molested by squirrels to molesting squirrels.

What many people don’t realize, however, is that these grey squirrels are not indigenous to the UK and actually cause damage to our woodlands, further degrading the indigenous red squirrel’s habitat.

The English red squirrel is arguably one of the most beautiful Eurasian red squirrels, and as such is a favorite of the British. In the 19th century, a plague killed many English red squirrels. To make up for the lack of English red squirrels in the population, gray squirrels were introduced from the United States to Cheshire, England in 1876. After more than 100 years, gray squirrels became more aggressive and adaptable than red squirrels, so their population began to slowly expand while red squirrels rapidly declined.

Red Squirrel vs Grey Squirrel: saving the red squirrels

However, according to a recent survey by Red Squirrels of Northern England (RSNE) (which is one of the UK’s largest citizen science conservation programs), red squirrels haven’t disappeared entirely.

Overall results show that the current red squirrel range has remained the same, with red recorded at 43% of sites, a 1% increase on last year. Gray squirrels were found at 46% of sites, a 2% decrease from 2018.

However, life for gray squirrels is not easy in general. In order to protect the British red squirrel, a native species, the UK government has been trapping large numbers of gray squirrels since January 2006 in order for them to reach ecological balance, a move supported by most conservation groups.

Squirrel traps have been set up in Regent’s Park and on Primrose Hill to catch gray squirrels. The head of the park insisted that “the gray squirrel population must be controlled to protect the fragile ecosystem.”

Red Squirrel vs Grey Squirrel: pine martens

To better address the problem, the UK has even introduced pine martens (an endangered Victorian-era animal that only survives in the wild in the Scottish Highlands) into the habitat to control the squirrel population, including trapping and scaring off squirrels. They belong to the same family as otters and weasels, and are similar in size to domestic cats, with a slender body, brownish fur, and a distinctive cream-colored bib on their throats.

There are reportedly only about 20 pine martens left in England, but 18 were recently captured in Scotland and released into the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire to deal with non-native gray squirrels.

The North American gray squirrel was first introduced to Britain and Ireland as a pet in the 19th and 20th centuries, and since then, the gray squirrel has gradually dominated the local squirrel community with its superior adaptability and reproduction. The local red squirrels have been defeated by the North American gray squirrels and have almost gone extinct. According to a survey conducted in 2007, the number of red squirrels in the United Kingdom alone dropped from an estimated 3.5 million to about 25,000 due to the invasion of the gray squirrels.

There are a number of reasons for this result, such as the fact that British gray squirrels are larger and have more fat to overwinter. For example, English gray squirrels carry the squirrel pox virus that spreads to red squirrels, a deadly virus they are immune to, and then there are no local species that can control their populations.

In order to cope with the gray squirrel infestation, the locals have used every possible method from sterilizing captured gray squirrels, to encouraging hunting, to systematic poisoning, and even putting them on the dinner table, but with little success. It wasn’t until the locals said, “They’re everywhere,” that someone remembered the pine marten.

As a result, attempts were made to introduce, breed and release pine martens from other regions. Surprisingly, the pine marten, which had been given the job, was able to fulfill its mission and save the red squirrels from defeat. In particular, a survey conducted in 2014 showed that the pine marten became the main reason for the decline of the gray squirrel population in North America.

Moreover, with the increase in the number of pine marten populations in the wild in recent years, the number of North American gray squirrels has been on a decreasing trend, while the number of native red squirrels gradually began to increase. This has boosted the confidence of the locals and given the pine marten a bad rap, making it the “invasive species finisher”.

Researchers sifting through pine marten feces have shown that pine martens eat both types of squirrels, but are more likely to prey on gray squirrels. Pine martens are omnivores and are not picky eaters, much less able to tell who their “homeboys” are, so the reason they eat more gray squirrels is in the squirrels’ own habits.

Pine martens as predators will use scent to mark territory and communicate with each other, as their long-term prey in the native red squirrels, has been able to make behavioral responses to these scents and try to avoid the pine marten, thus increasing the chances of survival. North American gray squirrels, on the other hand, as outsiders, are wary of pine marten scent, so pine marten predation success is high.

This is one of the key manifestations of the native species in the local ecology and the reason for the increase in the local red squirrel population. But biologists warn that pine martens are not a long-lasting remedy against gray squirrels, and they must be made more effective in as short a time as possible. Because prey species can sometimes develop behavioral responses to new predators in just a few generations, no one knows if gray squirrels will develop anti-predator behavior.