Squirrels are smart. One that runs afoul of a homeowner has to be relocated several miles away, preferably across a body of water, or else it will resolutely find its way back home. And this isn’t the only way that the rodents show their savvy. In a study published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers at the University of Berkeley present evidence that eastern fox squirrels, a common sight in North America, organize the 3,000-10,000 nuts they stockpile each year by variety, quality, and possibly even personal preference. Under certain conditions, the squirrels may even use a complex cognitive strategy called “chunking” to organize their nut booty.

The average human can hold about four items in their working memory – the short-term memory we rely on to recall the steps necessary to cook a recipe, for example, or to perform the mental math it takes to hand over cash at the checkout line. If four items seems awfully low, that’s because humans have learned to hack that limit through a process neuroscientists call chunking. Chunking explains why a series of numbers—229541326—is much easier to remember as 229, 541, 326. Consider a grocery list. Sure, you might just scrawl the products you need out onto paper in whatever order you think of them. But what's actually easier to commit to memory? A straight list of items:

Bread

Cheese

Peaches

Eggs

Milk

Apples

Chicken

Onions

Or one where things are clustered into categories?

Read More at:
https://www.popsci.com/squirrels-organized

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