The next time you see a squirrel chasing another squirrel around a tree, listen for the muk-muk. Nesting squirrels use it when they’re hungry and are attempting to solicit a feeding from their mother.īut the muk-muk does double duty. It’s quiet, only about 20 decibels, and is sometimes called a buzz. Muk-muk - The muk-muk resembles a stifled sneeze: phfft, phfft. I think we’ve driven it from the area, but I better be as ventrilocal as I can.’ ”įor obvious reasons, the squirrel doesn’t want to give up its location. It is, in the words of scientists, “ventrilocal.” Said Lishak: A quaa moan “means ‘I don’t see the predator. The narrow frequency range of the quaa moan - and the way it starts softly, builds, then tapers off - makes it hard to tell exactly where the noise is coming from. It sounds like a chirp followed by a meow. Quaa moan - This is lesser in intensity still. “A quaa says there is still danger - they can still see the predator - but it may be moving away,” Lishak said. Quaa - The quaa is basically a long kuk issued after the threat level has dropped. “The next time you hear kuks, look where the squirrel’s looking and you’ll see the reason,” Lishak said. The squirrel also orients itself toward the threat. Even if other squirrels can’t see their kukking compatriot, it’s easy for them to tell where the sound is coming from and thus where the danger is. Looked at on a spectrogram, kuks have a short duration and a broad frequency. Lishak’s work with trained cats shows that as soon as the squirrel starts kukking, the cat gives up, knowing it has lost the element of surprise. The second audience is the predator itself. “Rapid kuks say, ‘Hey, there’s a predator close by. The first is for conspecifics - a word that means others of the same species, i.e., other squirrels. But now researchers know there are two audiences for the kuk. “We used to think they were intended only for the ears of other squirrels,” Lishak said. Kuk - The kuk is a sharp bark of alarm, usually issued in a series: kuk kuk kuk! “It’s a pretty complex question,” Lishak said, and one he’s trying to answer.įor now, follow this guide and you, too, can speak like squirrels - or at least understand them. How are they able to distinguish between a harmless rabbit and a threatening cat, even from a perch high in the trees? If the cat makes eye contact, it sets them off in a New York minute.” “Stalking - starting, stopping - sets off alarm signals. “If the cat is walking at an even pace, the squirrels ignore it,” Lishak said. The way a cat moves through an area affects squirrel reaction. A monofilament line keeps the cats from actually catching one.)Īmong their findings: Squirrels are observant. Later, they trained domestic cats to hunt squirrels. They started out with a model of a cat that was pulled on a tether. They even give squirrels something to talk about. Lishak and his students spend hours in the field recording vocalizations and making observations. But scientists were studying squirrel sounds long before spectrograms became common, assembling a set of onomatopoeic words to describe unique calls: kuks and quaas, moans and muk-muks. To study this squirrel talk, Lishak uses software that depicts the barks as jagged lines known as spectrograms and that show a sound’s duration and frequency. What we may hear as nonsensical chattering the Auburn University biology professor perceives as the back and forth of squirrels communicating with one another - and with other animals, as well. Robert Lishak knows what the squirrels are saying.
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