A black squirrel lives somewhere in our yard and stops by the bird feeder in the mornings for a meal. Wikipedia has a nice article on these curious creatures. This was also a good way to test the 18x optical zoom of my camera. Unfortunately, by the time I was able to make the necessary adjustments to the camera to improve the contrast, he ran off.
I grew up near the beltway around Washington DC, and remember seeing some black squirrels there. I recently learned that they had been intentionally imported from Canada many years ago.
About 10 years ago, nearly all of the squirrels in Ontario Canada were long-haired and entirely dark black. Once I saw a short-haired gray squirrel amongst about 10 black in a park in Toronto. This one had obviously hitched a ride with a tourist from the States. A couple of years later there were several individuals with some grey, and both long and short-haired black squirrels.
Recently, I saw the same process taking place in Ottawa. A short-haired gray gray from further south bred with the local long-haired black squirrels, and after a first generation where the part-gray offspring mostly died during a cold winter, we’re now seeing the short-haired gene from the gray live on in the blacks, with about 50% in one local group now short-haired where they were previously all long-haired.
I’ve read that this is possible because they’re all the same Eastern Gray Squirrel species, where the long-hair was simply an adaptation to the colder northern winters (somewhat altered these days by global warming). Thus, it appears that the better heat absorption of the black fur is almost critical in cold northern winters, but that the long hair may no longer be needed.
Those are some interesting observations! Thanks for the information. I’m curious to see if this kind of pattern is occurring elsewhere as well. Thanks for posting.
The one in our yard still hangs around… We see him from time to time.