Daylily Nut Farm's
Tribute
to the
Ultimate Nut Farmers
Why do squirrels bury nuts? The common urban myth is that they are stashing a food supply. We've all seen squirrels burying nuts. But have you ever seen a squirrel return and dig one up?
Are squirrels really so stupid that they would bury edible food randomly scattered about in moist earth even though they are industrious enough to build and live in warm dry shelters (called drays)? In northern winters, when food is most scarce, the ground is frozen solid and buried under snow. Detecting and digging up an individual nut beneath this barrier would be a ridiculously energy intensive task. Really -- Come on! Is there a dumber way to store food?
Surely nature and evolution point to a much more plausible explanation for this behaviour. It's a much loftier and more comprehensive long-term plan for squirrel survival -- deliberate farming of the nut trees on which they thrive. The squirrels are manipulating their environment for the benefit of their descendents. It's as simple as this: Given two parallel species of squirrel in two identical ecosystems, one of which buried nuts while the other didn't, the food supply was enhanced in the ecosystem of the nut-buriers and their numbers increased faster than the non-nut-buriers. Over time the nut-buriers crowded out the non-nut-buriers, and Voila! Our friends the squirrels became the original Nut Farmers.
Being a lover of trees, myself, and being one who seeks the lessons nature can provide, I, too, have planted trees. As you may have read earlier, some of the trees I've planted have grown large and impressive (the tree pictured above is the best personal example). I don't usually plant nut trees, but I do harvest a benefit. I have breathed the oxygen my trees have freed as they clear the atmosphere of excess carbon dioxide.
In a way, everything we do on this Earth can be likened to the burying of nuts. We plant seed with every action we take. And the seeds we plant are our legacy to the future. As with the squirrel who will never reap the harvest of his small act, the truly meaningful nuts we bury are those which benefit the generations beyond our ken.
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