Squirrel Tails

The red squirrels tail has many functionalities.

This is going to be a long one,

so bare with me and get comfortable.

The most obvious function is communication.

Whether it's to communicate

with other squirrels or other species.

If the communication

is between squirrels, it's either

a display of warnings, alerts, play, or mating.

The bigger, the more lush,

flush and fluff the male tail is,

the better his chances are

to attract a females attention.

In case it's with other species,

I'll get back to this one in the end.

Other, more subtle uses of their tails

are that they also use their tails

as a tiny umbrella doing rain

but also as a blanket doing sleep.

When they nap on branches,

they will lay their tails over their body

like Tintin has done on this picture.

The result, the tail will look like a withered leaf

to any birds of pray that may fly above them.

They will also shield themselves

from high winds, by sitting

with their back to the wind,

letting their tails push the wind past their bodies.

They also use their tails

to guide them through the air,

when they leap those long

and breathtaking jumps,

from tree to tree, fine tuning their landing

as they fly through the air.

Now, back to the self defense tail.

If another species is to cross paths

with our squirrel, they will warn them off.

This is often displayed

with tail twitching, followed by

foot stumping and high pitched sounds,

as a warning signal, to back off, now!

But! If things gets serious,

let say a snake wants a quick snack,

they will use their tails as a distraction.

Twitching their tails in front of the snake eyes,

and as soon as the snake turns its head

to look at the tail, our squirrel strikes!

With a bite force strong enough

to crush human finger bones,

they attack the head of the snake,

biting straight truth their skull,

instantly killing the snake.

If a snake were to bite our squirrels tail,

not to worry, the tail has tiny blood vessels

and very little blood flow and the potential poison

are not very likely to go to our squirrels body.

If it does, by the time it reaches our squirrels body,

it's such a low dose that it'll probably

only make them sick for a couple of days.

However, the tail might fall off as the result

of such an attack.

But, it's better to lose your tail,

than your life...