Are Squirrels Smart? How Smart a Squirrel Is, and What Its Nut Stashes Show
Are squirrels smart? Yes, for rodents: grey squirrels recover their own buried nuts at about twice the rate of a rival's, and fox squirrels bury 99% of hazelnuts in the fall but 76% in summer. There is no squirrel IQ. Each study, with journal, year and number of animals.
Are squirrels smart? Yes, for rodents, but no one has measured a squirrel IQ. Studies show that tree squirrels remember where they buried nuts, match their effort to the value of the nut, and change how they hide food when another animal watches. None of that gives a score you can set beside a human IQ.
Below: what each study found, with the journal, year and number of animals, how a squirrel’s brain compares with a dog’s and a cat’s, and why “are squirrels smarter than dogs” has no tested answer. The finding most pages miss: the same squirrel buries 99% of its hazelnuts in the fall but only 76% in summer.
Key takeaways
- There is no squirrel IQ. IQ tests compare people with a norm group of people, and no such norm group exists for squirrels.
- Memory: grey squirrels recovered their own buried hazelnuts at about twice the rate of nuts another squirrel buried (Jacobs and Liman, Animal Behaviour, 1991).
- Value: 23 fox squirrels buried 99% of hazelnuts in the fall and 76% in summer, and inspected peanuts with fewer head flicks (Delgado and colleagues, PLOS ONE, 2014).
- Audience: grey squirrels used evasive caching tactics when another squirrel watched, but not when a crow-family bird watched (Leaver and colleagues, Animal Cognition, 2007).
- Brain: a grey squirrel has about 454 million neurons in the whole brain, a dog about 2.25 billion and a cat about 1.22 billion.
Are squirrels smart, or is it just instinct?
How smart is a squirrel? Smart at the things its life demands: finding food, hiding it and remembering where it is. It is not measured on any scale that compares animals.
IQ is a score that compares one person with a large sample of other people of the same age. A squirrel has no such sample and no test built for it. So “squirrel IQ” is a figure of speech. What researchers do instead is test one ability at a time, as the studies below do. Our ranking of the smartest animals by neuron count and test scores uses the same rule and ranks species by what was measured.
Do squirrels really remember where they bury their nuts?
Yes. Grey squirrels recovered their own buried nuts at about twice the rate of nuts that another squirrel had buried, according to Jacobs and Liman (Animal Behaviour, 1991).
In that study a small group of hand-raised grey squirrels buried 10 hazelnuts each in an enclosed area. They were then allowed to dig up their own caches and those of others. Finding their own nuts far more often points to memory for where each nut went. Secondary summaries, including Scientific American’s, describe the design this way. The paper itself is behind a publisher’s paywall, so we cite the finding and not the exact counts.
Test your own spatial recall with our memory game or the sequence memory test. Both use the same skill in a screen format: hold a layout in mind, then reproduce it.
How do squirrels decide which nuts to bury?
They judge the nut first. Fox squirrels spent more effort on valuable nuts and scarce seasons, and the numbers are in a 2014 PLOS ONE study by Delgado, Nicholas, Petrie and Jacobs.
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Animals | 23 adult fox squirrels (10 in summer, 13 in fall) |
| Nuts offered | Peanuts and hazelnuts, one at a time, 15 per squirrel |
| Hazelnuts buried in the fall | 99% |
| Hazelnuts buried in summer | 76% |
| Inspection | Fewer head flicks for peanuts than for hazelnuts |
Read it as a decision. A squirrel looks at a nut, flicks its head to judge it, then eats it or buries it. It buried almost every hazelnut in the fall, when food is about to run short, and fewer in summer. The authors report that assessment and investment per cache rose when the nut was worth more or food was scarcer.
Do squirrels hide their nuts from other animals?
Yes, from other squirrels at least. Grey squirrels used evasive tactics when a squirrel watched them cache, but not when a bird from the crow family watched, according to Leaver and colleagues (Animal Cognition, 2007).
That split matters. It suggests the squirrels treated a rival squirrel, which could steal the nut, differently from a bird that is not after the same food. The abstract does not give the number of squirrels, so we do not quote one. For a bird that does similar things, see our guide to crow IQ, and for another animal with no IQ score, are chickens smart.
Are squirrels smarter than dogs?
No study has tested that, so nobody can say. A squirrel and a dog solve different problems with different senses, and no common test exists.
What we can compare is brain size. Our smartest animals study lists published neuron counts. A grey squirrel has about 454 million neurons in the whole brain. A cat has about 1.22 billion and a dog about 2.25 billion, roughly 5 times the squirrel’s count. Neuron counts are a rough guide to processing capacity. They do not measure intelligence.
| Animal | Brain mass (g) | Neurons in the whole brain |
|---|---|---|
| Grey squirrel | 5.5 | about 454 million |
| Cat | 34.9 | about 1.22 billion |
| Dog | 86.5 | about 2.25 billion |
For the animals that do have a named test, see our posts on dog IQ and cat IQ. The news piece on the smartest bird in the world shows the same method for birds.
Where would your own score land?
Take the IIF-certified assessment and get your score with the scale it was measured on, the percentile it corresponds to and the confidence range around it — the three figures most online tests leave out.
Find your IQ score now! →What would a squirrel IQ test even measure?
A human IQ test samples several abilities, such as memory, reasoning and speed, and adds them into one score. The squirrel studies each sample one ability, so they map onto a human test only loosely.
| Study | What the squirrels did | Nearest human test skill |
|---|---|---|
| Jacobs and Liman, 1991 | Recovered their own buried hazelnuts about twice as often as a rival’s | Spatial memory |
| Delgado and colleagues, 2014 | Buried 99% of hazelnuts in the fall and 76% in summer | Judging value and planning |
| Leaver and colleagues, 2007 | Used evasive tactics when a squirrel watched, not a crow-family bird | Reading a social situation |
Human IQ tests also fix the scale with a large sample of people, so a squirrel could not be placed on it. Even so, the three skills are real, and our brain games let you try the first one yourself.
Why do people say squirrels are clever, then?
Because the behaviour looks planned. Burying food, checking who is watching and digging it up months later are all things people read as thought.
The studies back some of that and not all of it. They show memory, value judgement and some audience sensitivity. They do not show that squirrels reason about what another squirrel knows, and the evidence for that kind of thinking is much weaker. A fair summary: smart for a small rodent, and nowhere near measured against a person.
If you want a number for yourself, take the IQ test. It is built and normed for people.
Quick answers
- Are squirrels smart? Yes, at finding, hiding and remembering food. No squirrel IQ exists.
- How smart is a squirrel? Smart enough to recover its own buried nuts at about twice the rate of a rival’s, and to bury 99% of valuable nuts in the fall.
- What is a squirrel’s IQ? There is no score. IQ compares people with a norm group of people.
- Are squirrels smarter than dogs? Untested. A dog has about 5 times the neurons, but neurons are not a test score.
- Do squirrels remember where their nuts are? Yes, according to Jacobs and Liman (1991) and later work.
The bottom line
Squirrels are smart for what they do: remember, judge value and hide food from rivals. That is measured one skill at a time, in studies of 23 fox squirrels and small groups of grey squirrels. There is no squirrel IQ, and no study that ranks a squirrel against a dog.
Sources
- Jacobs LF, Liman ER (1991). Grey squirrels remember the locations of buried nuts. Animal Behaviour 41(5), 831-841.
- Delgado MM, Nicholas M, Petrie DJ, Jacobs LF (2014). Fox squirrels match food assessment and cache effort to value and scarcity. PLOS ONE 9(3), e92892.
- Leaver LA, Hopewell L, Caldwell C, Mallarky L (2007). Audience effects on food caching in grey squirrels. Animal Cognition 10(1), 23-27.
- Neuron counts: the data table of our smartest animals study, built from 14 published papers.
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