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Introduction
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
In the late afternoon, Thorington and his host drove to a shrine on the outskirts of Tokyo. They walked up a broad, well-maintained path from the parking lot into the shrine. Above them were magnificent old Japanese cedars, the famed cryptomeria trees; the understory consisted of maples and a variety of other trees that Thorington did not recognize. His host, Dr. Imaizumi, pointed to a tree hole, and Thorington trained his binoculars on it. Soon, a squirrel’s head appeared, giving him his first glimpse of a wild Japanese giant flying squirrel. He watched impatiently as the squirrel withdrew its head, then reappeared, and again withdrew its head. Suddenly, it emerged and seemed instantly to dash to the backside of the tree and out of sight. He vividly remembers his sinking feeling: he had seen a giant flying squirrel but just barely. Then, from higher in the tree, the same squirrel appeared and launched out into a gliding flight to the base of another tree. Soon the darkening shrine seemed full of squirrels, calling excitedly and gliding back and forth overhead. They had been confined to their nests for several days by a typhoon, and this was their first dry, windless night. Too soon, it was dark and Thorington followed Dr. Imaizumi as they retraced their steps to the car, but the thrill of that evening, 30 years ago, is still with him. Thorington’s interest in squirrels started long before then, probably with his unsuccessful attempts as a boy to keep them from raiding his bird feeder. When he came to the Smithsonian 36 years ago, his enthusiasm increased when he began to examine the worldwide diversity in the museum collection, from giant flying squirrels to pygmy tree squirrels, from large Asian marmots to least chipmunks, from common eastern gray squirrels to rare Borneo sculptor squirrels. It always helps to have someone to share your enthusiasm with, and he was fortunate to find an extremely enthusiastic high school student, Larry Heaney, already at work helping to curate the squirrel collection. Larry’s cry, “Sciuridae Forever!” still seems to resonate through the hallways of the Smithsonian, although now he is the much more sedate, silver-haired Curator of Mammals at the Field Museum in Chicago. Throughout their careers Thorington and Heaney have continued to collaborate on squirrels. As a curator of one of the largest squirrel collections in the world, Thorington answers many questions about squirrels, asked by a wide variety of people. This book is designed to provide answers, both to these questions and to questions that we think should be asked. As we have reviewed the Introduction literature on squirrel biology, we have looked for facts and interrelationships of general interest, and these we have arranged as answers to relevant questions. One of the exciting things about focusing on a group of animals is that when you look closely, fascinating connections appear. For example, there are interrelationships between the fossil history of the squirrels and their current distribution around the world; their anatomy and their ecology; and their ecology and their behavior. The worldwide diversity of squirrels is astounding. There are 278 species , which occur on five continents. We like to say, “The sun never sets on the Sciuridae!” This diversity encourages informative comparisons. The xiv Introduction Many people may not realize that prairie dogs, like this black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) mother and pup, are also squirrels. In all, there are 278 species of squirrels around the world. Photo © Shirley Curtis, www.scarysquirrel.org Inquisitive, industrious, talkative, and energetic are terms commonly used to describe the squirrel. Photo © Plaistow John, www.scarysquirrel.org [54.224.52.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:08 GMT) ground squirrels and tree squirrels of Africa exhibit differences from those of North America and northern Eurasia, which are different again from those of Southeast Asia. These differences raise tantalizing questions about their behavior, ecology , morphology, and evolutionary history. Some of these questions we can answer, and some of them we cannot. Therefore, an animal answer guide, like this one, is inevitably a work in progress. We hope our readers will view it as such, and that our answers will provoke more questions and stimulate more inquiries into the biology of squirrels. Introduction xv This page intentionally left blank [54.224.52.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:08 GMT) Squirrels: The Animal Answer Guide This page intentionally left blank ...