Mammals of North America: Eastern Gray Squirrel

Squirrels are members of the rodent family. All members of the squirrel family share certain characteristics. This includes chipmunks, flying squirrels, ground squirrels, marmots, prairie dogs, and tree squirrels. Their skull and muscle anatomies are alike and they have the same number of similarly-shaped teeth. The Eastern Gray Squirrel is considered a tree squirrel, due to the fact that it spends a great deal of its life span living in trees.

Members of the squirrel family are found naturally in all parts of the world, except Australia. In North America, the Eastern Gray Squirrel lives mainly in habitats east of the Great Plains, from southern Canada, south to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in areas that favors the growth of deciduous hardwood trees. The Eastern Gray Squirrel has also been introduced into some areas of the western U.S.

An Eastern Gray Squirrel munches on lunch.
CC Licensed Photo
An Eastern Gray Squirrel munches on lunch.

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The majority of gray squirrels have gray fur, with off-white to grayish bellies and long bushy tails. Individuals can vary considerably in color, however, from almost white to almost black, and every shade in between. The average Eastern Gray Squirrel weighs around 1.5 pounds, but can vary somewhat from region to region. Their thick bushy tails average around eight to 10 inches in length and body length can vary from eight to twenty inches in length.

Squirrels normally produce two litters of young yearly, with an average of around two to four babies in each litter. The young leave the nest around 10 weeks of age, and can live to be more than 12 years old, although many may not survive through one full year.

A squirrel's nest is called a drey, which is normally built from twigs and leaves in the forks of trees, gray squirrels have been known to live inside hollow trees, and to invade human-built structures, settling into attics of buildings. The Eastern Gray Squirrel is a diurnal (active in daylight) mammal and is commonly seen by humans in the Eastern United States in the early morning and late evening hours.

The Eastern Gray Squirrel is omnivorous, meaning it will eat many types of food, including both plants and animals. However, being a consumer of what is readily available, tree squirrels feed mainly on buds, nuts, seeds, and fruits of the trees in which they live, as well as insects in their immediate area. An exposed bird feeder near a wooded area greatly entices squirrels into human occupied areas as does maturing corn fields in late autumn.

The gray squirrel is a food hoarder, meaning it buries surplus food during times of plenty and digs up its cache during times of scarcity. Their reputations for hoarding is so well known that its name has been borrowed in English usage describe a human action that means to "hoard away or save things," as in "hoard away money."

Eastern Gray Squirrels are prey for a number of other North American mammals including bobcats, coyotes, domesticated cats and dogs, hawks, humans, owls, raccoons, snakes, gray wolves, and some larger individual members of the Mustelidae family, such as badgers, skunks, and weasels.


SCIENTIC CLASSIFICATION
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Rodentia
Family: Sciuridae
Genus: Sciurus
Subgenus: Sciurus
Species: S. carolinensis

Drawing of the tracks of an Eastern Gray Squirrel

Squirrel Tracks

Sciurus carolinensis
Credit: Laura Perlick/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
An Eastern Gray Squirrel hanging upside down in a tree.

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Fun Fact: In 1969, the General Assembly of the state of North Carolina officially proclaimed the Gray Squirrel as the State Mammal. The Eastern Gray Squirrel is also the official state wild animal of Kentucky.