Jennie Hughes

Squirrels are opportunistic eaters, which means these little creatures adapt to eat a wide variety of available foods such as insects, eggs, fungi, and meat.

Squirrels are medium-sized rodents belonging to the Sciuridae family. It's incredible to watch these playful little creatures having fun on garden trees.

January 21 is celebrated as National Squirrel Day. You might be surprised to learn how squirrels help look after the environment. Squirrels are notorious for taking any chance they can get to steal food from bird feeders in residential gardens.

Anyone who has a garden with lush green trees and a bird feeder will probably get a chance to watch adorable squirrels roaming and running here and there with quick, spontaneous movements. These lovely creatures have a long, soft-furred tail that attracts people's eyes during their fast, acrobatic jumps.

Like ants, squirrels have a habit of storing food in bulk.

They store many nuts and seeds in the ground by digging burrows, but they forget to take them all from underground later, which indirectly helps increase the growth of trees and vegetation in the forests. This means they play a vital role in increasing the greenery in their surroundings.

However, squirrel species are known to be significant predators of birds' nests and can kill young birds. Especially when birds are in the nestling or egg phase, they are at high risk from these rodents.

Squirrels are not hunters; they look for an opportunity and work out their plan. They are clever watchers and keep an eye out for times when an adult bird is out hunting.

Then, they execute their plan and steal the eggs from the unguarded bird's nest. They make sure to play it safe when stealing eggs. On the other hand, we should remember that killing birds and stealing their eggs is not the first choice of food for these adorable little creatures.

When they have no other food source, they choose to become nest robbers. They are also very active animals, so they need nutritious food to boost their energy.

That's why they opt for bird eggs and other meaty foods. Most squirrel species are opportunistic hunters and attack the nests of different birds, eating baby birds and, very rarely, adult birds.

If you like this article about these little squirrels, take a look at our other content to find out if squirrels eat birds and if squirrels eat meat.

The natural world is a fascinating place: as our African Elephant Facts and Mantis Shrimp Facts blogs show, from the biggest to the smallest, there's always something new to discover about the wildlife we share our planet with.

Think of woods in fall and you'll almost certainly imagine a fluffy-tailed squirrel scampering around through the trees stashing nuts to keep it going through the winter ahead. But there's much more to know about these adorable little rodents than just storing food and scrambling up tree trunks.

Red squirrels live all over the world. From the classic English red squirrel that pops up on Christmas cards every winter to Switzerland's black "red" squirrels, the world is full of these fluffy-tailed critters.

To keep track of them all, scientists have come up with a system called taxonomy which shows how closely related different animals are. Its system of kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species shows how different animals relate to each other.

No matter how they're related, we think all those nutty little squirrels are fascinating. We've compiled a list of the most intriguing, unexpected and downright weird facts about the red squirrel population around the world to show everyone they're more than just a fluffy tail.