Battle Royale: Squirrels Fight In Jar Of Peanuts

Squirrels are fascinating little animals that we see everywhere in America from the deserts of Arizona to the green forests of Maine. They live in many different kinds of climates!

I did NOT know that squirrels were so territorial about peanuts!

I have a friend that rehabs squirrels and works with a kind of squirrel sanctuary. Honestly, I don’t completely understand that point of a squirrel sanctuary but that is their bag, not mine. But it did inspire some research for this post. So many squirrel species are territorial including American reds, and northern flying squirrels. However, the common Grey squirrel that most people know are not. That said, squirrels will chase or nip others in their feeding territory to show them who is boss. Usually it is a dominance display. So, for certain species of squirrels there are dominance hierarchies. A casual guess at this suggests that the two squirrels in this video are either fox squirrels or grey squirrels and they are territorial food fighting.

These two need a ring announcer! IN THIS CORNER…! Followed by a solid boxing ding.

It’s kind of funny because neither of these skills is willing to let the other squirrel have even one peanut. They have made it an all or nothing game. The humans actually help the squirrels decide the fight by putting a lid on the nut jar. One of the squirrels quickly loses the fight and decides he does not want any more to do with the nuts or the other squirrel. After the man in the video takes the lid off, one of the squirrels escapes and just leaves. There can only be one winner in this kind of boxing match.