Okay, I get it, you will not read this article. You’ve come here looking for the answer to a hypothetical question about the number of nuts a squirrel can hold in its mouth, otherwise known as an article about squirrels. That’s fine, I don’t blame you. I’d rather be reading about squirrels than writing about them too. But the thing is, there is over one way to skin this cat (I do not know what a cat is). So I wrote an article that was not only going to tell you how many nuts a squirrel can hold in its mouth but also other related questions related to nuts and the squirrel.
Let’s start with the most common question:
Do squirrels hold nuts in their mouths?
Yes, squirrels hold their nuts for temporary storage.
Squirrels have incisor teeth that never stop growing. To keep them from getting too long, they chew on hard surfaces to wear them down. So they like to bite things like electrical cords and telephone wires.
When squirrels find nuts, they bury them in the ground so they can eat them later. But sometimes they find more than they can bury right away. They’ll hold those in their mouth until they find a good place to hide them.
To carry multiple nuts, squirrels will push one into the front of their mouth and hold it there with their lips. Then, when they reach another nut, they push it up against the first one and hold it with their tongue and lips again. They can carry a couple of nuts this way until they reach a safe place to stash them in the ground.
How many nuts can a squirrel hold in its mouth?
It depends upon the size of the nut and the species of squirrel. Smaller species can carry only one nut. Larger species sometimes carry two nuts at once, with each nut in a separate cheek pouch. This means they could carry up to two nuts at once.
Depending on the size of those nuts, this might equate to seeds or even pecans. Squirrels are excellent at knowing which types of nuts are safe to eat and which ones are not, so they will often pick the largest ones if possible.
The average squirrel has a mouth that can accommodate about three or four inches’ worth of food (using an acorn as a reference). However, there are some species which have mouths capable of accommodating up to eight inches of food at once.
This is important because it means that certain species can fit larger quantities of food into their mouths and transport them to another location (such as a burrow or tree) where they can eat it later on.
For example, if you were trying to find out how many walnuts you could fit into your mouth, you’d probably have difficulty fitting over three or four of them (depending on how big they are).
A squirrel would find this easy though because they’re able to fit much larger amounts into their mouths thanks to their large jaw muscles and flexible bones which allow them to open wide enough for even large walnuts.
Do squirrels store nuts in their cheeks?
Squirrels can store nuts in their cheeks, making it possible to carry a couple of nuts at once. A squirrel can also run and leap with a nut in its mouth without dropping it.
Squirrels store nuts in their cheeks. The pouches are on the sides of their heads behind the teeth, and they can expand to hold a lot of food.
The pouches look like pockets that open into the squirrel’s cheeks, but they aren’t actually pockets. They are just loose folds of skin and muscle.
Squirrels with large cheek pouches can store a lot of food in them. For example, fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) have large cheek pouches that can hold about 2 cups of acorns or hickory nuts — enough for several meals!
Some squirrels have tiny cheek pouches that hold only a few seeds at a time. Red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) have tiny cheek pouches, so they don’t store many seeds. Instead, they find lots of small caches of seeds that they have buried in the ground and rely on their memories to find them again later.
How many nuts can a squirrel eat?
The answer to your question is: it depends. It depends on the type of nut, the amount of fat and protein in the nut, whether the nut has a shell (not to mention whether that shell is hard or soft), and how much other food is available.
The short answer is, a squirrel can eat about two nuts a day.
Let’s look at some more examples.
Black walnuts are very high in fat, but they have a hard shell and are difficult to open. We know squirrels store and eat black walnuts, but they take a long time to get them open, and during this process they will be very vulnerable to predators. Black walnuts also have a large percentage of their calories tied up in their shells (this is even more true of hickory nuts). So squirrels may eat 1-2 black walnuts per day while they are getting them opened, but they probably won’t eat any more after that unless crazy hungry.
Squirrels also like hazelnuts because they taste good, and they like acorns because they provide lots of energy. All animals have to balance the amount of calories they need against the time and effort needed to get those calories.
Acorns taste terrible, which means squirrels don’t want to eat them unless they’re starving. So squirrels will only eat acorns if their preferred food sources aren’t available (such as when there was an early frost that killed all the beechnuts before the squirrels could harvest them). Acorns have a thin shell that can be cracked open by hand or with a nutcracker in seconds.
Can a squirrel choke on a nut?
Yes. A squirrel can choke on a nut, just like any other animal can choke on food.
But it’s highly unlikely.
I have seen them choke on a nut, but only because they were eating it too fast. Squirrels have been eating nuts for tens of thousands of years, and they’ve figured out how to eat them without choking.
Seriously though, I saw a squirrel choke on a nut once. I was walking down the street and saw this gray squirrel sitting on a branch eating a nut. It was obviously having trouble getting the nut down its throat, so I went over to inspect; the squirrel was choking! It had one of those “Oh no what do I do” faces you see on people when they are choking.
I tried to help by doing the Heimlich maneuver (the only thing I could think of doing), but the squirrel kept moving away from me so that I couldn’t get close enough to help it. Finally, it recovered and ran away with its tail between its legs (or whatever that expression is for when something bad happens).
I never found out what kind of nut it was (probably something poisonous), but the moral of the story is that you should always be careful when eating nuts because you don’t want to end up like him.
Conclusion
The size of the nut and the species of squirrel both affect how many nuts a squirrel can hold in its mouth. Smaller species, such as red squirrels, can hold only one nut at a time. Larger species, such as fox squirrels, sometimes carry two nuts at once, with each nut in a separate cheek pouch. This means they could technically carry up to two nuts at once.