Nine years after The Hague city council spent €150,000 on a bridge to allow squirrels to cross a busy main road, it seems the bushy-tailed rodents have finally learned the ropes. In the first two years just five squirrels were filmed using the crossing, but by last year the trickle had become a steady stream, with a record 263 crossings …
The ground squirrel hibernates in a unique way, burning almost no energy while it is out for the winter, with no loss of muscle mass, scientists discovered. “Essentially, seeing 13C and/or 15N in metabolites at these various steps indicated that they originated from urea, and thus, that the hibernator was using urea nitrogen salvage,” said biologist Matthew Regan. During the …
