Claims that squirrels carry out elaborate fake burials to confuse their rivals intrigue the Guardian. "Grey squirrels are even more devious than anyone realised," the Daily Mail reports.
"To protect their winter food stocks from potential thieves, they put on an elaborate show of burying non-existent nuts and seeds."
Scientists at a university in Pennsylvania have observed the rodents carrying out fake burials, which they do more often if they think they are being watched. But a University of Exeter researcher poured cold water on any suggestion that the behaviour showed they were unusually intelligent. "They may just have learned through trial and error that
certain behaviours protect their food from theft."
"What is to be done?" asks the Telegraph.
"Our readers have contributed their suggestions, from poison to pies to piping. Our columnist Simon Heffer, who first drew attention to this threat, stands ready with his shotgun. But others must join us. It is time, as Churchill almost said, to fight them on the beeches."
The House of Lords debated the vexed question of grey squirrels' impact on the songbird population last November. One peer suggested that paying 'a substantial sum for every squirrel tail handed in' would help to control the rodents, but another pointed out that it was a failed policy that had been abandoned in 1958.
Grey squirrels are an alien species whose spread across Britain has greatly diminished the native red squirrel population, which is now largely confined to Scottish pine forests.
This is an edited extract from the Wrap, our daily digest of the papers.
