Laboratory Exercises in Animal Behavior - Squirrels and Food Selection - Worksheet
Worksheet
1. What is meant by "scatter-hoarding?"
Collecting scattered items and storing food for future use. The cold weather is their "clue" to start collecting.
2. Develop your own scientific definition of "foraging strategy."
Decisions that animals make about what to eat, when to eat and where to eat, that are based on the positive and negative effects on their survival and reproductive success.
3. What are the two aspects of squirrel scatter-hoarding that you will be investigating.
1) Do squirrels prefer to forage where food is plentiful or where food is less plentiful?
2) Do squirrels prefer to forage neat cover or far from cover?
4. Why should the four patches should be as similar as possible?
If they are not similar then any differences in foraging cannot be explained with the aspects we are considering. For example, if one patch has more grass or leaves than another one, then foraging differences might result from differences in ground cover, or differences in food supply and distance from cover.
5. Why do we count the number of peanuts in each patch at the beginning and end of each observation period?
To determine the number of peanuts that were eaten.
6. Why so scientists report their findings to other scientists?
To inform other scientists of their findings and to allow other scientists to evaluate the design of the study, to agree or disagree with their interpretations of the results and to replicate the study if they chose to do so.
7. What is the hypothesis you will be testing?
Make sure it is a hypothesis and not a prediction. A hypothesis is an explanation or a theoretical model. A prediction is an IF-THEN statement about an observable result.
8. Why was it necessary to flip a coin to decide which patches would get more food?
To have random assignment of comparison treatments, and to work toward an unbiased study.
9. Would it be best to keep the same arrangement of patches or to choose a new arrangement at the start of each hour-long observation?
If you move patches you will not be studying foraging strategies with the same variables. For instance, if you move a patch from one area to another that has longer grass you have changed the circumstances under which the squirrels forage. Your results would then be "confounded."
