[plinyelder]

I've Seen It All Now!

I can go peacefully. 8)

[Fantasywriter]

I’ve seen this before. I used to have fat white mushrooms in my MA yard, and the squirrels ate them like potato chips. A lot of fun to watch!

[Optimist]

“I’ve Seen It All Now!”

unfortunately without a video to go with your post,
you are the only one that has seen it all, now.
:-)

[snuffy smiff]

I’ve watched whitetailed deer eat them too. Certain types of ‘shrooms they seem to really relish! Never saw any die from it.

[Vigilantcitizen]

They’re just pre-making gravy.

[mnehring]

I have a friend who is a OCD chef/forager who has mentioned several times that most mushrooms are not dangerous, it is just the ones that are dangerous are so bad, they give the entire foraging hobby a bad name. I have a feeling squirrels have enough evolution behind them to know the difference.

[guitarplayer1953]

Only the ones that folks call shrooooomssss. wow man!

[Screaming_Gerbil]

Alaska Science Forum September 5, 2007

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Squirrels and toxic mushrooms; aspens and leaf miners

Article #1871

by Ned Rozell

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This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.

Fairbanks reader darleen masiak recently saw a red squirrel carrying an Amanita mushroom across her deck, presumably to stash it in its midden for the winter. She wanted to know how such a small mammal could survive after eating a mushroom that is toxic in large doses.

Fungus expert Gary Laursen of the University of Alaska Fairbanks confirmed that forest squirrels, both red and flying, cache Amanita mushrooms as well as other “psychoactive” mushrooms that affect the central nervous system. He has dug into squirrel middens in the boreal forest and found many samples of the mushrooms. He said a biologist recently contacted him and told him he’d seen grouse digging up and eating mushrooms that would be toxic in large doses to humans.

“Many animals are known to go after the psychoactive ‘shrooms,” Laursen said.

Brian Barnes, a physiologist and the director of the Institute of Arctic Biology, said a squirrel’s liver might be able to detoxify the active agents in the mushrooms, but he knows of no evidence for this. Barnes studies arctic ground squirrels on Alaska’s North Slope. He thinks young male ground squirrels might be eating lots of fungi, including potent ones, as they stir in their dens from hibernation. The squirrels often emerge from hibernation fatter than when they went in.

“I wonder if, while in their cold and completely dark hibernaculum, arctic ground squirrels are eating psychoactive mushrooms and whether they respond by experiencing hallucinations, feelings of well being, and laughing fits, as do humans (or so I’m told),” Barnes wrote in an email.

* * *

[SoCalPol]

Squirrel post ping

[null and void]

[plinyelder]

[nolongerademocrat]

This is what they look like after eating fermented pumpkin:

Drunk Squirrel Tries to Climb Tree - Break Fails
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0so5er4X3dc

[uglybiker]

It's so they can grow hair on their......uh.... you figure it out.

[dangus]

Eating mushrooms could explain alot about squirrel behavior.

[verum ago]

plinyelder: if the mushroom was poisonous, it'll probably take awhile (18 hrs to a couple days) to kill the squirrel. But some edible mushrooms grow from dead wood too. However, I'm inclined to think that if the squirrel was eating it, odds are it was edible.

I've seen squirrels eat mushrooms in my own yard and be none the worse for wear. However, once, while I was collecting for a mycology class, I came across a patch of Amanita pantherina and observed a squirrel eating one. I was unable to collect any (bags were all full), so I came back the next day. Lo and behold, there was a dead squirrel, probably the same one I'd seen the day before.

Got any pictures of the mushrooms in question? I could take a stab at identifying them- the odor, a good pic of the gills/pores, a cross section, and one just of the whole thing and its surroundings would give me a fighting chance. A spore print would be invaluable too- take the shroom, remove the stipe (if it has one), and lay it on a piece of paper for maybe a couple hours and let the spores collect on the paper. The paper should be part white, part black.

[nolongerademocrat]

Please tell me this one is not real:

baby with snake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oh0v_DHFrw&feature=related

[Semper Mark]

"Will I be picking up dead squirrels .. maybe tomorrow?"

Mushrooms are fine for squirrels...

It's the liquor that they can't handle.

[this_ol_patriot]

[SMARTY]

Well... they ARE rodents.

[vigilante2]

Animals know what and what not to eat

[Daffynition]

What's for dessert?