This protects the seeds and the cone’s core, which is why pine cones don’t rot in snow or water. When it’s dark, damp and cold, a pine cone’s scales are swollen and kept tightly closed. You see, pine cones open and close depending on their surroundings. They usually store the cones in places that are dark, cool, and moist so that the seeds are protected by the cones and last a long time. Squirrels like to cut young pine cones off tree because they know these cones still have seeds inside. They usually bury the cones underground or hide them in holes in trees, but some people say that squirrels have put cones under the hood of their car or that they’ve seen cones placed neatly in rows along a wall. Squirrels store pine cones where they find a good hiding place. When squirrels hide their food in different places, they usually store the same kind of food together, so they will have one area where they keep all their pine cones and separate areas for each type of nut they hoard.
Most squirrels hide their food around their territory, which is called scatter-hoarding.They store all their food in one place, which is called larder-hoarding.Tree squirrels do not hibernate, so they need to store as much food as they can for the cold winter months when food becomes scarce. Once they find trees with pine cones that they like, the squirrels often come back year after year to enjoy the seeds. Squirrels tend to like eating pine cones from the same tree. Here’s a video of a squirrel eating a pine cone on the ground: After removing a scale, the squirrel eats the two seeds stored inside. Female pine cones have two seeds under each scale. Then the squirrel removes the scales one by one with its strong front teeth, working from the bottom of the cone to the top.Īs the squirrel removes scales, it turns the cone slightly with its paws to get access to the next scale on the cone. It holds the cone with its front paws, either in the air or on the ground. This means that hard pine cones are the perfect snack for a squirrel to chew on.Ī squirrel starts by chewing off the scales near the stem of the pine cone.
If they don’t do this, their teeth get too long and the rodent starves to death. One trait of rodents is that their front teeth never stop growing, so they need to gnaw on hard things to keep their front teeth short. Once a pine cone has matured and opened up, the seeds have probably been released into the wind and there is nothing left for a squirrel to eat. They pick young green or brown female pine cones because these have nourishing seeds inside that squirrels find delicious. Squirrels eat the seeds inside pine cones and not the pine cones themselves.
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