Body characteristics: tail hair is dense and long and fluffy, limbs and front and rear feet are longer, but the front limbs are shorter than the hind limbs. The ear shells are well developed and can reach the eyes when folded in front, and there is a bunch of long black hairs at the end of the ear in winter. The back of the body from the end of the muzzle to the base of the tail, the side of the body and the outside of the limbs are brownish-gray, the base of the hair is grayish-black, and the tips of the hair are brown or gray. The abdomen is white from the back of the lower collar to the base of the tail and on the inside of the limbs. The dorsal and ventral surfaces of the tail are brownish black with a gray hair base and brownish black tips. The muzzle, cheeks, and underparts are as dorsally colored but bluish gray, the ear shells are blackish gray, and the winter coat has large tufts of black hairs. Individual coat color varies widely, including greenish gray, gray, brownish gray, dark gray, and blackish brown. With regional differences, coat color also varies, such as Liaoning squirrels are grayish in color, while squirrels in the south of China are darker in color. In addition, the fur color is also affected by the seasons, winter fur gray or gray-brown, summer fur black or dark brown.
Life habits: squirrels are typical arboreal rodents, inhabiting mountain coniferous forests and mixed coniferous - broadleaf forests, with branches, moss and feathers as nesting material, nesting between branches. The nest is round, the exit is open on the leeward side, but there are also inhabited in the tree grotto, and some of the old large bird's nest to repair and become. Squirrels can make several nests per year, with primary and secondary nests, and secondary nests are used for temporary rest. Male squirrels seldom build nests, mostly using old nests.
The squirrels eat mainly plant food, but also insects and their larvae, ant eggs, bird eggs and other animals, but the main food for the seeds of larch and other coniferous forests, and in the summer, more to take a variety of berries and mushrooms; in the absence of food, but also ate the young shoots of trees. Daytime activities, the most active early in the morning, not winter eyes, but winter activities to reduce the cold winter, rarely out of the nest activities.
Squirrels have the habit of storing food. Whenever the fruit is ripe, it can often be seen with pecans, acorns or other goodies in its mouth, and whenever it jumps from one branch to another, the stash increases. Not only does it gather pecans and ripe fruit, but it often hangs gristly mushrooms on the branches above it, to be air-dried and stowed away in a storehouse. It has indeed a great skill in finding suitable branches on which to hang the mushrooms, and in drying them so that they do not fall off. In the squirrel's storehouse were found pecans and other plant seeds, but none of them were rotten or worm-eaten, and all were of good quality. The squirrel's barns are numerous, yet some of them are liable to be damaged by wind and rain and by violent winter storms, so that the outward shape of their neighborhood is altered and they can no longer be found. This little creature builds spherical nests whose entrances can be closed from the inside, and outside the nest, while the rain pours down, the wind howls, the snow flies, and the ice-covered trees creak, it lies in the warmth of its nest and waits for a sunny day to come. At this point, it goes in search of its larder, and when it finds it, it feasts. If there are no storms or rain and the sun shines warmly, it jumps along the branches of the trees and plays, its long tail enabling it to jump up to 10 meters. When it gets tired, it returns to its nest for a nap. When a blizzard blows at night and the trees creak, it rests in a well-insulated nest. The convenience of the tree-hole larder and the camping nest adjacent to it will starve and freeze to death under winter, so it does not need to hibernate.
Distribution: the squirrel has a wide distribution, in the whole cold temperate forest area can be caught. In our country is mainly distributed in the northeastern provinces, northeastern Inner Mongolia, Hebei and northern Shanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, Xinjiang and other provinces and districts of the mountainous areas; foreign countries from the Far East of Russia, Japan, North Korea, northern Mongolia, to the west has been distributed to Western Europe. In coniferous forests, the squirrel is not a lot of every year, its number of how much is shifted by the number of seeds of conifers in winter; because its food to plant seeds and fruits, seeds sometimes account for more than 95%; and spruce seeds are not every year a bumper crop, in the year of pine cones failed, the squirrel will move to the place where there is more food to forage for food; and in the year of food abundance, it will be a large number of reproduction.
There are many species of squirrels, about 240 species in the world and 26 in China. Among them, the squirrels living in the woods are very common in the northeast and north China, and thus are also called common squirrels. It has a slender body with gray, dark brown or russet body hair, so it is also called gray squirrel.
Squirrels build nests in dense branches, or use the abandoned nests of crows and magpies, and sometimes make nests in tree holes; they eat wild fruits, but also eat shoots, young shoots, leaves, as well as insects and bird eggs. Autumn, the squirrels began to store food, a squirrel often several kilograms of food stored in several places, and sometimes see the squirrels in the sun on the tree food, do not let them deteriorate mold. In this way, in the cold winter, squirrels will not worry about nothing to eat.
Squirrels are generally active during the day, and are more active in the early morning. It has a good sense of hearing and sight, and is agile and active. The squirrel's fur is light and warm, and although its quality is not as good as that of otter and sable, it is plentiful and is one of the important fur-bearing animals in China.
The body length is about 22 centimeters; the back of the body is brownish-brown, and the general ventral surface is chestnut-red, sometimes even the inner side of the limbs are chestnut-red; some individuals only have a red ventral midline, or even completely without red. The tail is almost as long as the body, and the tail hairs are blackish brown with a light brown apex; some individuals have a grayish-white tail end. Red-bellied squirrels are arboreal and diurnal, and are most active in the morning and evening. Contrary to popular belief, they do not live in tree holes, but use thin, leafy branches to weave spherical nests high in the treetops, which are larger than footballs and lined with soft bark, fibers, and other more comfortable materials. Both male and female red-bellied squirrels have their own tree nests, sometimes more than one. Female squirrels naturally raise their young in their nests, with two young per litter, usually one to two litters a year. Red-bellied squirrels mainly feed on plant fruits, flowers and leaves, and occasionally take some animal bait. In Taiwan, the squirrels may have been harmed by the sudden loss of biodiversity in their habitat as a result of the logging of low elevation broadleaf forests in the past and the switch to large scale forest plantations of exotic Willow Fir. The bark of the trees was chewed, and the trees were deformed and died, resulting in huge losses, and the red-bellied squirrels were named as forest pests and attracted a lot of attention!