Montreal's Eastern Grey Squirrels Vary in Coat Colour by Neighbourhood
A new McGill study found that eastern grey squirrels in Montreal vary in coat colour depending on the neighbourhood they live in, CBC reports. The reported driver is local environment: the animals are influenced by conditions that include temperature and forest cover.
The interesting implication is scale. If heat and tree canopy shift from block to block, a city becomes a patchwork of slightly different habitats, and the squirrels' coats appear to track that patchwork rather than the city as a whole.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
A neighbourhood pattern isn't the same as watching an animal change. The finding describes colour varying across areas, not individual squirrels switching coats after a move.
Fair — but it does point at which conditions might be doing the work, since temperature and forest cover are the factors named.