A Groundbreaking, Unprecedented, Never-Before-Seen Discovery—That’s Been Noted for Decades

The headline caught my attention: “Squirrels spotted hunting and eating animals for first time.” Reading on [emphases added]:

Until now, squirrels were thought to be primarily vegetarian, cramming their cheeks full of seeds and nuts, which they often bury in underground stores to get through the colder months.

But biologists were amazed to see Californian ground squirrels chasing and killing voles in predatory behaviour never before recorded in the animals.

Other U.S. and international media coverage was easy to find at CNN, People, CBS News, Yahoo! News, Los Angeles Times, YubaNet.com, Latin Times, the Straits Times, LAist, ChipChick, Firstpost, and more. Popular science magazines, such as Smithsonian, Earth.com, Popular Science, ScienceDaily, Yale Environment 360, University of California, SciTechDaily, StudyFinds, Gizmodo, Science Blog, Science Times, LiveScience, the Mind Unleashed, and Eureka Alert!, ran the story too, thus conferring extra expert legitimacy.

Almost all the articles were apparently derived from common sources, such as a University of California, Davis press release and public statements from the two professors leading the research project.

I had assumed that squirrels had been scurrying about the earth for millennia. To then break with vegetarianism only in the year 2024 seemed extraordinary. But such an abrupt, drastic dietary change certainly would be newsworthy.

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Long a skeptic of scholars’ firstness claims, I investigated.

It took less than ten minutes of web searching to find several pre-2024 documents attesting to squirrels’ occasional carnivorism. (See, for example, J. R. Callahan’s “Squirrels as Predators,” from 1993.) Despite the headlines, squirrels have long been omnivorous—i.e., eating both plants and animals (e.g., voles, mice). Moreover, apparently, dozens of “squirid” species are known to participate in the practice.

Nor was I the only skeptic. The Dec. 18 Gizmodo version allowed comments and received plenty, including eight that argued that there was nothing new about squirrels eating meat, with most of these commenters claiming to have witnessed the behavior themselves. One linked to a 2005 BBC story about a pack of black squirrels during a local severe pine cone shortage attacking a big barking dog, “literally gutting” it, and “taking pieces of their kill away with them.”

Had the professors reported witnessing squirrels eating other animals for the gazillionth time in recorded history, however, the media likely would have paid little attention.

The Journal of Ethology published the study in December 2024 online and January 2025 in print. Professors of biology and environmental science and policy at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the University of California, Davis had led a large team of student data collectors.

Of the three communication stages—journal article, press release and interviews, and media coverage—the journal article, as one might have expected, seems most retrained in its firstness claims. Yet, it still makes some.

In the abstract:

Here we document the novel emergence of widespread hunting of California voles and carnivorous feeding behavior by California ground squirrels.

Further details are cluttered enough to confuse the reader as to which particular aspect is emerging novelty. Is it the widespreadness, the hunting, the CA voles as prey, the carnivorous feeding, or the CA ground squirrel species in particular? More cluttered sentences with firstness claims follow, crowded in ambiguity:

For the first time, we document the occurrence of widespread hunting of mammalian prey, the California vole (Microtus c. californicus) by the California ground squirrel … Here, we provide the first evidence of California ground squirrels (Otospermophilus beecheyi, Richardson, 1829, formerly Beechey ground squirrel, and recently distinguished from O. douglasii (Smith et al. 2016; Long and Smith 2023)) repeatedly hunting, killing and consuming adult vertebrate prey in nature.

In addition to claiming firstness, the latter quote informs us that the California Ground Squirrel was only recently identified as a separate species. So, what’s first? Perhaps the observation that this particular species that’s only been around, technically, for several years is hunting and eating meat?

To be fair, the journal article references the Callahan article mentioned above. Still, the authors attempt to explain it away as insufficient in certain details, such that their study remains “first” in most important respects.

Hype increased greatly with the press release and the two professors’ and project directors’ public statements [emphases added]:

‘This was shocking,’ study co-author and University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire biologist Jennifer E. Smith said in a statement. ‘We had never seen this behavior before. Squirrels are one of the most familiar animals to people. We see them right outside our windows; we interact with them regularly. Yet here’s this never-before-encountered-in-science behavior that sheds light on the fact that there’s so much more to learn about the natural history of the world around us … in our twelve years of conducting observations on hundreds of squirrels we had never observed any incidents of vole hunting before this summer … ‘I could barely believe my eyes,’ [Sonja] Wild said in a statement. ‘From then, we saw that behavior almost every day. Once we started looking, we saw it everywhere.’

At a minimum, the project directors strongly imply that their firstness hype pertains to all kinds of squirrels, anytime and anywhere. They’re referring to the squirrels “outside our windows” and perhaps “hundreds of” others.

By the final stage—the reporters’ stories in dozens of media outlets—the hype remained largely unrestrained, with firstness the hook [emphases added]:

Published in the Journal of Ethology, the study fundamentally changes our understanding of ground squirrels. (UC Davis Instagram, Dec. 18, 2024)

California squirrels are eating another rodent for the first time, new study finds. (CNN Science, Dec. 18, 2024)

Now, scientists have found unprecedented evidence of another type of squirrel exhibiting carnivorous behaviors, including hunting, killing and eating voles, according to a new study. (CNN Science, Dec. 18, 2024)

But a new study provides the first evidence that California ground squirrels also hunt, kill and eat voles. The study, led by the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the University of California, Davis, is the first to chronicle widespread carnivorous behavior among squirrels. (UC Davis, Dec. 18, 2024)

Only a few reporters showed restraint—limiting firstness claims to professors’ quotes rather than their own text or qualifying such claims in their own writing. For example [emphases added]:

New findings released by University of California, Davis researchers on Wednesday purports to show the first evidence of widespread carnivorous behavior in squirrels … There, researchers say they observed squirrels actively hunting voles in 42% of the species’ interactions. (CBSNews 13–Sacramento, Dec. 18, 2024)

But now, scientists have discovered evidence of a type of squirrel in California displaying carnivorous behaviors … Initially, this discovery may seem concerning, but experts say that such a dietary change is pretty normal in animals. (ChipChick, Dec. 22, 2024)

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Though not explicitly stated, one might assume that the experts of the latter quote differed from the study directors—i.e., the reporter sought a second opinion.

One may make fun of firstness claims, but they are not harmless braggadocio in scientific research. They can cause serious harm. When readers believe a study is the first of its kind, they also believe there is no point in looking for previous studies. A firstness claim, essentially, ghosts all the previous research on that topic, narrowing what is understood in society’s collective working memory to just that in the most opportunistic scholars’ most recent study. Society is less well-informed than it could be, and in some cases, it is far, far less.

Before you go, did you know that the Mount Lyell Shrew had never been photographed before November 2024? Nor had there ever been a photograph of a great white shark giving birth before the year 2023, according to The Guardian, American Oceans, CNN, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Fox Weather, National Geographic, CBS News Science Alert, NBC Philadelphia, BBC, Smithsonian, Popular Science, Business Insider, Fox Weather, CTV News, MSN, Gizmodo, MassLive, ITV, New Atlas, and others.

Follow Richard P Phelps on X. 

Image of Crazy Squirrel by Erin on Flickr