I nominate this for the Squirrel Video of the Year (my own rodents, by the way, are all fattened up for winter after generous ingestion of seeds and nuts). As the Daily Mail explains, a David Freiheit of Montreal affixed a piece of bread to the GoPro camera and put it near a squirrel.
The results were absolutely predictable, as you can see below. At least the guy got his camera back.
The video, of course, went viral, with over a million views in the last week.
h/t: Tina
Guy should be careful…the sqrl’z deservedly gonna insist on royalty payments for the copyright!
b&
The squirrel is clearly doing work for hire.
That just raises an entirely different set of problems. You see, he’s literally working for peanuts, and the Department of Labor isn’t going to be too happy to find out about that….
b&
Shouldn’t it be up to the squirrel whether he got enough bread?
I think he kneads a raise.
Yeah…definitely hasn’t got enough dough. At yeast double would be a good starter.
b&
Anyway you slice it.
Reblogged this on Peddling and Scaling God and Darwin and commented:
Brill this, but Jerry wont like my blogs as I am a god-botherer
You probably need to be more concerned that you used the B word. 🙂
It’s probably OK for michaelroberts to have a blog of his own. The big no-no is calling this site a bl*g. 🙂
So cute! I love the way squirrels wildly wave their tails, when they’re excited or apprehensive. And I half-expected the cameraman to proffer a bag of hazelnuts as a trade.
I love how the squirrel approached the camera all flat and nervously backing off, as if thinking:
“I want that bread. Wait, what’s that thing the bread’s on? Run away! Wait, but I want that bread. What’s that thing the bread’s on? I’ll creep to the side so it won’t see me. Run away!”.
I was wondering if, like my mini-waterproof camera, the GoPro had a flashing “recording” LED visible from facing the lens. I believe that some countries mandate such, making surveillance cameras slightly harder to obtain.
But in retrospect, I think there was a bespectacled hulking gurt hoomnz out of view, which was making the sqrl nervous.
In the Psych 101 (yes, literally) course that I took in the third quarter of the last century, this was explained as approach – avoidance behaviour. There is effectively a gradient of attraction and another of repulsion.
Hypothetically, if the attraction is stronger at a distance and repulsion overcomes the attraction as the animal gets closer, then it will stay in a zone and oscillate back and forth.
The squirrel has a sufficiently higher level of intelligence that it can use strategies to resolve the conflict. A planaria worm might be stuck for some time just reacting to the trophic forces.
Freiheit remains remarkably calm…
The squirrel is a pretty talented camera operator given that that was its first attempt at filming (I assume)!
My, he’s a plump one! (the squirrel, not David)
And David’s wearing his Remembrance Day poppy.
Fantastic video!
Look up the GoPro video where they attach one to the bill of a pelican. Fascinating bird’s eye view of flight.
That made my day!
Hilarious!
My friend once made a dry cake, sliced it and put it on the porch to cool. A squirrel took a slice and disappeared into bushes. In a couple of minutes the squirrel carried the slice back, uneaten.
Maybe the squirrel in the video was not happy with the quality of the GoPro.
That is hilarious! The squirrel actually bringing back the food, like it was so bad it was cursed.
Yes. That sounds like the punchline of the ultimate cooking insult. That dry cake was apparently a bit too “dry.” (Btw, what is a ‘dry cake’ — without frosting, like a pound cake?)
A pound cake, yes.