So, it’s more interesting than this. The trees are playing the squirrels. There’s a normal amount of acorns that can support a normal amount of squirrels. But once every few years, the trees make a bunch more acorns. More than the normal amount of squirrels can eat. But not frequent enough that the number of squirrels increase. So the squirrels go crazy and hide em everywhere that year, but there’s no way they can eat them all, so there are a bunch of acorns planted.
Tldr: trees manipulate # of acorns to get squirrels to plant more.It’s amazing nature found this blindly and it was the most efficient way to propagate as a species.
It was a good enough* way to propagate as a species
Local minimum, not a global minimum. Evolution is one long autoregressive process.
I just learned two new words
But not for you, only for your grand x 100 children
You don’t get a 250 year old forest in 25 years
Well, not with that attitude.
? I planted an oak tree when I was 6, it’s now over 40ft tall, and is currently dropping more acorns than the squirrels can handle. I’m 37 now for reference.
Ever met a 30 year old squirrel? Idk to be honest I have no idea how long they live
5-10 years, I just looked it up. So 1st set of grandkids should be able to benefit, as it’s dropping acorns by year 10 or so
“Accidentally”
“Forgetting”So all the clever squirrels die of malnutrition?
Makes me wonder which mechanism has limited human intelligence.
Death in childbirth because human heads are enormous?
Squirrels in it for the long con.
Ah yes the Sarah Silverman bit in a meme
That was the goal all along.
Huh, I’m not a squirrel expert at all but I understood that they’re pretty good at remembering their stashes.
Forgetful squirrels are one of the primary drivers of reforestation.
