College students go nuts for 
squirrels, but at the University 
of Michigan researchers have 
taken an interest as well. 
U-M is one of several schools 
participating in a research 
project called the Kluane Red 
Squirrel Project.
Ben Dantzer, an assistant 
professor of Psychology and 
Ecology 
and 
Evolutionary 
Biology at the University, leads 
the research project based in 
Yukon, Canada. The study has 
been going on for 30 years, 
making it the longest running 
research project of its kind and 
focuses on North American 
red squirrels. The goal of the 
project is to learn what allows 

an animal to be successful 
in survival and reproduction 
over generations.
Dantzer said his research 
allows 
scientists 
to 
know 
more about how an animal’s 
early life affects its adulthood 
traits and behaviors, which 
can often be applied to human 
topics as well. 
“We know that these things 
may occur in rats and mice 
in laboratory environments,” 
Danzter said. “It may occur 
in humans but we can’t do 
experiments on humans for 
obvious reasons, and then lab 
mice have a lot of artifacts 
where the environment is 
constant: they have constant 
food, they’re comfortable, they 
are fat and happy, literally. In 
wild animals, you can kind of 
study whether those things 

happen in nature where they 
are experiencing fluctuations 
in their environments and 
that’s going to impact those 
things.”
The team is also able to 
learn more about the impacts 
of climate change by observing 
how the changing conditions 
affect the squirrels, Dantzer 
said. 
“They give us an idea of 
how animals will respond 
to global and environmental 
changes in terms of reductions 
in winter severity, changes 
in 
precipitation 
patterns, 
warming 
pattern, 
things 
like that,” Dantzer said. “So 
if we’re able to study these 
types of questions of how they 
adapt to changes in global 
climate, then that can help us 
to understand better things 
about how other animals 
might adapt to changing 
climates.”
Dantzer 
expressed 
his 
excitement 
about 
another squirrel research 
project being conducted 
right on campus. This is 
led by Rackham student 
Charlotte Devits, who is 
researching 
the 
effects 
that an urban environment 
has on the survival of 
wildlife. Devits’s thesis 
project aims to discover 
how an urban environment 
such as Ann Arbor affects 
the behavior of wildlife. 
Devits 
tags 
squirrels, 
which allows researchers 
to 
track 
the 
squirrels 
and 
maintain 
personal 
information about each 
one.
The squirrels are tagged 
in the Nichols Arboretum, 
but they eventually make 
their way to the Diag and 
other parts of campus. In 
an interview posted to 
the 
Matthaei 
Botanical 
Gardens 
& 
Nichols 

Arboretum’s website, Devits 
said she hopes to uncover 
what traits help our squirrels 
— formally known as Fox 
Squirrels — survive in this 
environment, as well as other 
cities and urban environments. 
She’s also recording data on 
health factors, for example, 
observing each squirrel for 
wounds, parasites, mange and 
other conditions.
“We’re trying to understand 
what allows the species to 
cope with different levels of 
urbanization,” Devitz said in 
the interview. “We focus on 
personality traits to see if a 
particular behavior is present 
across the study sites.”
Devitz did not respond to 
an interview request from The 
Michigan Daily. 
LSA senior Sanjana Ramesh 
said she loves the campus 
squirrels and did some digging 
into what the ear tags were 
when she noticed them.
“I 
just 
really 
like 
the 
squirrels,” 
Ramesh 
said. 
“There’s this whole meme 
going around on the internet 
about 
how 
our 
campus’s 
squirrels are the best, and I 
can definitely conform to that. 
I think that the whole part of 
the squirrel tags was just new 
and I’m really curious.”
Ramesh said that, as a 
senior, she had never seen 
squirrels with ear tags on 
campus.
“I just thought it was 
interesting, and I wanted to 
know why,” Ramesh said. “I do 
know that other animals are 
tagged, so I wanted to know. 
I figured it was a research 
thing because that’s usually 
what it is … Thankfully, it 
was research and they’re not 
trying to kill our squirrels. I 
was really scared they were 
trying to kill our squirrels.”

2 — Friday, October 11, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News

TUESDAY:
By Design
THURSDAY:
Twitter Talk

FRIDAY:
Behind the Story

WEDNESDAY:
This Week in History

MONDAY:

Looking at the Numbers

B E HIND THE STORY

QUOTE OF THE WE E K 

“
I always say that I feel like a freshman here on campus, because I 
obviously don’t know the campus as well and stuff like that, but 
sometimes being in these classes with all these freshmen, you just kind 
of feel like you’re out of place. You come here to Michigan for more 
opportunities, but I feel like I’m being set back more than pushed 
forward sometimes.”

Zoe Garden, LSA junior, discussing her experience as a transfer student at the University

Every Friday, one Daily staffer will give a behind the scenes look 
at one of this week’s stories. This week, LSA senior Julia Fanzeres 
discussed covering a protest of former Secretary of State Hillary 
Clinton, who visited campus on Thursday to give a lecture at 
Rackham Auditorium.

“It was really frustrating because the demonstrator was cooperating 
with us and wanted to have her voice heard, but the DPSS officer 
interjected and advised her not to speak to us. It delegitimized the 
role of journalists in covering protests, and it diminished the quality 
of our coverage because we were able to get that demonstrator’s 
perspectives.”

Julia Fanzeres, Daily Staff Reporter

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Researchers look at lives of squirrels, 
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‘U’ scientists gather data on behavior of campus wildlife, animals in Yukon

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