“Splooting”: How squirrels cope with high temperatures – knowledge

This heat! No swimming pool in sight, no cool drinks, no ice cubes. The wild animals also suffer from this. Squirrels can’t even switch to T-shirts and shorts, or rather, it doesn’t help them: You can’t take off your fur. Nevertheless, the cute rodents have found their own way of coping with the hot days, like they are currently doing in the social media is to be observed.

The squirrels look for a cool corner, preferably in the shade, and then lie down as flat as possible on the ground, all fours stretched out. In this way, they dissipate as much body heat as possible and can soon be happily hopping from branch to branch and bunkering hazelnuts.

How helpful would a quick sploot under the desk be

This behavior is apparently rooted in evolution and also helps them to survive in other situations. German-speaking rodent experts also speak of “splooting” (the term cannot be meaningfully translated). If the animals lie flat, motionless, they are more likely to be overlooked by dangerous predators such as foxes or badgers.

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They can also use the scent glands on their throats to mark their territory. However, this splooting also has an ambiguous side effect: the squirrels look even cuter, so they are photographed at every opportunity and lose their anonymity on Twitter and Instagram.

This is perhaps also the reason why this behavior has so far rarely been observed in humans. A flat bed in the underground car park would certainly refresh you, how helpful would escapistic splooting under the desk be when an unpleasant boss rolls up. But people don’t want to see themselves that way on the internet.

Unless you declare spontaneous lying down to be a subversive act, join a flash mob and call the whole thing planking. Corresponding campaigns were popular on the Internet for a while, but have since been forgotten. The squirrels, on the other hand, are sure to be splooting like crazy this summer.