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Red Squirrels Stayed at Urban and Rural Sites at Similar Rates on Hokkaido

Ezo red squirrel in Makomanai Park, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan
Research · Ecology

Eurasian red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) in cities and rural areas on Hokkaido, Japan, were almost equally likely to remain at the same study site over four months. The estimated probability was 0.66 in urban areas and 0.67 in rural areas—roughly two in three animals in either setting. The result ran against the researchers’ expectation that squirrels might stay longer in cities because of abundant food and fewer predators.

Between 2015 and 2021, researchers marked 306 squirrels at nine sites and looked for the same individuals again during repeated surveys. They measured spatial persistence: the probability that a squirrel was still associated with its study site four months later. This is not the same as survival, since an animal missing from a site may have died or moved elsewhere. The analysis also accounted for the possibility that a squirrel was present but not spotted.

Local differences mattered more than the urban–rural divide

The estimated average time spent at a site was about 13 months for urban squirrels and 16 months for rural squirrels, but the overall difference was not clearly supported. Males and females also had similar spatial persistence. The greater variation was between individual study sites: some places within the same urban or rural category differed considerably from one another.

Among urban locations, squirrels at a larger habitat patch had longer estimated spatial persistence than at a smaller one. Sites linked to neighbouring groves showed shorter persistence than more isolated patches, where moving to another grove may be harder. Because the study covered only nine sites, these are descriptive contrasts rather than proof that patch size or connectivity caused squirrels to remain or leave.

More aggression between city squirrels

Urban squirrels showed more aggressive encounters with squirrels of the same sex, even after accounting for how many animals were observed. In rural sites, all recorded same-sex aggression was between males; urban sites had both male–male and female–female encounters. The researchers also found no clear overall difference in predator abundance between urban and rural sites.

Stronger competition in some city habitats could encourage squirrels to move, but the study did not establish that aggression caused their departure. Its central finding is that squirrels did not remain at urban study sites more consistently than at rural ones, despite the differences in behaviour. How a particular habitat is structured may be more informative than the simple distinction between city and countryside.

Sources and image credit

  1. Takahata, Y., Ohtsuki, H., Uchida, K., Shimamoto, T., et al. (2026). Spatial persistence of rural and urban Eurasian red squirrels in Japan. Urban Ecosystems, 29, 273.Primary open-access research article published 24 September 2026. Researchers marked 306 Eurasian red squirrels at nine Hokkaido sites and used capture–mark–resight hidden Markov models. Four-month spatial persistence was 0.66 in urban and 0.67 in rural sites, with substantial site-level variation and no clear sex difference; urban sites showed more same-sex aggression while predator abundance did not differ clearly.

Image: Ezo red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris orientis) in Makomanai Park, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan, 3 November 2021. Photo: H yamaguchi / Wikimedia Commons. Representative image; not a study animal. · CC BY 2.0 · Source

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