What was really amazing is that the squirrel did not run away and up a tree like it does when encountering a dog. Just waved a few inches side to side and just kept very much on the same spot were it was foraging the instant the bird attacked, like another day in the office. Such a badass squirrel indeed!
that doesn’t always work. i once hit a squirrel with a football that i was sure it was going to dodge. but after scampering back and forth, it dodged right into the path of the football at the last moment. it didn’t appear to be hurt, and scurried away afterwards, but i still felt really bad about it.
> but after scampering back and forth, it dodged right into the path of the football at the last moment.
Note that (like many evolved things) squirrel behaviour is designed around a actively adversarial environment. (It may or may not have had a explicit mental model of the process, but from a behavioural perspective) it was likely expecting the football^Wnovel bird of prey to course-correct towards it, in which case lunging in the opposite direction that the attacker just expended effort accellerating toward gives it the best chances of getting away. (Or something along those lines, I don't know enough details to be particularly sure.)
yah, that's kind of what i assumed as well. the squirrel was stunned for a good few seconds, not realizing what had gone wrong with its evolutionarily-inherited strategy, which was a cartoony kind of funny after-the-fact.
