The fall season brings changing colors, cooler temperatures, and falling acorns. This nut of the oak tree is the stereotypical favorite meal of the squirrel, and sets off their frantic scramble to stock their stores for winter. While this sounds like greed by the squirrel, it also benefits the tree. Scatter-hoarding behavior of the squirrel disperses the acorns more widely. And though squirrels retain remarkably large mental maps of their locations, acorns are lost or a squirrel may die before consuming them. In this way, enough acorns are planted to produce the next generation of oaks.

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