Peanut Food Source And Sunflower Food Experiment

In short, the experiment successfully supported the hypothesis. There was a significant disparity between the peanut food source and the sunflower seed food source. The ANOVA test was able to provide a p-value very close to 0 which means it’s statically significant. On top of that visually the average amount of the food source left was visually different when comparing 62.8 peanut grams left compared to 99 sunflower seed grams left. This clearly shows that peanuts are the more desirable food source for squirrels in the area we tested. At the first three trials (idk about the last two) squirrel(s) where often still seen foraging in the peanut tray after the elapsed time of the trial. This shows that the squirrels didn’t reach the point where they would give up in that foraging location. Also at the first three trials the squirrels seemed “uninterested” in the tray with the sunflower seeds and weren’t even touched.
From this, we are confident concluding that squirrels do have a lower GUD for a more desirable food source.
The GUD for the sunflower seeds were so low that it even seems that as long as there’s another food source that they won’t go for sunflower seeds. This seems very interesting to me considering that I wouldn’t think a certain food source would take that much precedence over another. However, per the marginal value theorem, this is understandable as the squirrels saw only limited value in sunflower seeds. They would have to spend more time on handling the sunflowers seeds to get the same nutrients from the peanuts. So, more time at a location can lead to other reasons why a squirrel wouldn’t want to forage sunflower seeds such as
predation. While the experiment seems simple in that the data collected entailed the removed/eaten nuts per trial, there were many other factors which could not be accounted for. For example, it was impossible to account for the weather and the dining patterns of the squirrels. We found from many of the failed trials that squirrels didn’t seem very active at certain parts of the day which made it hard to find time to do trials. Additionally, there was a lot of heavy rainy days that we could not do trials during and also could change when squirrels would go out and forage. Finally, after many failed sights we were able to find a few that had a present squirrel population and fair weather days. To improve upon some of the issues experience, it would be valuable to add more trials and to have a more secluded test sight. The urban ecosystem has many external factors which can scare a squirrel or introduce other peanut foragers. Additionally, it would be beneficial to video the trials for accurate analysis and behavior observation. These two points were the subject of the study, yet their results were analyzed instead of the act. From all the data, it is clear to see that squirrel foraging behavior is effected by a more desirable food source not just a little but drastically effects it. The foraging behavior persisted through each trial as predicted. This is important because it shows that squirrels can have a basic understanding of cost – benefit analysis when foraging. This also can imply that someone can analyze nutrition nut data and be able to predict: What is the most desirable nut a squirrel has in its behavior? And finally, that squirrels hate sunflower seeds.