An interactive map detailing the activities of IU squirrels is supposed to come out in June, said Emily Jones, the president of IU Squirrel Club.
With one click on any part of campus, online users will see over 50 squirrels, their territory on campus and the individual squirrel’s face, markings and personality.
“The idea is to have a guide,” Jones said. “So you can distinguish them from each other based on their facial features.”
Jones, who is in her fifth year at IU, said she wanted to make a squirrel map since her freshman year in 2013. She’s been taking notes of the squirrels on campus and marking down their features, personalities and territories.
“If you open my laptop, the desktop is cluttered with notes, maps and information,” Jones said.
Jones said she is out with squirrels two to three times a day for 10 to 15 minutes each time.
“They all have different schedules,” she said. “Some wake up earlier and some wake up later.”
She's seen Charlotte, one of her favorites, every day for three years.
“I make appointments to visit her,” she said.
After long and intimate times spent with the squirrels, Jones said she can recognize them almost immediately.
“From a distance I can see how they move,” she said. “When they get closer, I can tell who it is based on the color, the way they look at me and the markings.”
Jones named most of the squirrels she’s identified, while some are named by the squirrels_of_iu Instagram followers. Lucy is a squirrel who hangs out at the green area in front of the IU Chemistry Building.
When Jones spotted her, she knelt down, swung her forearm back and forth to imitate a tail flick with a peanut in between her fingers.
“Lucy, tut-tut-tut."
She clicked her tongue and made a rhythm that resembled the chattering sound squirrels made.
Lucy drew closer and took the peanut off her hand.
“Good girl, Lucy,” she said while petting Lucy under her peanut-clutching paws.
One frequent question Jones receives about her knowledge of squirrels is how she tells them apart.
“A lot people think they all look the same,” she said. “They actually don’t.”
She said the squirrels are like cats and dogs. Even though they’re the same species — fox squirrels — it's possible to see their differences when up close.
“It’s just a lot of daily observation, taking notes of where they are and what time of the day they’re there,” she said. “Over time it merges.”
Another question is how she knows where their territory is.
She said she knows because she sees them multiple times a day for many years, and they never go out of the lines of their territories.
Jones said she knows their trees, too.
They have their trees where they always go back every night, she said.
"They’re just kind of like us,” she said. "They’re like little people."
For Jones, befriending squirrels doesn’t mean domesticating them.
Charlotte once followed her onto a bus. Jones said it’s not because she wanted more food, but she was just curious and wondering, “Where do you live? I want to see where you travel.”
Jones said she hopes to team up with other departments to do more scientific research in order to prove her observations.
“It might sound crazy,” she said. “My hypothesis is that in different parts of campus, the squirrels have different features because of different genes or different families.”
Sometimes, she has seen squirrel pictures people sent her and known where they were taken based on their facial features, even when people didn’t tell her. People were shocked because she was right, she said.
Near the Jacobs School of Music, for instance, their eyes are spaced farther apart, Jones said, and, around the Indiana Memorial Union area and Dunn’s Wood, they have a bump in their head.
“That only exists in this area and is not the case anywhere else on campus,” Jones said.
She said the website map is in the making as the data collection continues. She said she hopes it will launch before the end of the school year.
An IU squirrels genealogy tree is one of the goals for future club leaders, Jones said. She has been drawing the family tree of the squirrels near Jacobs since she was a freshman. But it will be cool to have a genealogy tree for the other squirrel families on campus, she said.
IU senior Karis Neufeld said she’s curious about how people track and identify squirrels on campus.
“I would like to see how many of them have names and are unique individuals,” Neufeld said. “It’s funny to think about them having their own territories and personalities.”
