If you live near squirrels, then you’ve probably witnessed their suicidal tendencies around roads. It can seem like they are waiting for a car to approach before darting across the asphalt, sometimes changing direction multiple times or freezing in the middle of the street, only to be straddled by a car’s wheels. Or, in some unfortunate instances, not.
Squirrels’ attraction to roads isn’t just something you’re imagining. It turns out these fluffy-tailed rodents, paradoxically, feel safer near roads with lots of traffic. It’s another illustration of how the “landscape of fear” has been scrambled in the Anthropocene.
The findings “seem counterintuitive, but show while roads can present a risk of being hit by a vehicle, squirrels living near roads appear to perceive the risk of being caught by a predator as lower,” said Kristin Thompson, who shed light on this phenomenon while earning a Ph.D. at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
Ecologists coined the phrase “landscape of fear” to describe how animals modify their behavior based on how risky a place seems, particularly when it comes to encounters with predators. But the things species evolved to fear might be a poor match for a world where humans have altered risks in myriad unnatural ways.
Thompson discovered just such a dynamic among gray squirrels living in southeast England, according to a new paper in the journal Oikos. To gauge how urban squirrels differed in behavior from their country cousins, the scientists visited six locations with differing levels of human presence such as roads and buildings. At each one, they placed a series of small trays bearing bits of peanuts. Some of the trays were next to large trees, enabling squirrels to make a quick escape if a predator such as a fox arrived. Others were placed out in the open.
In theory, squirrels should devour more of the peanuts on trays near the safety of a tree, because they will be less fearful and skittish. And that held true in the new experiment. But the scientists noticed an odd dynamic. The difference between the “safe” and nearby “risky” trays was significantly reduced when the site was close to a road. And the louder the road, the smaller the difference. The squirrel behavior suggests they felt less in danger amid the din of nearby traffic.
The researchers surmise this is likely because squirrels perceived that predators were less likely to be around when noisy people and cars were in abundance. But the authors note that this perception – whether real or not – has to be balanced with the danger of becoming roadkill.
“Our findings suggest human activities have a double-edged impact on urban wildlife like the gray squirrel,” said Sasha Dall, a University of Exeter ecologist.
Now, said Dall, they need to study how proximity to roads and urban life influence survival rates, food supply and reproductive success of these critters.
That might help answer the question of whether the squirrels really are making a canny choice by hanging out near roads, or are miscalculating how dangerous it is to play near traffic.
Thompson, et. al. “Urban noise and its predictability moderate perceived risk associated with roads in grey squirrels.” Oikos. Oct. 15, 2025.
Photo by Jeremy Hynes on Unsplash