Dowsing?

[Ravenshire]

Fixed that for ya.

K'den 'splain the squirrels ability to find it's buried treasure of nuts?

I have done several experiments with these critters when I was on the mainland. They do not smell it. They do not do it from memory and they aren't triangulating.

My interest in squirrels peaked when I went to London's Hyde Park on a warm sunny day in June. Their were squirrels everywhere and signs posted, "Do Not Feed the Squirrels".

Yet this guy comes walking down the path with a bag of peanuts hand feeding these squirrels. They would run up his leg and he was hand feeding them. WARNING: Only hand feed a squirrel at it's eye level as they cannot see below their snout! I learned that one the hard way--OUCH!

So what is so weird about that? Peanut is a subtropical plant. It is mostly used here in Hawaii as ground cover. It is a pretty plant with little yellow flowers. There is no way those squirrel knew what the heck a peanut was until it was introduced to them.

I introduced peanuts to squirrels in Rhode Island. They had no idea what it was but once they analyzed it, they wanted more. I did the same thing in Florida, where peanut do grow, but not in that area. Once they figured it out, they would find my peanuts anywhere I hid them and they where in a jar.

So, I moved to another part of Florida where squirrels used my back fence to run from tree to tree. I put a cashew(not found in South Florida) and they would all hop over it without even investigating. If people want to do experiments with squirrels in the NE, use hazel nuts, they know them well. Or, peanuts of which they are clueless.

So the reality is Sir, that dowsing is done in nature all the time. By squirrels, deer, bees and your cat!

Anecdotal evidence of completely unscientific "experiments" is supposed to impress me, why? It's certainly not evidence of dowsing by any means. For fuck's sake, people have been feeding squirrels peanuts as long as there have been peanuts, squirrels and people. Gee, I wonder how they could possibly have recognized it as a food source.

As far as how they find their food stash, I'll take the word of these guys, or these guys over you're insane ramblings every time. And, when it really comes to it, this paper from Berkley on the subject of how squirrels find their food stash is more trustworthy than either of the other two, and significantly more trustworthy than your bullshit stories.

If the squirrels are dowsing, they're pretty fucking bad at it:

A study done at the University of Richmond cites that squirrels fail to recover up to 74% of the nuts they bury.

(my bold)

Care to show us where the scientists are getting it wrong? I mean, if you want to, you can prove all these guys wrong. Do an actual study, with control groups and everything, and come report your findings in a couple years. Or, you can keep spouting bullshit. Six of one, half dozen of the other to me.