Claim spread squirrels in California have turned carnivorous. We hunted down the details

In July 2025, a rumor spread across social media that squirrels in California were turning carnivorous, prompting people to search our site for the truth behind the claim.

Multiple Facebook pages (archived), including one with more than 34 million followers (archived), posted an image claiming, "California squirrels are turning carnivorous. They are actively hunting other animals for the first time, study reveals." The image was also shared on Instagram (archived), where it was liked more than 187,000 times.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Hashem Al-Ghaili (@hashem.alghaili)

While the language used in the widely shared image made the story sound more dramatic than reality, it is true a study found that squirrels in a California park were exhibiting carnivorous behavior.

The study, published in December 2024, investigated the behaviors of squirrels at Briones Regional Park in Contra Costa County, California, earlier in the year. However, the researchers had been studying the long-term behavior of squirrels at the park since 2013.

Over a period of 18 days, researchers observed 31 instances of squirrels hunting — defined as the active pursuit of prey — voles within the park. The behavior occurred during a peak in the vole population at the park; in 2024, the vole population peaked seven times higher than the 10-year average.

Jennifer Smith, the lead author of the study and co-leader of the long-term ground squirrels project, said the team "had never seen this behavior before," according to a news release from UC Davis. The other co-leader of the squirrel project, Sonja Wild, had observed hundreds of squirrels in nature and yet she said she could "barely believe" her eyes.

The researchers included a video they recorded of the squirrels hunting voles.

According to the UC Davis news release, the researchers believed the squirrels' behavior was evidence of them being flexible opportunists because the squirrels began hunting voles as the latter became more abundant and the researchers did not see the squirrels hunting any other mammals.

While this was the first time the researchers observed this behavior in the California ground squirrel, which is a distinct species of squirrel related to chipmunks and prairie dogs, it was not the first time scientists had seen any kind of squirrel exhibit such behavior.

Southern flying squirrels, for example, "are considered one of the most carnivorous squirrels because they supplement their diet with eggs, birds, and carrion," according to the National Wildlife Federation. Similarly, in 2022, researchers in Europe presented evidence of a European ground squirrel catching and eating a sparrow.

None of the above squirrels were the kind most commonly seen in American backyards and cities. Those are a kind of tree squirrel called the gray squirrel, the Organizations of American Historians has written.