Our Animals
Have you ever seen a squirrel fly?
Now you can at the Cayuga Nature Center. Come see our Southern Flying Squirrels!
The squirrels were born in captivity in May 2011 and have been living at the Nature Center since July 2011. Been to the Nature Center, but haven't seen them yet? The squirrels had to be acclimated to humans before they were ready for the animal room. Nature Center staff wore the squirrels in pouches around their necks so the squirrels could get used to be around humans.
Did you know that flying squirrels live in forests right here in central New York? Since they are nocturnal and are often high up in the trees, many people don’t see them and don’t know they’re here! Flying squirrels cannot actually fly; they glide. Stretching between their front and hind legs is a special gliding membrane called a pantagium. This membrane gives them the ability to glide up to 200 feet! The flying squirrels use this membrane almost like a parachute as they glide, and they use their flat, bushy tail to help them balance when climbing and to keep them warm when they sleep. At night, flying squirrels glide from tree to tree in search of food. They like to eat acorns, nuts, seeds, berries, mushrooms, fungi, insects, and larvae. Come over to the Cayuga Nature Center to see our squirrels!
Butterflies
On Saturday, September 17, we released the butterflies from the Butterfly Garden for their voyage south. At the end of every summer, monarchs living east of the Rocky Mountains begin to fly South to spend the winter in the mountains of Mexico. Millions of monarchs fly up to 3,000 miles to reach their roosting spots. One spot takes up a few hectares. How do the monarchs know where to go? How does a single monarch fly thousands of miles to reach a specific location in Mexico? In an effort to better understand how monarchs make this mass migration, researchers from MonarchWatch created small adhesive tags to mark the butterflies and track them. The small tags are attached to the hind wing of the monarch, and do not hinder them in flight. Each tag has a code that tells whether the monarch is male or female, when it was tagged, and where it was tagged. If a tagged monarch is found in the US or in Mexico, the public can turn in the tag code to help scientists determine where the monarch originated, and what route they were taking on their way south. Millions of monarchs make this journey every year, so the more information researchers can gather, the more it will help us to understand how monarchs make this incredible journey.
For more information about monarchs and monarch migration, visit www.monarchwatch.org.