YouTuber Viva Frei set a GoPro on the ground with a piece of bread attached, hoping a squirrel would come close enough for a great portrait. It did better than that. In November 2014 the squirrel grabbed the whole camera, ran up a tree with it and gave the internet a dizzy, bark-level view of its world.
The squirrel that stole a GoPro
The clip opens in a tidy, low-angle composition: a brick building behind and a squirrel edging closer to the lens. Then the framing collapses. The animal picks up the camera, the picture swings wildly and suddenly the view is of tree bark, branches and the ground falling away below.
Frei had been experimenting with tempting a squirrel to play with his camera, and this was the result. According to ABC’s Philadelphia station 6abc, the video was approaching one million views within about a week of being posted. In a follow-up video the squirrel left the camera up in the tree, and it took six hours to get it back down. Frei said that would be the last time he let a squirrel play with his camera.
Watch the squirrel’s-eye view
Why squirrels grab things and carry them up trees
Squirrels are hoarders by instinct. The eastern grey squirrel, the familiar park squirrel of eastern North America, stores food in thousands of small caches each season, burying some for months and moving others. It finds them again with spatial memory, using near and distant landmarks, with smell as a back-up. An object that smells of bread is, to a squirrel, simply a big piece of food worth carrying off.
The climb is just as natural. Grey squirrels are among very few mammals that can run down a tree head-first: they rotate their hind feet so the claws point backwards and grip the bark. For an animal weighing 400 to 600 grams, a GoPro is a heavy load, but up a tree is where a squirrel takes anything it wants to keep.
They are clever about it, too. When a grey squirrel thinks it is being watched, it sometimes pretends to bury food while keeping it in its mouth, a trick that suggests surprisingly complex thinking.
Filming wildlife with an action camera
Action cameras are ideal for close wildlife footage because they are small, wide-angle and tough. To keep your camera, skip the bait: mount it firmly to a tripod, stake or tree with a strap, then let animals come to it on their own. You will get natural behaviour and you will not have to wait six hours for a squirrel to give your camera back.
For another animal story, read the Norway duck rescue. For a calmer close view of wildlife on a GoPro, visit Jigokudani’s macaques.
Related reading
- Flying Squirrel Portraits: Faces, Tree Trunks and Hollows
- A Young Squirrel Brought Indoors: The Rescue Photo Sequence
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