Don’t forget the obviously non-invasive european starling and european house sparrow common at feeders.
Comment on Why do boomers hate squirrels so much?
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 months agoSquirrels are an invasive species, they’re not native to North America.
Just how many tens of millions of years do a species need to exist in a place before you consider it native to that land?
“The earliest known North American squirrel fossil dates back to the late Eocene epoch, about 34 million years ago.” source
technocat@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Shadow@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Only about 300 years, from your own link you kindly provided:
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think you need to read that carefully again. Squirrels have been in North America for millions of years before Europeans arrived. The part you quoted was where Europeans took a specific species of squirrel found in North America, the eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), back with them to England.
The rest of that quoted piece talks about that specific species of North American squirrel’s spread around other parts of North American.
Shadow@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Yeah you’re right, I totally read it backwards. 🤦
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 months ago
No worries!