Smith's bush squirrel
Paraxerus cepapi
— Where the name comes from
Paraxerus means “beside Xerus”, that is related to the African ground squirrels but not one of them: the Greek pará used as “para-” is in English. Cepapi is neither Greek nor Latin, it is the animal’s name in a Bantu language of Botswana, transcribed by the first European collectors.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Rodents
- Habitat
- Wooded savannah of mopane and acacia
- Range
- Southern Africa: Angola, Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, northern South Africa
- Size
- 13–20 cm of body, tail as long again, 100–260 g
- Diet
- Seeds, fruit, flowers, acacia gum, insects
- Lifespan
- 8 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It lives in pairs or small family groups that defend a common territory.
- 02
They recognise one another by rubbing muzzles, and treat as strangers anyone without the right smell.
- 03
It sleeps in tree cavities, often old woodpecker holes.
— What sets it apart
It spends part of the day eating the gum that runs from wounded acacias, and in doing so keeps the injuries in the bark open. Some researchers suspect it does so deliberately, as galagos and certain primates do, gnawing the edges of the wound to keep the flow going — a rudimentary form of cultivation, where the animal plants nothing but keeps in production a source of sugar that would otherwise close within days.
