I really enjoyed the video of the trapping process. You mentioned some you take back to the lab, and some you don't. What qualifies a squirrel for a trip to the lab? When you release them after a day of science, do you take each one back to the area where it was trapped? I thought the picture of you carrying all those traps was great...pretty tricky walking across the tundra with that unwieldy load! That fog can be unbelievable while trying to drive on the road, there. I think that's enough to qualify you as an ice road trucker... Have fun, enjoy the snow!

Alicia Gillean

Hi, Susan!
Thanks for posting! If we decide to take a squirrel back to the lab, we mark it's location (each area as an assigned number) on the cage and return the squirrel to the exact same area. Females tend to stay in a relatively small area, but the males seem to roam a bit farther.
I just wrote a blog post to answer your question about how we decide which squirrels to bring back to the lab and which ones to release on site. You can read it here: http://www.polartrec.com/expeditions/arctic-ground-squirrel-studies/jour...