Squirrels vary in color patterns across landscapes and neighborhoods. Some areas they are black, others gray, and even in a few white, but why? For the past 10 years, we have built a community of 10,000+ citizen scientists collecting and analyzing data to answer this question. Anyone, anywhere with an internet connection (and some squirrels nearby) can take part in this study.

Together we can crack this nut!

get involved

By engaging with the SquirrelMapper project you can contribute to an important scientific discovery about evolution in action in our own backyards. Here are five ways that ANYONE can participate in the SquirrelMapper project:

Contribute observations of squirrels to the SquirrelMapper project on iNaturalist

Over 160,000 photographs of squirrels have been submitted so far. When you submit an observation, the community of citizen scientists at iNaturalist confirms its identification. Once an observation is confirmed to be an eastern gray squirrel (a research grade observation), we import your photo to our project site at Zooniverse for you to classify by its coat color.

Classify the coat color of squirrels at the SquirrelMapper project on Zooniverse

The coat color of each squirrel is confirmed through classifications by at least 10 SquirrelMapper volunteers at Zooniverse. Once the color of a squirrel is classified, we map it, identify its habitat, and determine which morph occurs more often where. This lets us understand how quickly squirrels, and mammals like them, can adapt to changes in their habitats.

Measure natural selection on squirrel coloration by playing our SquirrelSpotter game

In this game you will search for squirrels in scenes of old growth forests, secondary forests, and roads, and we measure how long it takes you to find gray and black squirrels in each scene. By participating in the game you will directly measure the selection pressures on black and gray squirrels in each environment.

Map squirrels classified by citizen scientists with our data explorer tool

Check out our interactive map below to explore the location and color morph of eastern gray squirrels. These observations were submitted by citizen scientists to iNaturalist, with the coat color of each squirrel classified by citizen scientists like you at Zooniverse. Over 45,000 people have contributed to this dataset through iNaturalist and Zooniverse.

Experience evolution by playing our interactive digital squirrel game

This game lets you experience directly how the different morphs evolve across the changing landscape