An angry little squirrel has been filmed trying to scare away a black bear 1,000 times bigger that was trying to steal its nuts in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.
In a clip from new Disney+ documentary series America the Beautiful, a hidden camera captures the moment when a bear tries to raid the squirrel's stash of nuts that it has been gathering for the winter, and the squirrel does its best to chase it away.
This camera trap footage is part of the documentary crew's approach, capturing fly-on-the-wall behavior that the animals might never have done if there was a human camera crew lurking nearby. This allowed the team to film smaller, quirkier natural stories that they might not have even known to look for.
Squirrels hide nuts to prepare for cold weather and points when food is scarce. Grey squirrels stash them in multiple locations, often digging up and reburying so they remember the location, according to the Smithsonian Education Center. It is estimated around 25 percent of nuts collected by squirrels are stolen.
"[The camera traps] allow you to film really shy animals that you couldn't get any other way," Mark Linfield, an executive producer and Wildstar Films co-founder, told Newsweek.
The squirrel in the video is trying to stash all its pine cones and nuts in a secret cache before winter comes, but a black bear descends, and starts eating its reserves. The squirrel, rather than hiding or running away, defends its food stash, running towards and squeaking at the bear aggressively.
"You then see this incredible standoff between the squirrel and the bear," Vanessa Berlowitz, also an executive producer and co-founder for Wildstar Films, told Newsweek. "No one's ever seen that in the world, because normally the bear would be aware [of the camera team], and the squirrel would be aware, you wouldn't get that sort of natural behavior."
"A lot of our animals we portray as sort of heroic, and that's not necessarily always just the big, shiny, mountain lions and grizzlies. We've got a whole sprinkling of fantastic sort of underdogs as well," she said. "Effectively, the animals are filming themselves"
Thankfully, the squirrel has a secret stash up in the tree that all the other animals below don't know about, so it can make it through the winter.
The six-part series America the Beautiful will be available to watch on Disney+ on Monday, July 4. It aims to reveal the hidden secrets of regional animals across the U.S., from the classic icons to the unknown heroes.
"[We had a resource of] naturalists, and guides, and enthusiasts and park rangers, who are all kind of really into their local wildlife. It was tapping into those sorts of people that would help you get into those really unusual stories that you don't see every day," said Berlowitz. "As well as the small things, we worked really hard to show iconic animals. Each of the regions has an iconic animal that is emblematic of that region."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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