Socialization and Interaction (6 week old grey squirrel)

[Carmenellie]

Hey guys!

So our little grey squirrel from the other day is doing great. He's very active and vocal when he wants food, and is getting stronger every day. Since we plan on releasing him, I was wondering about interaction. He seems to really seek out interaction and attention from us, which I didn't expect from something straight from the wild. Is having some interaction important to their development, or should we keep him as isolated as possible to prevent him from becoming to comfortable with humans?

[HRT4SQRLS]

Playing with the baby is fine. They enjoy play and human interaction. You can also cuddle and kiss too if he will allow it.
Don’t worry about human/wild interaction and becoming human bonded. I have released many pet squirrels that do fine in nature as a wild. Squirrels have strong instincts. They are hard wired to be wild animals. I would say of the many I have released it’s only a small percent that hang around and want interaction with me after release. Some will crawl on me for a couple days but soon stop. An interesting thing... even those that crawl on me after release usually won’t allow me to touch them. If I try to pet them they will scurry away or bite me.

A bigger problem is those that want to keep a squirrel as a pet. That precious baby usually reaches a point where they start ‘wilding up’ in spite of all the play and cuddles with their human. We try to discourage keeping them as pets partly due to this and many other factors as well. They just don’t make good pets. At that point their human has become their captor and is no longer their beloved human.

[Carmenellie]

Interesting! That's really good to know, and I'll feel less guilty about playing with him while he is so cute and docile.