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Originally Posted by narfforc
They are having the same effect here in England, however I don't feel sorry for the Grey, it has done enormous damage to the Red.
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Might be a waste anyway– black squirrels are just greys with darker fur, apparently, not a separate species. So it's more like a hair colour becoming more common:
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Originally Posted by Some biologist in a BBC news article I just looked up
The rise of the black is the biggest change in squirrel demographics since the native reds almost disappeared 50 years ago from large parts of England.
This is not because black squirrels compete with greys in the way that greys compete with reds (the larger greys eat more, and carry a pox that is deadly to reds), but because the gene for black fur is dominant, just like the gene for brown eyes is dominant over blue in humans.
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Incidentally– what a surprise– it seems the black fur gives a survival advantage
in deep forests...