Viral photo sparks unusual discussion of squirrel anatomy
Some things you have to see to believe—like this odd squirrel that’s taken Twitter by storm in Japan.
One visitor to the Inokashira Park Zoo outside of Tokyo got an unusual sight early this month: A squirrel with what appears to be large mammary glands.
The photo, posted on Twitter earlier this month, has been shared more than 47,000 times and received 141,000 likes.
But what’s going on in this photo?
It’s not what it looks like, says Jessica Haines, an ecologist at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada. Squirrels, you see, “have nipples that go all the way up and down their chest,” says Haines, who researches red squirrels in Alberta. In other words, they’re not centered in the pectoral region like they are in humans.
And they don’t just have two. Mammary gland count differs by species but
