After completing my summer field season on July 20th, I presented data from an experiment at the Animal Behavior Society meeting in Boulder, Colorado. I rushed to analyze the data (which was collected during the 2012 and 2013 field seasons) and create a PowerPoint presentation in less than one week! My goal was to present our "snake cannon" experiment which was designed to test how squirrels respond to simulated snake strikes. We hypothesized that tail-flagging squirrels would respond faster than non-tail-flagging squirrels if tail-flagging truly signals their readiness for a snake strike. Well, I successfully pulled together a beautiful presentation which was a huge hit at the meeting. It was such a success that National Geographic decided to write an article about it on their website. Please read the well-written article, A Tale of Tails, here.
