Saber Tooth Squirrel

[longcruise]

 

[Trench]

He must have favored one tooth when knawing on things!! Nice picture!

 

[brubincam]

I've gotten a couple ground hogs with long curly teeth

 

[Birdman]

thats 0ne worth getting mounted. unusual for sure. kool pic YMHS birdman

 

[Tony Logan]

awesome it would make a nice skull mount, just skull on a little plaque, great conversation piece.

 

[wattlebuster]

Strange lookin critter :thumbsup:

 

[jethro224]

Yep, I'd hafta save the skull from that one. :shocked2:

 

[hoochiepapa]

He favored one side for some reason.

 

[chance]

Really cool pic!!

 

[Greenmtnboy]

:shocked2: :shocked2:

 

[roundball]

:hmm: ...or maybe he grew up out behind a nuclear power plant

 

[RC]

yer lucky he didn't bite the bullet!

well... there's a story you can tell!! :thumbsup:
(good thing ya got a pic!) :haha:

 

[upperplains]

You probably won't be able to cut the gravy with a knife and fork as he seems to be a bit long in the tooth.

 

[lakota]

I recall reading somewhere(I think it was a LaRue book) that when a rodent's teeth dont line up right they wont wear them down and they will keep growing and curling like that. It said they can actually curl around and eventually penetrate the animal's skull and kill it. :shocked2:

 

[hellerodsyahoo.com]

I haven't seen that before, I'll be watching my back trail even closer,thanks??

 

[longcruise]

Didn't think about saving the skull. It's rare enough for me to have the camera handy. And that with me having been a proffesional photographer for quite a few years. :haha:

 

[roundball]

And while this one looks like it's probably just some sort of anomaly, if you Google saber tooth squirrels, apparently there actually was such a strain of squirrel with long teeth as a normal part of their genetics. (cartoon characters have sprung up from that historical discovery)

 

[BillinOregon]

Marmot:You probably did that feller a favor; that tooth could have grown into his skull had he lived much longer.

 

[Stumpkiller]

I recall reading somewhere(I think it was a LaRue book) that when a rodent's teeth dont line up right they wont wear them down and they will keep growing and curling like that. It said they can actually curl around and eventually penetrate the animal's skull and kill it. :shocked2:

Bingo. Their teeth grow continually and if they don't wear on each other because of loss or misalignment that's the result. I used to have a 3/4 curl woodchuck tooth on my shooting bag but it pulled off somewhere over the years.

 

[Robby]

When I was a kid we caught woodchucks alive with snares and sold them to coon hunters. They doused them with coon scent and trained their dogs with them. Anyway, we had one real nasty, big old boar that wouldn't be taken alive. We discovered his front choppers were similar to your squirrel. We thought we were going to be millionaires!!! So we took him over to the local Vet and get an opinion on the value of this new species of sabre toothed woodchuck, ah the benefits of a small town back in the day. Sadly, he explained that what we had was a naturally occurring malady called a "malocclusion", not common, but not at all rare either. He went on to say we had done the poor creature a favor, in that eventually the tooth would penetrate the roof of the mouth and possibly the brain, if infection didn't get him first. Either way, a long suffering way to go. Cool picture, thanks for the memory!
Robby