And required (winter and spring). among stored food types, seeds are cached most commonly and for the longest times, because of their adaptations to dormancy and their concen- trated energy reserves (smith and reichmann 1984 ). the way in which food is hoarded may differ according to the hoarder species. scatter-hoarding, unlike larder-hoarding, is placing single food items in storage sites distributed through- out the home range; however, some intermediate hoarding patterns can also be distinguished and environmental factors may have an effect on hoarding plasticity (hurly and rob- ertson 1990 ; zong et al. 2014 ). if hoarders have low abilities to protect food, they will mainly use scatter-hoarding. there is a wide occurrence of food hoarding in mammals (smith and reichmann ; sherry 1985 ; vander wall ), and particularly among the species of sciuridae fam- ily. in red squirrels sciurus vulgaris , which are typical scat- ter-hoarders, food hoarding is an adaptive foraging strategy to preserve temporarily abundant resources for future peri- ods of food shortage. in winter and spring, cached food rep- resents a large part of a red squirrel’s diet, and the number