International Law

The Discovery Channel is reporting that apparently squirrels network like Facebook friends:

The squirrel world has its own Kevin Bacon -- a socially well-connected individual dubbed Mercedes by the scientist who studies him.

The major difference between human and squirrel social networks is that people, as the conventional wisdom goes, appear to be "separated" by five or six degrees. For squirrels, it takes only three connections for one member of a population to get to any other.

"It's the same thing," said Theodore Manno, a biologist at Auburn University in Alabama. "Squirrels with many connections tend to befriend squirrels that are like them; squirrels without many connections tend to befriend squirrels like them as well."

"Isn't that the same as the popular crowd going to each other's Facebooks and the skater kids doing the same?" he asked.

The discovery that squirrels have social networks not only illustrates the complexities of animal behavior, but also says something about the properties shared by all networks.

Read more here.  (Hat tip: Kate Carruthers via Twitter.)