Animals are sweet, baby animals are adorable, but baby squirrels are irresistible! While the sight of a baby squirrel enjoying its snack melts our hearts, can you imagine the sound of it?

For several weeks, a zoologist and wildlife photographer from London, UK,  Dani Connor, had the role of an adoptive mom to four orphaned red squirrels, at home in a Swedish forest.

When she moved to a small village in rural Sweden, she started photographing the red squirrels in the area and became especially fond of one, who she named Remy.

Yet, the poor squirrel had been hit by a car and had died, leaving her babies behind. Dani was determined to help. As soon as she found them, she started delivering them food on a daily basis.

She said:

“I was very lucky to find where the baby squirrels were! I spoke to several wildlife sanctuaries and the advice I was given was that the baby squirrels are too small to survive on their own and if their mother had been killed by a car, they need to be captured and raised in captivity.

I watched over the baby squirrels and I was so happy to see them eating the food I had left them, I decided that if they have teeth and that they can eat, they should be able to survive in the wild.”

Surely, it is a very generous and compassionate gesture by Connor. But it has its own delightful benefits. She has gained their trust in return, and she got the chance to have a closer look at their everyday habits.

One day, while she was filming them eating, she noticed that her camera is not registering all the sounds. She said she was missing “the amazing noises they make when eating.”

Therefore, she positioned the microphone closer.

At this moment, she heard something incredibly sweet: along with the munching noises they made while eating, she heard another faint sound — a sweet symphony of happy squeaks.

She said:

“When I heard it with headphones at home, my heart melted. I have been told it is the same noise they make when feeding from Mum.”

Cuteness overload!

Dani says that she’s spent over 100 hours with them, so her squirrels are used to her company and her filming them.

She believes they will soon be fully self-dependent:

“They will learn to live on their own. Squirrels are highly adaptable animals. I have already seen them cache food and no one has taught them this behavior – they learn from instinct, trial, and error.”

Sources:
fun.shared.us
www.boredpanda.com
www.bbc.com