If you’ve ever watched a squirrel gather and bury nuts in preparation for winter and assumed the flurry of activity was completely random, scientists at the University of California at Berkeley have discovered that there is a cognitive strategy behind all of that bushy-tailed toing and froing. It appears that squirrels have the ability to organize information about their winter food inventory using a memory device called “spatial chunking” which enables them to bury and retrieve nuts in scattered locations according to size, type, and even nutritional value. To ensure they find their carefully categorized nuts as they left them, these crafty critters have also mastered fake burying—or the squirrel spoof. By pretending to dig and cover storage holes while slyly hiding treasured nuts away from spying eyes, squirrels keep their crunchy cache safe from potential poachers.

However, even the most strategic squirrels lack perfect memory and about three-quarters of buried nuts are never retrieved. The good news is those forgotten nuts grow into trees which provide food and habitat that other animals also depend upon for survival. And when you ’ve enjoyed the shade of a mighty oak, hickory or walnut tree a squirrel may have had a paw in the planting. If you’d like to show your squirrel appreciation, there’s actually a day for that, January 21. In honor of forest generating squirrels, go nuts!