Genuinely useful "snake oil" (for squirrels)

The "snake oil salesman" is a common term for used someone selling bogus remedies and medicines. Although in the world of human medicine snake oil is considered to be an icon for fraud and quackery, it looks like some animals actually do have useful uses for compounds in snake skin. Today National Geographic News has a story about squirrels in New Mexico that have been observed chewing snake skins and the licking themselves to spread their bodies with chemical compounds from the skin.

Squirrels are immune to the snake venom, but many of the animals that eat them are not. The researchers posit that this behavior is a defensive strategy, with the squirrels using a kind of chemical armor to discourage attacks from predators. A hungry animal seeking a meal is much less likely to dig up a burrow that smells like rattlesnake than one that smells like squirrel.

To me it seems slightly similar to the clownfish-anemone relationship, in which one species is immune to the toxins of another and uses it as a refuge (although obviously this is different because the squirrels aren't coexisting or even interacting with live snakes, and snakes don't get any benefits from providing squirrels with the compounds, while anemones do benefit from hosting clownfish).

Very interesting, the variety of defensive strategies employed by different animals never fails to amaze me.

(Image credit)