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Black squirrels are more common in Montreal parks that have cooler winters and more tree canopy, and they are not simply concentrated in the downtown core. A 2026 Journal of Animal Ecology study of 197 parks in the Montreal Metropolitan Area found that the black morph’s frequency varied across the landscape. Sharp shifts lined up with major waterways. These are population-level patterns, not proof of what turns any individual squirrel black.
Black squirrels are a coat-color variant, not a separate species
Montreal’s black squirrels are eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) with melanism, a dark coat. The study links this to an incompletely dominant mutation in the MC1R gene. For its analysis, the researchers counted squirrels with black to dark-brown fur as melanic.
A squirrel does not darken because of the park it lives in. Its coat color is inherited. What differs between parks is how common each color is in the local population.
What the study did
The paper is “Fine-scale spatial variation in eastern grey squirrel melanism across a complex urban landscape,” by Francis Quang-Hai Dinh and coauthors (Journal of Animal Ecology, 2026). The team ran standardized visual surveys in 197 parks across the Montreal Metropolitan Area in June and July 2022. They added citizen-science records from iNaturalist and SquirrelMapper.
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In the study announcement on EurekAlert!, first author Dinh, then a McGill undergraduate, described the fieldwork: “I visited almost 200 parks around the city on my bicycle during my free time the first summer that I was at McGill, and observed over 800 squirrels, some of whom were grey and others were black.”
What explains the differences between parks
Cooler winters and more canopy
The black morph was more frequent where winter temperatures were cooler and canopy cover was higher. The authors read this as consistent with a thermoregulatory advantage of dark fur. That is an interpretation of an observational pattern, not a controlled test. Temperature and canopy also vary with urbanization, so tree cover alone does not determine coat color.
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Urbanization does not behave as you might expect
You might assume black squirrels peak in the dense urban core. They don’t. Across Montreal, melanism was generally negatively correlated with urbanization. The direction and strength of the urban-to-rural pattern differed by region.
Rivers may divide populations
The paper reports abrupt changes in morph frequency that match the St. Lawrence River and its tributaries. The authors suggest these waterways could act as partial barriers to dispersal and split squirrels into distinct regions by color. This is a hypothesis supported by the spatial match, not a demonstrated cause.
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Comparing parks: the factors that matter
| Factor | Association with black-squirrel frequency |
|---|---|
| Winter temperature | More black squirrels where winters are cooler |
| Canopy cover | More black squirrels where canopy is higher |
| Urbanization | Generally negative overall; varies by region |
| Position relative to major waterways | Sharp shifts in frequency coincide with rivers |
Limits of the evidence
- The study is observational, so it shows associations rather than proven causes.
- The authors report broad agreement among the three datasets. They also note that iNaturalist and SquirrelMapper records could modestly overrepresent black squirrels, so the pooled data is not a perfect census.
- The source material supports a metropolitan-scale pattern. It does not give a verified ranking of named parks or park-by-park percentages, so no park can be named here as the best place to see black squirrels.
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