30 Different Types of Squirrels, From Backyard Grays to Amazon Reds
October 24, 2026
Squirrels live in nearly every American park and backyard, yet the different types of squirrels around the world run well into the hundreds. More than 200 squirrel species live all over the world, with the notable exception of Australia. Most people in the United States know only two or three of them.
This list covers 30 tree squirrels, and nearly all belong to the genus Sciurus. The name comes from Greek words usually translated as “shadow tail,” a nod to the way a squirrel sits in the shade of its own bushy tail. Seven of the 30 live wild in the United States, one arrived by human release, and the rest range from Mexico and Central America to the Amazon, the Andes, Europe, and Asia.
Ground squirrels, chipmunks, marmots, and flying squirrels belong to the same family but are not covered here. Each entry below gives the animal’s range, its look, and a bit of the history behind its name or its place in American life.
| Squirrel | Where It Lives in the United States | Best Field Clue |
|---|---|---|
| Eastern Gray Squirrel | Eastern and midwestern states, plus introduced Pacific Coast populations | Gray coat, white belly, tail nearly half the body length |
| Fox Squirrel | Eastern and central states, mostly in open woodlots | Orange-brown or rusty underside, varied color |
| Mexican Fox Squirrel | Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona | Rusty tail edged in a pale fringe, pine-oak forest |
| Abert’s Squirrel | Ponderosa pine forests of the Southwest and southern Rockies | Long ear tufts, white belly |
| Western Gray Squirrel | Washington, Oregon, and California | Silvery gray coat, very full tail |
| Arizona Gray Squirrel | Arizona and western New Mexico, mainly along streams | Gray back, white belly, bushy gray tail |
| Mexican Gray Squirrel | Introduced population on Elliott Key, Florida | Reddish belly, dark gray back |
Pro Tip: Belly color, ear tufts, and location narrow the field faster than overall size. Check the underside and the tail fringe first, then match them against the region before settling on a species.
Important Note: Species counts vary by source. National Geographic cites more than 200 squirrel species, while AnimalSpot lists about 285 species in roughly 58 genera. The difference mostly comes from how each source counts the whole family, which includes chipmunks, marmots, and flying squirrels, and from how it treats disputed species.
1. Eastern Gray Squirrel
The eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) is the squirrel most Americans picture. According to Mass Audubon, adults run 17 to 20 inches long with a large tail almost half their body length, and they are typically gray with a white underside, though some are black, brown, or white.
Those color forms are the same species. The Illinois Natural History Survey notes that black, pale or white-splotched, and albino gray squirrels all occur in Illinois. Black populations became local landmarks in several Midwestern and Canadian towns.
The species has a loud history. Naturalists in the 1800s described huge gray squirrel migrations through the eastern forests, and colonial farmers treated the animals as crop pests. English settlers exported them as well: gray squirrels were released in Britain in 1876 and in Italy in 1948, and both introductions reshaped native squirrel populations.
Their habits still matter to forests. Gray squirrels bury nuts individually far from where they found them, and because they frequently miss some, trees grow. That arrangement, in which the squirrel gets a meal and the forest gets a planter, is one of the clearest examples of mutualism between animals and plants in North America.
2. Fox Squirrel
The fox squirrel (Sciurus niger) is the larger, more varied cousin of the gray squirrel. The University of Nebraska’s wildlife damage handbook gives their length at 18 to 27 inches from nose to tail tip, weighing roughly 1.75 to 2.25 pounds. They tend to favor open woodlots, farm edges, and suburban lawns over deep forest.
Color is the confusing part. Fox squirrels range from all black in Florida to silver gray with a white belly in Maryland, while Georgia animals usually have black faces and Ohio and Michigan animals are grizzled gray-brown with orange undersides. The handbook adds that several color types sometimes share one population.
The Delmarva fox squirrel, a subspecies of the Chesapeake region, became a conservation story. It sat on the federal endangered list for decades and was removed in 2015 after habitat protection and reintroductions. Missouri, meanwhile, counts both fox and gray squirrels among its popular game animals, according to University of Missouri Extension.
Common Mistake: A rusty-bellied squirrel is not always a fox squirrel, and a gray-bellied one is not always a gray squirrel. Body size and tail fringe settle most disputes, since fox squirrels are noticeably bulkier.
3. Mexican Fox Squirrel
The Mexican fox squirrel (Sciurus nayaritensis), also called the Nayarit squirrel, is the rarest fox squirrel for American observers. Its range follows the pine-oak forests of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico, and the only United States population lives in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona.
That Arizona toehold made the species a prized find for birders and mammal watchers who travel to the Chiricahuas. Birds & Blooms lists the eastern and Mexican fox squirrel as the two fox squirrel species of North America.
The Mexican fox squirrel is grayish above, with a rusty wash below and a tail edged with pale hairs. It forages on pine seeds and acorns, and it often stays high in the canopy, so the best chance of a sighting is early morning along a wooded canyon.
4. Abert’s Squirrel
Abert’s squirrel (Sciurus aberti) is the Southwest’s showpiece tree squirrel. Also known as the tassel-eared squirrel, it has tufted ears, a bushy tail, and a slender gray body, according to Outforia’s field guide. Winter ear tufts can reach several centimeters.
The squirrel carries the name of Colonel John James Abert, who led the U.S. Army’s Topographical Engineers in the 1800s, when army survey parties first brought back specimens from the Southwest. Its life revolves around ponderosa pine: it eats the seeds, the inner bark of twigs, and the fungi that grow in pine forest soil, and it builds nests of pine twigs in the crowns.
A famous subspecies, the Kaibab squirrel, lives on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim and has a dark belly and a white tail. Isolated by canyon and desert, it is a textbook example of how a mountain forest can shape a distinct squirrel.
5. Eurasian Red Squirrel
The Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) is the species Carl Linnaeus used when he formally named the genus in the 1700s. It lives across Europe and northern Asia, with fur that ranges from bright orange-red to near black and ear tufts that grow thicker in winter. National Geographic’s squirrel page shows one photographed at the Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington, Illinois, which is the usual way Americans meet it, since it does not live wild in the United States.
Its story in Britain is a cautionary one. After gray squirrels from the eastern United States were released in the 1870s, the reds disappeared from most of England, partly because grays out-compete them for food and partly because they carry squirrelpox, a virus that hurts reds far more than the grays. Britain’s small red squirrel strongholds, from Scottish pine forests to the Isle of Wight, are now managed on purpose, much like a garden hedgehog’s shrinking patch in the hedgehog species guide.
Do not confuse it with North America’s own red squirrel. That animal, Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, lives in parts of Canada, the northern United States, the Rockies and Appalachians, and as far south as Georgia, per Wildlife Informer. The two are not close relatives, and the American animal is smaller and noisier.
6. Western Gray Squirrel
The western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus) lives on the Pacific slope from Washington through California and into Baja California. It is larger than its eastern namesake, with a silvery coat, a white belly, and a particularly plumed tail. It prefers oak woodlands mixed with conifers.
Its diet follows the forest. Acorns and pine seeds feed it through autumn, and like many tree squirrels it is an opportunist. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife says tree squirrels feed mostly on plant material but also eat fungi, insects, and occasionally birds’ eggs and nestlings. The agency’s tree squirrel page covers how the species coexists with people.
Washington lists the western gray squirrel as a threatened species. Habitat loss, disease, and competition from introduced eastern gray squirrels all play a part, so a sighting in the Pacific Northwest is worth reporting to the state wildlife agency.
7. Arizona Gray Squirrel
The Arizona gray squirrel (Sciurus arizonensis) is a streamside specialist of the Southwest. Squirrels at the Feeder lists it among the North American tree squirrels, alongside the eastern and western grays. Its range covers central and southeastern Arizona, a slice of western New Mexico, and northern Sonora in Mexico.
Look for it in riparian corridors with walnut, sycamore, cottonwood, and oak, where nut-bearing trees reach down toward desert washes. It is gray above with a white belly and a long, fluffy tail, and it often moves quietly through the canopy rather than chattering from the lower trunk like many eastern squirrels.
In places such as Arizona’s Sonoita Creek and the Chiricahua foothills, the Arizona gray shares habitat with the Mexican fox squirrel and Abert’s squirrel, so careful attention to elevation and tree type helps sort out which is which.
8. Mexican Gray Squirrel
The Mexican gray squirrel (Sciurus aureogaster), often called the red-bellied squirrel, lives in the forests of Mexico and Guatemala. Its back is dark gray, and the underside ranges from reddish orange to cream. Some animals are almost entirely black.
The United States has one population, and humans put it there. In the 1930s, squirrels were released on Elliott Key in the Florida Keys, now part of Biscayne National Park, and they survive on the island as a small introduced population. Florida is home to many such arrivals, from Mexican squirrels to the exotic parrots of Miami.
In the Mexican highlands, the species lives in pine, oak, and tropical forest, and it eats fruit, seeds, and shoots. Its tail is full and slightly paler than its back.
9. Japanese Squirrel
The Japanese squirrel (Sciurus lis) is found only in Japan, on the islands of Honshu and Shikoku. It is a small, rusty brown squirrel in summer and turns grayer with longer ear tufts in winter. Hokkaido has a different animal, a subspecies of the Eurasian red squirrel.
The Japanese squirrel lives in mountain forests and has a strong association with walnut trees. Gnawed walnut shells split neatly along the seam are a classic field sign, and researchers use them to track the animal where sightings are rare.
Its numbers have fallen where forest has been logged or cleared for development. Because it is so tied to Japan’s woodlands, it is a good example of how an island squirrel can be both familiar in folklore and uncommon in practice.
10. Variegated Squirrel
The variegated squirrel (Sciurus variegatoides) earns its name from its coat. Populations from southern Mexico through Costa Rica show an unusual range of patterns, including gray, brown, black, and banded forms, and the coat colors can vary even within one valley.
It is among the most visible squirrels in Central America. Travelers to Costa Rica often meet it in town plazas, coffee farms, and hotel gardens, where it feeds on fruit, seeds, and flowers.
That wide variation has long tangled the taxonomy. Early naturalists described many of the color forms as separate species, and later work folded them together under one name with several subspecies, a reminder that coat color alone is a weak identification tool.
11. Yucatan Squirrel
The Yucatan squirrel (Sciurus yucatanensis) is a small tree squirrel of the Yucatán Peninsula, Belize, and parts of northern Guatemala. It is grayish brown above with a pale or buff underside, and it lives in tropical dry and semi-deciduous forests rather than the cloud forests of its relatives.
The region is also the heartland of the ancient Maya, and the squirrel shares the landscape with archaeological sites such as Chichén Itzá and Tikal. Visitors who climb those ruins often see it dashing through the surrounding forest.
Because the Yucatán has thin soil and a long dry season, the squirrel depends on fruiting trees and seed crops that vary through the year. It is not widely studied outside Mexico, but it is the species most travelers will meet around Cancún and Mérida.
12. Persian Squirrel
The Persian squirrel (Sciurus anomalus), also called the Caucasian squirrel, is a Middle Eastern and Caucasus species. Its range covers Turkey, the southern Caucasus, Lebanon, Israel, and Iran, plus a few Greek islands such as Lesbos.
It is smaller than the Eurasian red squirrel and has a more muted coat, with a gray-brown back and a rusty wash on the underparts and throat. Oak, pine, and walnut forests give it nuts and seeds, and it often lives close to mountain villages.
The species sits at a meeting point between European and Asian squirrel faunas. Many taxonomists treat the Persian squirrel as the Eurasian red’s nearest wild neighbor, and the two overlap only at the edge of their ranges in the northeast.
13. Red-Tailed Squirrel
The red-tailed squirrel (Sciurus granatensis) has one of the longest scientific histories on the list. Alexander von Humboldt described it in 1811 from the Colombian region then called New Granada, which is where the species name comes from.
Its range runs from Costa Rica and Panama through Colombia and Venezuela, and it also occurs on the island of Trinidad. It lives in rainforest, shade-grown cacao and coffee farms, and city parks.
The red tail gives the animal its common name, though the amount of red varies widely. Many individuals have a reddish belly and tail but a dark back, and tropical forest populations can look quite different from highland ones.
14. Yellow-Throated Squirrel
The yellow-throated squirrel (Sciurus gilvigularis) is a small rainforest species of northern South America. It is found mainly in the Guianas and in adjoining parts of northern Brazil and Venezuela.
The animal’s pale yellow or buff throat gives it its name. The back is brown or olive, and the tail is lightly banded, which makes it easy to confuse with several close relatives in the region’s forests.
Field notes on the species are sparse. Rainforest squirrels live high in the canopy and are shy, which makes them hard to observe, and researchers often depend on museum specimens and camera traps rather than extended behavioral studies.
15. Brazilian Squirrel
The Brazilian squirrel (Sciurus aestuans), also called the Guianan squirrel, is one of the oldest named squirrels on the list. Linnaeus described it in 1766. In Brazil it is known as the serelepe, and it is a common sight across the Atlantic Forest region.
Its range stretches from the Guianas and Venezuela through eastern Brazil to northeastern Argentina. It is an olive-brown squirrel with a speckled back and a pale underside, and it eats fruit, palm nuts, and seeds.
That adaptability helps it survive in parks and forest remnants around Brazilian cities. It is also one of the squirrels that taxonomists have repeatedly revised, and its distinction from Ingram’s squirrel, covered later in this list, has been debated.
16. Andean Squirrel
The Andean squirrel (Sciurus pucheranii) lives in the mountain forests of the northern Andes. Outforia describes it as found almost exclusively in Colombia, where it is a small reddish-brown tree squirrel. It is named for the French zoologist Jacques Pucheran.
The species lives in cool, cloud-draped forests at elevations that would be unusual for lowland squirrels. These forests are patchy because of farmland and cattle pasture, so the animal’s range is fragmented.
Like many Andean mammals, it receives far less public attention than the birds that share its forests, though it plays the same role of seed eater and seed mover as its relatives elsewhere.
17. Bolivian Squirrel
The Bolivian squirrel (Sciurus ignitus) occupies the eastern slope of the Andes in Bolivia, southern Peru, and northwestern Argentina. It is mostly a Yungas species, living in the misty forest zone between the Amazon lowlands and the high Andes.
Its species name means “fiery,” and the animal has a reddish tint on the belly and sometimes the tail, set against a dark brown or olive back. It is small and quick, and it forages in the middle canopy.
The Yungas belt is a hot spot for narrow-range wildlife, and the Bolivian squirrel shares its forests with spectacled bears, cock-of-the-rock birds, and hundreds of orchid species.
18. Allen’s Squirrel
Allen’s squirrel (Sciurus alleni) is a Mexican endemic, meaning it is found nowhere else. It lives in northeastern Mexico, mainly in the pine-oak forests of the Sierra Madre Oriental and nearby uplands, which puts it within a day’s drive of the Texas border.
It is a medium-sized squirrel with a grayish back, an orange-tinted belly, and a bushy tail. Its range overlaps loosely with that of the Mexican fox squirrel, and the two look similar at a distance.
The mountains of northeastern Mexico are less visited than those of the central and southern parts of the country. As a result, Allen’s squirrel is often listed in field guides but rarely photographed by tourists.
19. Peters’s Squirrel
Peters’s squirrel (Sciurus oculatus) lives in the highland forests of central Mexico. The common name honors Wilhelm Peters, the German zoologist who described the species in 1863 while directing Berlin’s zoological museum.
It is a medium-sized squirrel, gray-brown above and pale below, and it lives in pine-oak forests at elevations that can reach cool mountain zones. Seeds, nuts, and fungi make up most of its diet.
Central Mexico’s highlands are densely populated, and forest fragments are often surrounded by farms. The species survives in these remnants, though it is not as abundant as it was when 19th-century naturalists collected it.
20. Deppe’s Squirrel
Deppe’s squirrel (Sciurus deppei) ranges from northeastern Mexico south through Central America to Costa Rica. It is named for Ferdinand Deppe, a German collector who gathered animals, plants, and birds in Mexico in the 1820s and sent them to Berlin.
The animal is small and dark, with a brown or blackish back and a lighter belly, and it typically lives in humid tropical forests, including cloud forest. It forages on the ground more than many of its cousins.
Deppe’s squirrel is a handy example of the 19th-century collectors who shaped squirrel taxonomy. Many names on this list, including Peters’s and Collie’s, trace back to similar expeditions.
21. Collie’s Squirrel
Collie’s squirrel (Sciurus colliaei) lives on Mexico’s Pacific slope, in a band of dry tropical forest and thorn scrub. It is named for Alexander Collie, a Scottish surgeon and naturalist who sailed on HMS Blossom during Captain Frederick Beechey’s voyage in the 1820s.
The squirrel has a gray back, a pale underside, and a bushy tail with pale fringes. It looks a bit like a small gray squirrel but is adapted to a hot, seasonal climate rather than the humid forests of its relatives.
It is also called the Sinaloan squirrel, and it is most common in the lowlands where the Sierra Madre meets the coast. Like other tree squirrels of the region, it eats seeds, fruit, and flowers.
22. Ingram’s Squirrel
Ingram’s squirrel (Sciurus ingrami) lives in the Atlantic Forest of southeastern Brazil. Taxonomists have debated how distinct it is from the Brazilian squirrel, and some references have treated them as a single species.
The animal is brownish olive above with a paler belly, and it lives in forest remnants, where it eats seeds and fruit. It spends most of its time in the canopy.
The Atlantic Forest once stretched along most of Brazil’s coast, but cities, farms, and plantations have cleared much of it. That habitat loss matters for any squirrel with a narrow range, and Ingram’s squirrel survives mostly in protected areas and mountain forest.
23. Richmond’s Squirrel
Richmond’s squirrel (Sciurus richmondi) is a Central American species known from Nicaragua’s forests. It is named for Charles W. Richmond, an American ornithologist who collected in Nicaragua in the early 1890s for the U.S. National Museum.
The squirrel is reddish brown above and pale below, and it lives in humid lowland and foothill forests on the Caribbean side of the country. It is small and tends to stay in the canopy.
Because the animal is poorly documented, a good deal of what is known comes from museum specimens. Richmond’s story is typical of 19th-century exploration, when American institutions sent collectors into Central America to describe the wildlife.
24. Sanborn’s Squirrel
Sanborn’s squirrel (Sciurus sanborni) is a Peruvian species, described in the mid-1900s from the forests on the Amazon side of the Andes. It is one of the least-studied squirrels in this article, and field guides offer few details beyond its range and general appearance.
It is a brown to reddish squirrel with a pale belly, and like its relatives it lives in the forest canopy. It likely eats seeds, fruit, and nuts, as other regional squirrels do.
Species such as this one show how much work remains in tropical mammal research. Researchers regularly revise squirrel ranges and identities with new DNA studies, and Peru’s forests still hold animals that have never been closely observed.
25. Guayaquil Squirrel
The Guayaquil squirrel (Sciurus stramineus) lives in the dry forests of southwestern Ecuador and northwestern Peru. It is named for Guayaquil, Ecuador’s main port, and its species name comes from a Latin word for straw, a reference to its pale, straw-colored fur.
This squirrel lives in a different climate from its rainforest relatives. The Tumbesian dry forests on South America’s Pacific coast have a long dry season, and the animal eats seeds, fruit, and pods from drought-adapted trees.
Those dry forests are among South America’s most threatened habitats, cleared for farms and cattle. That makes the Guayaquil squirrel a useful indicator of a distinct and shrinking ecosystem.
26. Fiery Squirrel
The fiery squirrel (Sciurus flammifer) is a rainforest squirrel of northern South America, mainly Venezuela. Oldfield Thomas of the British Museum described it in 1904, and the name refers to the flame-colored belly that sets it apart from darker-bellied relatives.
Taxonomists have not always agreed on its status. Some treat it as a distinct species, and others lump it with the Northern Amazon red squirrel, which looks similar and lives nearby.
Disputes like this one come up often with tropical squirrels, because the animals vary in color and their ranges blur into one another. DNA analysis is gradually sorting out which names stand.
27. Calabrian Black Squirrel
The Calabrian black squirrel (Sciurus meridionalis) is one of Europe’s most recently recognized squirrels. It lives in the mountains of Calabria and neighboring Basilicata in southern Italy, including the Sila, Pollino, and Aspromonte ranges, and it was long treated as a subspecies of the Eurasian red squirrel.
Its glossy black coat and white belly make it striking against beech and pine forest. Many Italian researchers now treat it as a separate species, on the strength of genetic and body differences.
American readers should know the threat to it. Eastern gray squirrels from the United States were released in Italy in 1948 and have spread, and conservationists worry that the same fate that struck Britain’s reds could reach southern Italy’s black squirrels. Its appearance is also unrelated to the black color form of the eastern gray squirrel at home in the United States.
Key Insight: A black squirrel is not a species. In the United States, it is usually a color form of the eastern gray or fox squirrel, while in Calabria it is a separate animal with its own scientific name.
28. Junin Red Squirrel
The Junin red squirrel (Sciurus pyrrhinus) lives in the Andean forests of central Peru, around the Junín region from which it takes its common name. It is a medium-sized squirrel with a reddish tinge on its underside and tail.
It lives at mid-elevations, in cloud forest and humid montane forest, where cool temperatures and steep slopes divide populations. That kind of isolation helps explain why Peru has so many closely related squirrels.
Like its neighbors, the species depends on healthy forest. Coffee farms, roads, and settlements have fragmented much of the Peruvian slope, and the squirrel is most reliably found in protected forest and nearby corridors.
29. Northern Amazon Red Squirrel
The Northern Amazon red squirrel (Sciurus igniventris) lives north of the Amazon and Solimões rivers, across parts of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. Its species name means “fiery belly,” and the underside is a vivid orange-red compared with the dark olive or brown of its back.
Rivers act as barriers for small rainforest animals that never cross open water. The Amazon’s great channel splits many closely related species, and this squirrel is one of the clearest examples.
It forages in the forest canopy and feeds on palm nuts, fruit, and seeds. Like other rainforest squirrels, it spreads some of the seeds it buries, though the details have been studied far less than the habits of gray squirrels, whose caching behavior has been documented in North American woodlands. Researchers such as Steele have shown that squirrels decide which seeds to eat at once and which to store, and that they remember where they cached food, according to Humane Gardener.
30. Southern Amazon Red Squirrel
The Southern Amazon red squirrel (Sciurus spadiceus) mirrors the northern species on the other side of the river. It lives in the Amazon lowlands of Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador, mostly south of the main river channel. Its species name comes from a Latin word for chestnut-brown.
It looks similar to its northern counterpart, with a reddish belly and a darker back, and it lives high in the canopy of lowland rainforest. It is one of the larger Amazonian tree squirrels, but its body is still far smaller than an eastern gray’s.
Squirrels do not glide, but their relatives do. For readers curious about gliding mammals, the sugar glider guide covers a marsupial that looks like a flying squirrel, and the bat guide covers the only mammals capable of true flight.
| Region | Squirrels on This List | Typical Habitat |
|---|---|---|
| Southwestern United States and Mexico | Abert’s, Arizona Gray, Mexican Fox, Allen’s, Peters’s, Collie’s | Pine-oak mountains, riparian woodland, dry tropical forest |
| Central America and southern Mexico | Mexican Gray, Variegated, Yucatan, Deppe’s, Richmond’s | Humid lowland forest, dry forest, cloud forest |
| Northern and western South America | Red-Tailed, Andean, Guayaquil, Junin Red, Sanborn’s, Fiery | Andean cloud forest, dry coastal forest, rainforest |
| Amazon and eastern South America | Yellow-Throated, Brazilian, Ingram’s, Bolivian, Northern and Southern Amazon Reds | Rainforest canopy, Atlantic Forest, Yungas |
| Europe and Asia | Eurasian Red, Japanese, Persian, Calabrian Black | Conifer and mixed forest, mountain woodland |
Taken together, these 30 squirrels show how a single body plan, a bushy tail and strong incisors, has adapted to deserts, cloud forests, and city parks. The animals in a typical American backyard are only a small part of that story, and learning to tell one from another is a good first step into the wider family. Readers who enjoy small mammals can continue with the hedgehog guide, and anyone checking backyard visitors can start with a look at the belly color and the tail fringe.