The spotted ground squirrel is a small, easily overlooked resident of Arizona’s sandy grasslands. Open occurrence databases hold 262 records for it in the state, most of them GBIF specimen and survey records rather than photographs, a sign of how seldom this quiet squirrel is caught on camera.
A small squirrel of sandy country
One of the smallest ground squirrels in North America, it favors loose sandy soils in desert grassland and open shrub, where it can dig easily and slip out of sight fast. Arizona records center on Cochise County in the southeast, with scattered reports from the grasslands of the northeast in Graham, Coconino, and Navajo counties. It lives a more solitary life than the colonial round-tailed squirrel and the prairie dogs, so its diggings are spread thin rather than gathered into towns.
Marked for the sand
The coat is sandy brown, dappled with pale, squarish spots that break up the animal’s outline against bare ground. That subtle spotting, along with its small size and preference for open sandy flats, is the surest way to separate it from Arizona’s other ground squirrels.
A record that runs quiet
Its scattered, mostly warm-season records reflect a small animal that is thinly spread, rarely photographed, and dormant through the coldest part of the year, not one that is truly absent from much of the state.
Full species profile
