The white-tailed antelope squirrel is a small, diurnal ground squirrel of Arizona’s open deserts and plateaus, easily known by the white tail it flips forward over its back like a parasol as it dashes across hot ground. Open occurrence databases hold 348 records for it in Arizona, 327 of them iNaturalist photographs, a strong showing for a rodent that is out and active in daylight.
Where to see it in Arizona
The records concentrate across the northern half of the state, in Coconino, Mohave, Navajo, and Apache counties, taking in the Colorado Plateau country around Petrified Forest National Park, the Grand Canyon rim, and the Vermilion Cliffs. This is a squirrel of pinyon-juniper flats, sagebrush, and rocky desert, foraging on seeds, green vegetation, and insects and rarely straying far from a burrow it can bolt into.
Active all year, even in the heat
Unlike ground squirrels that sleep through winter or summer, the antelope squirrel stays active across the whole calendar. It handles the desert’s extremes behaviorally rather than by hibernating: it forages in short bursts, then ducks into cool burrows to shed heat before venturing out again. That year-round activity is why it appears in the record in every month, most often when observers are afield in the milder parts of the year.
Status in Arizona
The white-tailed antelope squirrel is native to Arizona and ranked S5, secure, by NatureServe, matching its least-concern global status. It is one of the more reliably seen small mammals of the state’s high desert, active by day and unbothered by heat that drives most other rodents underground.
Full species profile
