From Backyard Feeders to National Stage
For most families, a love of backyard squirrels stays exactly there, in the backyard. For Kira Egete and her family in Guelph, Ontario, it became something much bigger.
Kira, a Grade 10 student, has turned her household's obsession with the bushy-tailed rodents into a legitimate scientific inquiry, one that has now earned her a coveted spot among 400 participants at the Canada-Wide Science Fair, taking place in Edmonton later this month.
Her project focuses on a question that sounds simple on the surface but opens up a genuinely fascinating window into animal biology: how do squirrels see colour?
A Surprisingly Unstudied Question
Squirrel vision is one of those corners of the natural world that hasn't attracted a lot of scientific spotlight, which is part of what makes Kira's work stand out. While dogs and cats have well-documented vision studies behind them, squirrels are common enough to be overlooked.
Squirrels are dichromats, meaning they have two types of colour-sensitive cone cells in their eyes, compared to the three most humans have. That means they can perceive some colour, unlike fully colour-blind animals, but their view of the world is considerably more muted than ours. Kira's research digs into exactly how that affects the way squirrels interact with their environment.
For a teenager who grew up watching squirrels with her family, the project is a natural extension of years of casual observation now given scientific rigour.
The Canada-Wide Science Fair
The Canada-Wide Science Fair, run by Youth Science Canada, is one of the country's most prestigious STEM competitions for students from Grade 7 through Grade 12. Each year, students who place at their regional fairs earn the chance to compete nationally, bringing projects from fields ranging from environmental science to engineering to medicine.
Edmonton is hosting this year's event, drawing top young researchers from every province and territory. For Kira, it's a remarkable achievement for a Grade 10 student, and a signal that her squirrel work resonated with judges well beyond her local competition.
Science Born from Everyday Life
What's refreshing about Kira's story is that her research didn't begin in a lab or with a grant application. It began with a family that simply paid attention to the world outside their window, and a teenager curious enough to ask a real question about it.
That kind of grounded, curiosity-first science is exactly what competitions like the Canada-Wide Science Fair are designed to celebrate. Not every breakthrough starts with expensive equipment or a university supervisor. Sometimes it starts with a feeder, a notebook, and a very specific family obsession.
Kira's work is a reminder that science is happening everywhere, including in the backyards of mid-sized Ontario cities, and that the next generation of Canadian researchers is already asking the right questions.
Source: CBC News Kitchener-Waterloo
