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
