SQUIRRELS VS HOT PEPPER BIRD SEED! Does this spicy food actually work against squirrels?

This is not so much a matter of birds lacking taste or smell (some birds have a great sense of smell), but about the pepper plants using a pretty harmless chemical defence for their seeds to select a particular group of seed distributors. Capsicum is the active ingredient in hot peppers that makes them hot. It chemically reacts with mammalian nerve cells to get them to send the same signal that they send when the cells are overheated, but without doing any actual damage in the process. That is why eating hot peppers always feels like heat and not some other pain, like chewing broken glass (highly not recommended). The nerve cells in birds and reptiles use a slightly different mechanism to detect being on fire and so are effectively immune to the effects of capsicum. From the plant's point of view, it wants its seeds distributed by birds, who have a fast digestion system to keep the weight down, not by mammals who tend to have a more aggressive digestion which will break down the seeds, so the plants try to scare away the annoying mammals with a chemical defence for the next generation.

I wonder if the squirrel is going to feel it later like I do when I eat spicy food?🤔 😹

This strategy works on humans as well. Back in the day I had a extreme moocher for a roommate that would eat all of my food. So I started getting spicy food. I happen to like it much hotter than normal. 1 bite of my spanish rice and that was all she wrote. I could then have hot wings any time I wanted and some good chili or creole shrimp.

Interesting. We tried to keep the chipmunks from eating all our crocuses as soon as they came up every year by sprinkling them with cayenne pepper. They were eaten more quickly than usual. So then we realized they were Mexican chipmunks.

When I first got my bird table the food was being wolfed down until I noticed it was squirrels leaving nothing for my birds. I started using extra hot chilli powder and caught it basically it stood bolt upright and shot off I’ve never seen them since now my birds can enjoy the food that was intended for them it really works 😉

My birds eat with my squirrels. They are like a mixed family and it is beautiful to see them all get along. My Blue Jays are the hawk police for the squirrels, crows, mourning doves, cardinals, starlings, sparrows and ducks. They are literally one big happy group of furry & feathered friends! My regulars have been here the last 2 years and have learned to eat side by side. When you buy as much bird and critter food as I do, they learn to get along. These guys eat better than I do...and they bring me such joy.

We use red pepper flakes mixed into chicken feed to encourage our hens to lay more eggs. It actually works. My hens definitely have a sense of taste because they nibble on certain foods then move on if they don’t like it. Same goes with the momma hen when she samples the food before encouraging her chicks to eat it. Roos do the same for the whole flock.

Thank you so much for this!! Our battle with squirrels has taken so many forms. But this one is truly worth trying. We have tried EVERYTHING. Thank you!!

My mom taught me this as a kid. We always mixed cayenne pepper powder into the bird seed and the squirrels largely left it alone.

My squirrels LOVED the Coles hot pepper bird seed!!! They ate it so fast & came back for more. Even broke my bird feeder getting to it. So up here in Western New York, the squirrels love hot food!!! Haha!

Great video! I don't usually have a problem with squirrels, but will pass this on to my friends who have lots of squirrels in their gardens and feeders. Thanks.

thanks for the review, just bought my first bird feeders and I heard about the hot spicy bird food so I might have to see if we need that as well after we set up our bird feeding station

It's nice seeing someone feed birds. It was my old landlord's pass time, we'd sit and watch them flock by

Try mixing the spicy seed with regular seed so you get a little more out of the price. Eventually they will get smart enough to pick out the good seeds however

It may not taste hot for the birds on the way in but how about the way out? These birds may be burning the paint off every car in your neighborhood.

Thanks for recording this. Cool to see, learned something new.

My father said "Those squirrels don't like that Cajun bird seed." when he heard about this years ago. Happy Father's Day everyone. Miss you Dad!

A bit of correction here: A lot of birds do have a decent sense of smell, some (like vultures) even have a very impressive one. But smell and taste aren't the issue here. The spiciness of hot peppers has nothing to do with either sense. Capsaicin triggers a false alarm in an entirely different receptor...the one responsible for detecting high temperatures. And this receptor is what birds lack and what makes them immune to capsaicin's effects. The reason we think of the effects of capsaicin as being a matter of taste or smell is that the areas we use for those two senses are also densely packed with those heat receptors.

I think a DIY version could be cooked up pretty easily. Thanks for the video!

That’s amazing because birds are not affected by capsaicin! Never thought of that!