Nutcrackers

All 2 species of nutcrackers on WAnimals

Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.

Conservation status

Where they live

Recorded in 19 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:

Where to see them

Did you know…?

• It can bury more than thirty thousand pine seeds in a single autumn, spread across thousands of caches kilometres apart, and recover most of them months later beneath a metre of snow, guided by landmarks.

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• It has a sublingual pouch, a cavity beneath the tongue unique to its genus, in which it carries as many as a hundred pine seeds at once over several kilometres.

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• The whitebark pine depends almost entirely on it to reproduce: its seeds do not fly, and without the nutcracker's forgotten caches that high-altitude forest would not regenerate.

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• It hides as many as 30,000 pine seeds a year and remembers where most of them are.

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• It buries tens of thousands of seeds every autumn in individual caches and recovers most of them months later, even under a metre of snow, guided by landmarks: it is one of the greatest feats of spatial memory documented in any animal.

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• The Swiss stone pine of the Alps depends on it to reproduce: its seeds do not fly, and without the nutcracker's forgotten caches the stone pine forest would not regenerate.

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Ecosystems