as you said, we knew that pine martens we re you said, we knew that pine martens were predating both,r native cousin. so we wanted to find out how that was possible, and one of the way that mammal species avoid predators is through chemical signals, so through their sense of smell. so we thought that perhaps because the pine marten and red squirrel had shared an evolutionary landscape for such a long period of time, it might be aware of the threat of the pine marten and being able to recognise and avoid predation. the grey squirrel, as it has only been here for 100 years, might be naive to that and be left a sitting duck. and just out of interest, how many red squirrels are there? i can't remember the last time i saw a red squirrel, there don't seem to be any around the port of london where i live. indeed, so numbers of squirrels are quite hard to get out but they are largely restricted to the north of england, certain parts of wales, scotland, and they are recovering in ireland. but where the pine marten, until recently has been restricted to the west coast of ireland in the northern