Sciurus niger (species) en

Members of a species of gregarious tree squirrel native to the eastern United States excluding New England, north into the southern prairie provinces of Canada, and west to the Dakotas, Colorado, and Texas. Their habitat partially overlaps with the eastern gray squirrel, which is smaller and not as reddish in color as the fox squirrel. Fox squirrels are noted as living fossils, skeletally very similar the oldest known squirrel, Protosciurus, from the late Oligocene and early Miocene epochs.