Posted on March 31, 2025 (week 10)

The video was very entertaining and enjoyable to watch! I appreciate that Mark Rober applied his mechanical engineering skills to a problem he observed in his personal life. His solution was amusing: a squirrel ninja warrior obstacle course—clearly a seriously contemplated, thoroughly planned endeavor 😊.  

The problem Rober attempted to solve was squirrel-proofing a bird feeder so that he could birdwatch in peace. But as he admitted within the first thirty seconds of the video, he completely underestimated his adversaries. Despite the elaborate setup, all the squirrels quickly developed fluency running the course and made it to the bird feeder.  

I can confidently say that the video left me with a great appreciation for the intelligence, adaptability, and acrobatics of squirrels. It was cool seeing them learn so quickly and observing their different personalities. But my critical evaluation of Robert’s solution is that it was unjustifiably elaborate and did not achieve its objective in the long run.  

Rober had some solid ideas: The massive pile of walnuts under the bird feeder was a great distraction from the bird food and it was smart to use slippery poles to control the squirrels’ entry point to the setup. But he demonstrated a surprising lack of understanding about the problem. Specifically, he did not account for two main factors: the squirrels’ remarkable athletic ability (specifically their speed, agility, and jump length) and incredible learning rate. These skills rendered the various mechanical obstacles Rober cooked up obsolete. So, were some elements of the solution effective? Yes. But was the overall approach effective? No. 

Since squirrels are expert climbers and jumpers, a solution would need to account for those aptitudes. Now, I’m no expert. But consider this: set up a bird feeder sufficiently far away from climbable infrastructure (notably fences and roofs) and high enough so that squirrels cannot easily jump up to the bird feeder. Place the bird feeder on a platform whose legs are too slippery to climb. Optionally, implement a walnut dispenser distraction. Voila, squirrel-proof bird feeder acquired! To my unlearned self, this seems like a simple but effective solution to the problem. What do you think? 

Our engineering proposal assignment requires us to identify a problem and formulate an engineering solution to it. Rober’s project is a demonstration of a problem-solution pair and can be considered an (ill-conceived but funny) engineering proposal and implementation in video format. Its flaws demonstrate two important considerations for our assignment:  

1. The importance of research and thoroughly understanding the problem space before implementing a solution. Solutions are expensive to implement in terms of time, labor, and equipment. It is important to clearly understand how and to what extent a proposed solution solves a problem before committing to a costly implementation.  
2. How easy it is to overcomplicate solutions. Many problems do not require highly complex solutions. Instead, the best solutions are ones that directly address specific, major factors from the problem space in efficient, minimal ways.  

Mark Rober framed the squirrel maze as an attempt to squirrel-proof his backyard bird feeder. Honestly, I don’t buy it. Personally, I think the project was an excuse to build something fun that people would also enjoy watching. I can’t blame him. It looks like he enjoyed the process.  

Side note: I could not write about this video without mentioning how much I loved the nature facts Rober interspersed throughout it. For example, the one about squirrels being among the few mammals that can fall from any height—because they minimize their terminal velocity by flattening themselves, using their tail to increase drag, and fully extending their arms and legs to absorb the shock of landing—was super cool! I also loved hearing (and seeing) his observations about other “naturey” things that he noticed in his footage, such as plant vines moving around to find locations to anchor to as they grow!!