Squirrels can safely eat apples, and many of them love the fruit. Apple flesh and skin are nontoxic and provide moisture and natural sugars that squirrels readily enjoy. The one part to watch out for is the seeds, which contain a compound that releases small amounts of cyanide when crushed. For a backyard squirrel grabbing a slice off your deck railing, apples are a perfectly fine treat, but they work best as a small part of a varied diet rather than a daily staple.
Why Squirrels Are Drawn to Apples
Wild squirrels are opportunistic eaters. Their diet centers on hard mast like acorns, hickory nuts, and beechnuts, which fuel them through fall and winter. But when those aren’t available, they branch out to fleshy fruits, berries, flower buds, bark, mushrooms, and even the occasional insect. A ripe apple sitting on the ground beneath a tree fits right into that pattern. Cultivated apples are sweeter and larger than most wild fruits a squirrel would encounter, which is exactly why they’ll happily gnaw through one if given the chance.
You’ll often see a squirrel hold an apple wedge in its front paws and rotate it while eating, working through the flesh and leaving behind a thin shell of skin. Some squirrels eat the skin too. This foraging style is normal and mirrors how they handle other fruit in the wild.
The Apple Seed Risk
Apple seeds contain a compound called amygdalin. When a seed is crushed or chewed, amygdalin reacts with digestive enzymes to produce hydrogen cyanide. In humans, a lethal dose of cyanide would require eating roughly 83 to 500 apple seeds, so the handful of seeds in a single apple core poses little danger to a person. For a squirrel, which weighs around one to one and a half pounds, the margin is smaller.
In practice, a squirrel nibbling through one apple and encountering a few seeds is unlikely to suffer poisoning. Squirrels often discard seeds or eat around them. But if you’re deliberately putting out apple slices for squirrels, it’s worth cutting around the core and removing the seeds beforehand. This eliminates any risk entirely and takes about ten seconds.
How Much Apple Is Too Much
Fruit should be a limited part of any squirrel’s diet. Veterinary feeding guidelines for captive squirrels recommend no more than two slices of fruit per day, with apples listed among the safe options alongside berries, grapes, kiwi, watermelon, and several others. That two-slice guideline is for a pet squirrel eating a controlled diet. For wild squirrels visiting your yard, the principle is the same: a small amount is fine, but apples shouldn’t become their primary food source.
The reason comes down to nutrition. Apples are high in sugar and water but low in calcium. Squirrels need calcium in proper balance with phosphorus to maintain healthy bones and teeth. When the ratio tips too far toward phosphorus (common in diets heavy in seeds, nuts, corn, and sugary fruit), the body pulls calcium from bones to compensate. Over time, this leads to metabolic bone disease, a condition seen in captive and hand-fed squirrels that causes weakened bones, tremors, and sometimes paralysis. It’s largely preventable with a balanced diet, but it’s one of the most common health problems in squirrels that rely too heavily on human-provided food.
How to Offer Apples Safely
If you want to leave apple pieces out for squirrels, a few simple steps make the experience better for them. Cut the apple into slices or small wedges and remove the core and all seeds. Leave the skin on, as it’s safe and gives the squirrel something to grip. Place the pieces on a platform feeder, a railing, or a clean surface off the ground where they won’t sit in mud or attract ants quickly.
Rotate what you offer. Apples one day, a few raw broccoli florets or a chunk of butternut squash the next, mixed with their natural foods like nuts in the shell. Variety prevents squirrels from fixating on one food and developing nutritional gaps. Avoid leaving out dried fruit, fruit juice, dates, figs, persimmons, or plums, all of which are either too concentrated in sugar or pose digestive issues for squirrels.
Fruits to Offer and Fruits to Skip
- Safe in small amounts: Apples, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, cantaloupe, watermelon, kiwi, pears, nectarines, cranberries, and papaya.
- Higher in sugar (use sparingly): Bananas, sweet cherries, grapes, mangos, and crabapples.
- Avoid entirely: Dates, dried fruit of any kind, figs, raisins, prunes, plums, persimmons, and avocado. Avocado skin and pit are toxic, and the flesh is excessively high in fat.
For any fruit with a pit or large seeds (cherries, peaches, apricots), remove the pit before offering it. Pits contain the same type of cyanide-producing compounds found in apple seeds, often in higher concentrations. Berry seeds are the exception and are fine to leave in.
Wild Squirrels vs. Pet Squirrels
A wild squirrel that grabs a slice of apple from your yard and then spends the rest of the day foraging acorns, fungi, and bark is getting a naturally balanced diet. The apple is a bonus. The concern is more relevant for people caring for pet squirrels or rehabilitating orphaned juveniles, where the animal depends entirely on what you provide. In those situations, the Merck Veterinary Manual advises strictly limiting fruit and prioritizing natural foods and nutritionally complete rodent blocks once the squirrel is old enough to eat solid food.
For most people watching a squirrel munch an apple in the backyard, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s a normal part of their flexible, wide-ranging diet. Just keep portions small, skip the seeds, and mix in other foods when you can.