Interaction with the squirrels in my neighborhood has been and remains delightful. While certainly nowhere near domesticated pet level, there is nevertheless a certain "intimacy of interaction" that is notable: My face can be literally within inches of theirs, I can hear them chewing, smell the crushed peanuts over the mild aroma of their fur, and feel the surprising warmth and softness of the pads of their little paws resting on my finger.

And I am touched that several consider me much less of a threat than other squirrels down below, towards whom they glare and vigorously chitter their teeth. (In fact, I occasionally lean over the ledge with them, peering down and chittering too — in the spirit of general emotional support ;-)

The squirrels most definitely have individual personalities, the main characteristic of which (that I readily notice anyway) being their level of calm in the presence of humans. In addition to individual differences, there are most definitely gender differences as well, with the females, on average, being significantly more relaxed than the males.

In the graphs below, I have attempted to roughly capture both the individual differences and the gender skew. As shown, while wide individual differences definitely exist, the calmest individuals are almost invariably females.