CHICAGO - More than a year after it became a social media sensation, a new study suggests the "Chicago Rat Hole" on a North Side sidewalk wasn’t a rat but probably a squirrel.

What we know:

In an article first published by The Royal Society , researchers compared the concrete imprint’s proportions to museum specimens of eight rodent species.

Using photographs of the impression, they found the limbs and digits were too long for a brown rat.

Instead, the shape closely matched that of an eastern gray squirrel or fox squirrel. Because gray squirrels are far more common in the Chicago area, scientists concluded there’s a 98.67% chance the imprint came from one.

The study suggests the squirrel likely slipped from a tree branch and landed on wet concrete sometime in the early 2000s.

The

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