Agentic AI is increasingly judged not by fluent output alone but by whether it can act, remember, and verify under partial observability, delay, and strategic observation. Existing research often studies these demands separately: robotics emphasizes control, retrieval systems emphasize memory, and alignment or assurance work emphasizes checking and oversight. This article argues that squirrel ecology offers a sharp comparative case because arboreal locomotion, scatter-hoarding, and audience-sensitive caching couple all three demands in one organism. We synthesize evidence from fox, eastern gray, and, in one field comparison, red squirrels, and impose an explicit inference ladder: empirical observation, minimal computational inference, and AI design conjecture. We introduce a minimal hierarchical partially observed control model with latent dynamics, structured episodic memory, observer-belief state, option-level actions, and delayed verifier signals. This motivates three hypotheses: (H1) fast local feedback plus predictive compensation improves robustness under hidden dynamics shifts; (H2) memory organized for future control improves delayed retrieval under cue conflict and load; and (H3) verifiers and observer models inside the action-memory loop reduce silent failure and information leakage while remaining vulnerable to misspecification. A downstream conjecture is that role-differentiated proposer/executor/checker/adversary systems may reduce correlated error under asymmetric information and verification burden. The contribution is a comparative perspective and benchmark agenda: a disciplined program of falsifiable claims about the coupling of control, memory, and verifiable action.

翻译：自主人工智能如今的评判标准不再仅限于流畅的输出，更取决于其在部分可观测性、延迟与策略性观察条件下能否行动、记忆与验证。现有研究通常将这些需求分开探讨：机器人学侧重控制，检索系统侧重记忆，而对齐或保障工作则侧重于检查与监督。本文认为，松鼠生态学提供了一个鲜明的比较案例，因为树栖运动、分散贮藏以及对受众敏感的藏食行为将上述三种需求耦合于同一生物体内。我们综合分析了狐松鼠、东部灰松鼠，并在一次实地比较中纳入红松鼠的证据，构建了一个明确的推理阶梯：经验观察、最小计算推理及人工智能设计猜想。我们引入了一个最小化的分层部分可观测控制模型，包含潜在动力学、结构化情景记忆、观察者信念状态、选项级动作以及延迟验证信号。这推动了三个假设：（H1）快速局部反馈与预测补偿可提升在隐藏动力学变化下的鲁棒性；（H2）为未来控制而组织的记忆可改善在提示冲突与负载下的延迟检索；（H3）位于行动-记忆回路内部的验证器与观察者模型可减少静默失败与信息泄露，但仍易受误设定影响。一个下游猜想是，角色区分的提议者/执行者/检查者/对抗者系统可能在信息不对称与验证负担下减少相关错误。本文的贡献在于提供一个比较视角与基准议程：一套关于控制、记忆与可验证行动耦合性的可证伪主张的严谨研究纲领。