Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert liamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today we are coming at you with the return
Speaker 3: of Squirrels to Stuff to Blow your Mind. If you
Speaker 3: are newer to the show and your memory does not
Speaker 3: go back this far, what year was it? Was it
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen that we did a pair of episodes
Speaker 3: on squirrels that turned out to be real fan favorites,
Speaker 3: and I'll say host favorites too. We think about squirrels
Speaker 3: quite often, and I've never really thought about them the
Speaker 3: same way ever since we did those shows.
Speaker 2: That's right. They were quite popular talking about squirrels, their history,
Speaker 2: human and squirrel interactions, and what exactly squirrels eat.
Speaker 3: Yes, one of the big revelations from our research hall
Speaker 3: for those episodes it was about well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I was going to say the darker side of squirrels,
Speaker 3: but I don't know. It's not dark, it's just nature.
Speaker 3: It's the more violent side of squirrels, the more carnivorous
Speaker 3: side of squirrels. The thing most people don't think of
Speaker 3: when they think of squirrels, which is scavenging meat from
Speaker 3: dead animals, attacking baby birds in their nests, maybe even
Speaker 3: preying on their own kind some kind, sometimes just squirrels
Speaker 3: eating of the flesh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know a lot of this breaks down
Speaker 2: just to the basic idea that squirrels are more complex
Speaker 2: then a lot of people give them credit for. You know,
Speaker 2: it's easy to look at a squirrel and think, oh,
Speaker 2: that's cute, without of course realizing that this is a
Speaker 2: wild animal. And yeah, they're not pure herbivores either, as
Speaker 2: we discussed in those episodes. But the thing about those
Speaker 2: episodes is that I think for many of us they
Speaker 2: made squirrels a lot cooler because if you did kind
Speaker 2: of dismiss squirrels as just, oh, well, they're the these
Speaker 2: who we see them every day. They're mundane. You know,
Speaker 2: they're out there trying to eat the bird seed. They're annoying,
Speaker 2: but that's it. You know. It gave us maybe a
Speaker 2: little more room to appreciate them. And a part of
Speaker 2: our appreciation that grew out of that is we busted
Speaker 2: out i think two different T shirt designs for our
Speaker 2: T shirt store. We don't promote our T shirt store
Speaker 2: as much as our T shirt store would like us to,
Speaker 2: in part because we don't depend upon it. It's just
Speaker 2: for fun. But if you go to our tea public
Speaker 2: store you can find a link at stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com or check out the link tree
Speaker 2: on our Instagram. At STBYM podcast you'll see I moved
Speaker 2: them up to the top so you can see them
Speaker 2: rather easily. We have one that is the squirrels are
Speaker 2: Not what they seem and the other one is scug
Speaker 2: King of Rats. These are both squirrel shirts. They're both
Speaker 2: kind of metal looking. They're pretty good designs. I think
Speaker 2: people had some fun with.
Speaker 3: Them, agree. But there have been recent developments that caused
Speaker 3: us to return to the issue of squirrel once again.
Speaker 3: Multiple listeners over the past few weeks have excitedly gotten
Speaker 3: in touch to share news reports about a scientific paper
Speaker 3: out just this month in the Journal of Ethology, which
Speaker 3: returns to the topic of squirrels eating meat, and not
Speaker 3: just eating meat, but hunting and killing prey. So one
Speaker 3: of these messages, for example, came from our listener Daniel.
Speaker 3: He provided a link to the paper and said predatory
Speaker 3: carnivorous squirrels observed for the first time love the show. Ps,
Speaker 3: there's a Mountain Goats album called Beat the Champ and
Speaker 3: it is entirely about lucha libre no synth though off
Speaker 3: topic for today, but good to know. Nonetheless, Thank you,
Speaker 3: Thank you, Daniel. So if you are Daniel or any
Speaker 3: of the other listeners who sent this news our way,
Speaker 3: thanks for letting us know. And yep, you got your
Speaker 3: way here we are talking about it.
Speaker 2: We may have heard from a few other listeners over
Speaker 2: the years too, occasionally sending in some squirrel news I
Speaker 2: have found in homing through the squirrel news since twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen is that generally squirrels make headlines when there is
Speaker 2: blood involved. Yeah, so we'll be touching on a few
Speaker 2: different shades of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Warning that today's episode will include some gory details.
Speaker 3: But it's all nature, folks, and we got to face
Speaker 3: nature at some point, that's right. So what was found
Speaker 3: in this new predatory squirrel research. Well, let's go straight
Speaker 3: to the paper and have a look. So this paper
Speaker 3: has a long list of authors, but I'm going to
Speaker 3: read their names today. So this is by Jennifer E. Smith,
Speaker 3: Joey E. Ingbritson, Mackenzie m Minor, lc O Striker, Mari L. Podas,
Speaker 3: Tia A. Rivara, Lupen, mL tell Us, Jada C. Wall,
Speaker 3: Lucy M. Todd, and Sonya Wild And the paper is
Speaker 3: called Vole Hunting Novel, Predatory and Carnivorous Behavior by California
Speaker 3: Ground Squirrels, published in the Journal of Ethology twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: As I said, I think it was out just this month,
Speaker 3: in December twenty twenty four. And so actually, I think
Speaker 3: this paper is really interesting because it's not just a
Speaker 3: documentation of a surprisingly violent behavior being carried out by squirrels.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's kind of that would be an interesting
Speaker 3: thing if that's all it were, But it actually places
Speaker 3: it within some bigger theoretical framework about mammal behavior. So
Speaker 3: the authors begin by talking about ways that animals adapt
Speaker 3: to their behavior to respond to changes within their environment.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we can have this misconception that humans are really
Speaker 3: the only animals that can adapt substantially to changing pressures
Speaker 3: in the world around them, and that all of the
Speaker 3: other animals are well, you know, they're not as smart
Speaker 3: as us, and their behavior is produced by a system
Speaker 3: of fixed instincts that are fundamentally rigid, so they just
Speaker 3: can't really change very much, even if it would benefit
Speaker 3: them to do so. Now, I think it's true that
Speaker 3: humans are especially adaptable. The flexibility of human behavior is
Speaker 3: really one of the things that makes us special in
Speaker 3: the animal kingdom and allows us to survive in basically
Speaker 3: any climate or ecological situation. But I think sometimes the
Speaker 3: knowledge of our specialness in this regard can lead us
Speaker 3: to underestimate the fascinating behavioral flexibility of other animals, especially
Speaker 3: other mammals, even superficially unassuming mammals like squirrels. So just
Speaker 3: because we're really good at something doesn't mean other animals
Speaker 3: can't do it at all. And as one kind of
Speaker 3: illustration here, early in the introduction of the paper, the
Speaker 3: authors bring up a really interesting animal behavior concept that
Speaker 3: I don't believe I had ever heard of before. If
Speaker 3: I had heard of it, I'd forgotten about it, and
Speaker 3: by the time I read this. But the concept is
Speaker 3: called the ecology of fear. And this is a bit
Speaker 3: of a tangent from the main paper here, But I
Speaker 3: thought this was so interesting I wanted to get into
Speaker 3: it in some detail. So one of the references they
Speaker 3: cite introducing this idea of the ecology of fear is
Speaker 3: a paper from the Journal of Mammalogy published in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety nine by Brown, Landree, and Gurung called the Ecology
Speaker 3: of Fear, Optimal Foraging, Game Theory, and Trophic Interactions. What
Speaker 3: the authors of this paper point out is that it's
Speaker 3: easy to have an oversimplified view of how the presence
Speaker 3: of a predator can impact prey availability within an area.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to make up an example, and this
Speaker 3: scenario might not be perfectly valid in nature for the
Speaker 3: specific animals I'm using, but this is just to illustrate
Speaker 3: the principle. So imagine you've got a little park area
Speaker 3: and a bunch of rabbits living spread out across it,
Speaker 3: and they are being preyed on by a band of
Speaker 3: local foxes, and you're studying the predator prey interaction between
Speaker 3: the rabbits and the foxes. And then suddenly a new
Speaker 3: predator is introduced into this local environment. It's a cougar,
Speaker 3: and the cougar eats rabbits too. The foxes and the
Speaker 3: cougar both compete for the rabbits, So how does the
Speaker 3: cougar affect the availability of food for the foxes? A
Speaker 3: simple way of thinking is that the cougar kills and
Speaker 3: eats some of the rabbits. Thus some of the rabbits
Speaker 3: are removed from the population. Thus the number of rabbits
Speaker 3: available for the foxes to hunt is reduced. But the
Speaker 3: authors here point out that reality is more complicated than that.
Speaker 3: In the example I made up, the cougar might eat
Speaker 3: some of the rabbits, but the actual number that it
Speaker 3: kills and consumes compared to the total number of rabbits
Speaker 3: is relatively small. And yet the presence of the cougar
Speaker 3: could still greatly impact the availability of rabbit prey for
Speaker 3: the foxes. Now how would that be. It would be because,
Speaker 3: as the authors of this nineteen ninety nine paper say, quote,
Speaker 3: mammalian predator prey systems are behaviorally sophisticated games of stealth
Speaker 3: and fear. So what they're saying here is that prey
Speaker 3: mammals are not inert resources that are consumed like cookies
Speaker 3: from a jar. These are cookies that react. You know,
Speaker 3: they react to the fact that they are being eaten,
Speaker 3: and they are too very carrying degrees. Depending on the
Speaker 3: species adaptable, they can change their behavior in response to
Speaker 3: a threat. So the authors say that when studying predator
Speaker 3: prey interactions. In nature, there's actually a spectrum of different
Speaker 3: kinds of systems. So at one end of the spectrum
Speaker 3: you would have what the authors call population driven systems,
Speaker 3: and then at the other end of the spectrum you
Speaker 3: have what the authors call fear driven systems. In population
Speaker 3: driven systems, the main dynamic is predators killing prey, So
Speaker 3: the main variables are going to be like the number
Speaker 3: of predators and the number of prey, how many prey
Speaker 3: animals the predators eat, Whereas in fear driven systems, the
Speaker 3: presence of predators creates a condition of fear among prey,
Speaker 3: which causes prey to become harder to catch. So to
Speaker 3: go back to our example, if you have a cougar
Speaker 3: suddenly show up in this park, it could cause the
Speaker 3: rabbits to become significantly less available as prey, not just
Speaker 3: because they're literally disappearing from the population by being eaten,
Speaker 3: but because the rabbits are becoming more vigilant and more cautious.
Speaker 3: They're venturing out of shelter less. They might change what
Speaker 3: times of day they do things, they might change their
Speaker 3: foraging strategies. They might hide more or move away from
Speaker 3: any suspected predator earlier, earlier in possible detection. So in reality,
Speaker 3: a predator can functionally deplete the supply of prey animals
Speaker 3: in an area, not just by eating them, but by
Speaker 3: frightening them.
Speaker 2: Huh. I can't help but imagine a scenario where it's
Speaker 2: Gotham City, right, yeah, and maybe you're the local police force,
Speaker 2: and you have various stakeouts in place, you have various
Speaker 2: pending cases and so forth, and then there's a batman,
Speaker 2: essentially a new super predator preying on the criminal population
Speaker 2: of this and yeah, this's going to potentially interfere with
Speaker 2: everything that was going on. It's going to change the
Speaker 2: local criminal ecology.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it'll change like police joker interactions. Not just
Speaker 3: because all of your local jokers and riddlers have been
Speaker 3: put in Arkham Asylum, but they might actually stop doing
Speaker 3: crimes or something, or do them in a less easy
Speaker 3: to detect way. Yeah, for another not quite perfect, but
Speaker 3: I think interesting analogy. I was thinking just about supply
Speaker 3: and demand in human economies. When you have a lot
Speaker 3: of people who want to buy the same product and
Speaker 3: that product is in limited supply, the buyers can end
Speaker 3: up limiting access to that product, not just by literally
Speaker 3: buying up and hoarding all of the products that exist,
Speaker 3: but by the secondary effect of driving up the price.
Speaker 3: Sellers realize demand is high, They're like, oh, a lot
Speaker 3: of people want to buy this, So the sellers raise
Speaker 3: their prices as much as they can, and this limits
Speaker 3: access to the product, even though the product doesn't actually
Speaker 3: vanish from the market, is just too expensive for a
Speaker 3: lot of the people who want it. Similarly, I think
Speaker 3: you could think of a predator as a predator by
Speaker 3: its presence bidding up the price of prey. It's not
Speaker 3: that the prey animals no longer exist. Some of them
Speaker 3: don't exist anymore, but for most of them they're still there,
Speaker 3: but they are increasingly expensive to acquire because they adjusted
Speaker 3: their behavior in response to a predator. And so the
Speaker 3: authors of this nineteen ninety nine paper summarize the effect
Speaker 3: by saying behavior buffers the system. A reduction in predator
Speaker 3: numbers should rapidly engender less vigilant and more catchable prey.
Speaker 3: The ecology of fear explains why big, fierce carnivores should
Speaker 3: be and can be rare in carnivore systems ignore the
Speaker 3: behavioral game at one's peril. So how does this tie
Speaker 3: into the study about squirrels where well, the authors of
Speaker 3: this twenty twenty four paper cite the ecology of fear
Speaker 3: as an example of how prey animals, including squirrels, are
Speaker 3: not well modeled by thinking of them as rigid, inflexible
Speaker 3: machines or as like a just an innert resource like
Speaker 3: cookies in a jar. Instead, we should understand that, to
Speaker 3: varying extents, squirrel species and other mammalian prey can change
Speaker 3: their behavior patterns when different pressures appear in surprising or
Speaker 3: perhaps even alarming ways. But mammals like squirrels don't only
Speaker 3: change their behavior in response to the threat of a predator,
Speaker 3: they also alter their behavior in response to changes in
Speaker 3: the availability of food. So from here the authors go
Speaker 3: into a big catalog of let's talk about all the
Speaker 3: documented instances of squirrels, specifically, in their case, the California
Speaker 3: ground squirrel eating meat. That's where they're going from here,
Speaker 3: and so they end up citing a paper that we
Speaker 3: talked about extensively in our older series on squirrels from
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen. The paper is called Squirrels as Predators by J. R.
Speaker 3: Callahan published in The Great Basin Naturalist nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 3: You remember this one, Rob Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 2: And of course if you're reading any subsequent papers about
Speaker 2: squirrels as predators, they all cited this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this seemed to be.
Speaker 2: A major publication in the world of squirrel predator research.
Speaker 3: Callahan really seemed to do the legworking cataloging all these
Speaker 3: different examples not just of squirrels eating meat, but actually
Speaker 3: functioning as predators. Now, there's an important distinction to make here,
Speaker 3: which is the difference between what you might call it
Speaker 3: just standard predation versus what is called facultative predation. An
Speaker 3: animal is generally categorized as a predator if it needs
Speaker 3: to be a predator, if it can be expected to
Speaker 3: catch and kill prey as a regular part of its
Speaker 3: behavior across its geographic range.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially in the case of obligate carnivores. You know,
Speaker 2: where this creature has to hunt. Meat is what it eats.
Speaker 3: But also, I think you can think of some omnivores
Speaker 3: as just straight up predators if predation is a regular
Speaker 3: part of their acquisition of food. Meanwhile, a facultative predator
Speaker 3: is an animal that can sometimes optionally engage in predation
Speaker 3: if the circumstances are right, and that's typically what we're
Speaker 3: looking at with squirrels. I'm not aware of any squirrels
Speaker 3: that are consistent obligate predators, but there are a bunch
Speaker 3: of squirrels where the evidence is pretty good that while
Speaker 3: they are primarily herbivores, they will be omnivores when they
Speaker 3: need to be. And that's you know, the occasions might
Speaker 3: be rare, but many of them will shift strategies to
Speaker 3: eat foraged meat and sometimes even actively catch and kill
Speaker 3: live prey on an as needed or as available basis.
Speaker 3: Now this came up in our older episodes, but Callahan
Speaker 3: lists a bunch of different squirrel prey animals for the literature,
Speaker 3: just to gloss over them quickly. This includes birds, frogs, rats, lizards, rabbits, gophers, moles, snakes, fish, voles, ducks,
Speaker 3: wild turkeys, turtles, crabs, and salamanders. And sometimes this would
Speaker 3: this eating would involve the eating of the flesh, eating
Speaker 3: the meat. Sometimes it seems to be focused more on
Speaker 3: bones or joints, possibly for mineral supplementation in some squirrel species.
Speaker 3: But if you look at all of the previous research
Speaker 3: on squirrel predation. Taken together, it emphasized that the vast
Speaker 3: majority of the hunting done by squirrels was targeted at
Speaker 3: first of all insects or invertebrates, and then if you're
Speaker 3: looking at vertebrate prey, it would be relatively helpless juvenile
Speaker 3: prey such as actually eggs like bird eggs or bird
Speaker 3: hatchlings in the nest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so memory serves this paper and also a paper
Speaker 2: that I'll be referring to later, looked at the fact
Speaker 2: that when you're studying all this, yeah, you do have
Speaker 2: reports of squirrel predation and squirrels eating meat and and
Speaker 2: and so forth. But then also you have a lot
Speaker 2: of data that has arrived at via analyzing the stomach
Speaker 2: contents of harvest squirrels. And of course that data doesn't
Speaker 2: all provide a lot of context. Like you you can
Speaker 2: look at it and say, well, they still mostly eat
Speaker 2: seeds or plants or whatever, but there is a certain
Speaker 2: amount of meat. As to how that meat was obtained,
Speaker 2: you have to draw conclusions sometimes because yeah, there's there there.
Speaker 2: Of course, you can scavenge, you can take out prey
Speaker 2: that are just weak or helpless, juvenile and so forth.
Speaker 2: But then there is that threshold, right that you cross
Speaker 2: into potentially actively hunting prey, actively hunting something that is
Speaker 2: that is not like wounded or dying, but is to
Speaker 2: some degree like a like a valid, healthy prey creature.
Speaker 3: That's right, And to some extent this ambiguity remained up
Speaker 3: until the time of this new paper. So the authors
Speaker 3: describe the landscape of squirrel meat eating research before their
Speaker 3: paper as follows. They write, quote, despite the growing consensus
Speaker 3: that many squirrel species opportunistically consume meat, much of the
Speaker 3: early evidence for predation is based on stomach contents or
Speaker 3: the killing of heterospecifics in captive settings eg. Zoos or traps.
Speaker 3: This makes it challenging to distinguish between scavenging and direct predation.
Speaker 3: So this is what you're saying, Rob, We're in this
Speaker 3: situation where you can find squirrels and like cut open
Speaker 3: their stomachs and say, oh, there's some meat in there,
Speaker 3: but we can't tell did it actually kill something, or
Speaker 3: did it just find something dead and eat part of it,
Speaker 3: or in these other cases, you might have evidence that
Speaker 3: the squirrel did kill and eat an animal, but it
Speaker 3: was an animal that was caught in a trap or something.
Speaker 2: Right, And I want to add an important caveat here
Speaker 2: about predation. I don't want to make it sound like
Speaker 2: true predation is a fair fight. We've covered enough examples
Speaker 2: of predation in the past to know that there are
Speaker 2: plenty of obligate carnivores, obligate predators who are still They're
Speaker 2: obviously not going to go out and say, all right,
Speaker 2: show me the strongest of the pack. No, the one
Speaker 2: I shall fight today. No, no, no, They're still they're
Speaker 2: still going after off you know, weekend, young, old, and
Speaker 2: so forth, because they're inherent increased risks involved in going
Speaker 2: after stronger prey.
Speaker 3: Predators use their coupons, they are looking for the super
Speaker 3: saver options. Yes, oh, but anyway, the authors here continue
Speaker 3: quote the direct study of hunting behavior by squirrels remains rare,
Speaker 3: and most reports in field settings are still limited to
Speaker 3: a single depredation event. So one thing this does bring up.
Speaker 3: I've seen a few people kind of comment that like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, this isn't new. We have examples from before
Speaker 3: of squirrels eating meat, or squirrels, you know, report isolated
Speaker 3: reports of squirrels killing and eating animals. That is true,
Speaker 3: We do have these reports But what this new study
Speaker 3: contributes is extensive direct documentation, including video footage, of a
Speaker 3: specific species of squirrel, in this case, the California ground
Speaker 3: squirrel or Odospermophilus beachyi, hunting, killing, and eating adult vertebrate
Speaker 3: prey animals, specifically voles in the study. So how is
Speaker 3: this different than what we had before. Well, it's just
Speaker 3: a lot more observations of the predation behavior compared to
Speaker 3: the previous reports that were usually fairly isolated, and we
Speaker 3: have video evidence here. And they're not just going after
Speaker 3: juveniles or something that's caught in a trap or whatever.
Speaker 3: They're going after adult vertebrate prey animals. So a little sidebar,
Speaker 3: who are these California round squirrels the Odospermophylis beachy I.
Speaker 3: First of all, yes, they're cute. According to me, at
Speaker 3: least that's that's my opinion, Rob. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you share it, but yeah, they're cute little guys.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I guess, I don't know. I feel
Speaker 2: like I'm you know, I'm not used to being around
Speaker 2: these California squirrels, but the squirrels i'm around here in Georgia,
Speaker 2: I think of them as I just know too much
Speaker 2: about them, and I see them too often. I think
Speaker 2: of them as like, it's hard for me to imagine
Speaker 2: someone thinking they're straight up adorable, because like I hear
Speaker 2: them on the fence, I see the effects of their
Speaker 2: claws on the fence. They're like furry grappling hooks, you know,
Speaker 2: like they're they're clearly tough creatures. I saw one fight
Speaker 2: off a hawk once in my backyard. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 2: they're they're rough and tumble. So yes, cute, but with
Speaker 2: a number of caveats as far as my opinion of
Speaker 2: them goes.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's going to be all caveats from
Speaker 3: here on out. So yes, they're cute. But I included
Speaker 3: for you to look at here in our outline. I
Speaker 3: found a picture hosted on the University of California Integrated
Speaker 3: Pest Management Program website. It's a picture of an avocado
Speaker 3: that has been gnawed on by a California ground squirrel.
Speaker 3: And I thought this picture was I don't know, it
Speaker 3: just struck me. It looks both beautiful the pattern that
Speaker 3: emerges and the different colors of the avocado flesh as
Speaker 3: it has been gouged and carved out by the rodent's teeth.
Speaker 3: But also I think it's hauntingly sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a real visceral reaction to this. There
Speaker 2: is something heartbreaking about it, potentially wasted avocado. I feel
Speaker 2: this one, like this one is saveable. I think I
Speaker 2: could get in there with a with a with a
Speaker 2: with a knife, cut off the part that's been fouled
Speaker 2: by the squirrel and you know, have plenty leftover for
Speaker 2: sandwiches and whatnot.
Speaker 3: You better do a good job because you don't know
Speaker 3: what the squirrel has been eating before. The avocado.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's only going to seep in so far,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna cut that part off and spread the rest.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: These California ground squirrels, the adults typically grow to around
Speaker 3: twenty two thirty centimeters long in the body, plus another
Speaker 3: half body length or so again with the tail. They
Speaker 3: have a modeled gray and brown fur on their backs
Speaker 3: and on the flanks, with usually lighter colored fur on
Speaker 3: the underside. They have a bushy tail. A couple of
Speaker 3: the sources I looked at mentioned that the tail is
Speaker 3: not as bushy as the common tree squirrels that you'll see,
Speaker 3: but it is bushy nonetheless, I don't know, medium bushy.
Speaker 3: Maybe there are natives to the western part of North America,
Speaker 3: found today in US states of California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada,
Speaker 3: and extending south into Baja California. They generally inhabit grasslands
Speaker 3: where they dig out burrows in the earth that are
Speaker 3: sometimes shared by a bunch of different squirrels. They hide
Speaker 3: out and brood their young in the burrows. They typically
Speaker 3: forage during the day. They and they use these burrows
Speaker 3: because in part they are a common prey species to snakes,
Speaker 3: predatory birds, and larger carnivorous mammals. So to be super clear,
Speaker 3: California ground squirrels mostly eat plants. The authors mention that
Speaker 3: they forage most often for seeds that come from grasses
Speaker 3: and oaks, and during the growing season they will eat
Speaker 3: green vegetable matter, including quote leaves, flowers, buds, stems, shoots, roots, tubers, twigs,
Speaker 3: and bark from a wide variety of different plants. The
Speaker 3: authors mention over one hundred different species of plants that
Speaker 3: they eat from. So as herbivores, they are also very
Speaker 3: flexible foragers, as the avocado art we just talked about
Speaker 3: would indicate. They are a common agricultural pest within their range.
Speaker 3: If farmers have to deal with these things a lot,
Speaker 3: especially if you're growing I think, like fruits or nuts.
Speaker 3: But while those foraging strategies are the rule, we also
Speaker 3: get the exceptions, and quite a number of exceptions have
Speaker 3: been observed, maybe to the point where we should question
Speaker 3: whether they become a rule of their own. These observations
Speaker 3: include occasional carnivory, and while the reports are more isolated
Speaker 3: and sporadic, the authors found published accounts of the ground
Speaker 3: squirrels eating invertebrates. Of course, they're going to be eaten,
Speaker 3: you know, insects and other invertebrates, and eggs and nestlings
Speaker 3: of numerous birds, including kill deer, California quail, bob, white quail,
Speaker 3: ring necked pheasant, mourning dove, dark eyed junco, and American robin.
Speaker 3: Continuing the agricultural pest theme, they have been documented chomping
Speaker 3: ride on into domestic chicken eggs. They have been documented
Speaker 3: to eat fish. I think there's just one occasion of this,
Speaker 3: but eating a small silvery fish called the California grunion.
Speaker 3: And then finally the author's note quote Fitch, nineteen forty
Speaker 3: eight observed the California ground squirrel consuming, but not directly killing,
Speaker 3: young desert cottontails, adult pocket gophers, and kangaroo rats, so
Speaker 3: eating several of its cousins here. But again to emphasize,
Speaker 3: just because a squirrel is eating a rabbit, that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean it caught and killed the rabbit. It might have
Speaker 3: found a dead one free meal. And there have been,
Speaker 3: as we alluded to earlier, observations of the California ground
Speaker 3: squirrel eating meat in non natural conditions, for example, scavenging
Speaker 3: on human trapped fish and rodents, songbirds, and on other
Speaker 3: California ground squirrels. And there have also sometimes been observed
Speaker 3: instances of these ground squirrels cannibalizing juveniles of their own species.
Speaker 3: But again, what has long been elusive is much evidence,
Speaker 3: extensive evidence of these animals actively hunting and killing adult
Speaker 3: vertebrate prey. Well, this study found, oh yeah, under the
Speaker 3: right conditions they will absolutely do plenty of that. The
Speaker 3: specific prey here was the California vole or microtus Ce californicus.
Speaker 3: And if you look up this paper, it provides links
Speaker 3: to video that you can watch of these attacks of
Speaker 3: the squirrel just ruthlessly snatching a vole behind the base
Speaker 3: of its skull in its jaws, and I thought in
Speaker 3: this one particular video I saw it was fascinating how
Speaker 3: much it resembled traditional predator behavior, like what you would
Speaker 3: see with a wolf or a dog grabbing a squirrel,
Speaker 3: so like clamp the jaws at the back of the
Speaker 3: neck and shake. But while this did show up in
Speaker 3: the video I was looking at, the authors say that
Speaker 3: this was not the most common type of attack with
Speaker 3: the shaking like this. They characterized the squirrel on vole
Speaker 3: attacks as follows. In three documented hunting attempts from this study,
Speaker 3: squirrels engaged in typical predator stalking behavior, meaning that they
Speaker 3: flattened out their bodies low to the ground, and then
Speaker 3: attempted to minimize the sound produced as they approached prey
Speaker 3: before leaping into a sudden attack. That was the minority
Speaker 3: of cases. Nineteen of the documented hunting attempts involved chasing
Speaker 3: just a squirrel flat out run chasing a single vole
Speaker 3: across the ground. When the squirrel was able to come
Speaker 3: within range, it would pounce on top of the vole
Speaker 3: and then hold it down with its front paws and jaws.
Speaker 3: Then it would begin biting, most often at the neck,
Speaker 3: but also at other body parts. A bite shaking was
Speaker 3: observed in one attack, and squirrels occasionally but did not usually,
Speaker 3: engage in sit and wait ambush strategies, hiding behind tall grass. Quote. Instead,
Speaker 3: hunting attempts were best characterized by squirrels opportunistically chasing a
Speaker 3: single vole over a short distance in open areas across
Speaker 3: dirt substrate. And I thought that was interesting that, like,
Speaker 3: perhaps I'm taking the wrong thing away from this, but
Speaker 3: that just read to me as like, huh, you know,
Speaker 3: they don't maybe they don't have a super refined strategy
Speaker 3: like a lot of obligate predators would. They're just sort
Speaker 3: of winging it.
Speaker 2: On an level you could say, it's like they also
Speaker 2: kind of know how to do it as well.
Speaker 3: Yeh yeah, yeah, they do know. I mean they know
Speaker 3: how to bite, to like bite and subdue the prey
Speaker 3: with the four paws and the jaws. Where does that
Speaker 3: knowledge come from? Interesting question? The authors summarized, saying, quote,
Speaker 3: hunters successfully captured and killed a vole in seventeen of
Speaker 3: the thirty one observed hunting attempts, which is fifty five percent.
Speaker 3: So they observed thirty one cases of a squirrel trying
Speaker 3: to kill a vole. Seventeen of the thirty one worked.
Speaker 3: The other fourteen attempts failed. Prey either got away during pursuit,
Speaker 3: or escaped after being initially captured by a squirrel. Close quote.
Speaker 3: Another interesting thing is that in seventy percent of these
Speaker 3: kills the squirrel would not eat the vole directly at
Speaker 3: the kill site, but instead carry it away to a
Speaker 3: second location, sometimes even into its burrow or out of view,
Speaker 3: but other times just carrying it away to some different place.
Speaker 3: And I don't know for sure the reason for this,
Speaker 3: but I wonder if this is because the squirrel is
Speaker 3: prey itself and it might not be comfortable being out
Speaker 3: in the open. If this is, if this place is
Speaker 3: the place where the vole was vulnerable to the squirrel,
Speaker 3: that's also probably a place where the squirrel is vulnerable
Speaker 3: to one of its predators.
Speaker 2: Right, and now you're presenting a two for one deal,
Speaker 2: So you got to get out of there.
Speaker 3: Oh man, if you're like a hawk right here or something,
Speaker 3: and you can get two animals out of a single catch.
Speaker 3: Oh and one more detail from this part about the
Speaker 3: attacks is apparently these ground squirrels, you know what, they
Speaker 3: love to rip off the head quote In eleven of
Speaker 3: the events for which consumption of an intact carcass was observed,
Speaker 3: squirrels first removed the head of the vole, so that's
Speaker 3: just procedure. Head remove head first. Next, they either directly
Speaker 3: pulled meat out of the torso or first stripped fur
Speaker 3: from each of these body parts before can assuming the
Speaker 3: exposed meat, organs and cartilage. So an interesting thing about
Speaker 3: these gory observations is the context that came in because
Speaker 3: these observations were made within the context of a larger
Speaker 3: project known as the Long Term Behavioral Ecology of California
Speaker 3: Ground Squirrels Project, which had been going on for years.
Speaker 3: This has been carried out at a place called I'm
Speaker 3: not sure I'm pronouncing this correctly, but I think it's
Speaker 3: Brionas Regional Park in California, Brio Nes Regional Park, sort
Speaker 3: of northeast of Oakland and Berkeley. Interestingly, the project was
Speaker 3: in its twelfth year before these instances of squirrels killing
Speaker 3: and eating voles were first observed. And that doesn't mean
Speaker 3: it never happened before, but these squirrels have been studied
Speaker 3: intensely for twelve years in this region before anybody observed
Speaker 3: them doing this, and then once it was observed, they
Speaker 3: were observed doing it all the time, basically every day
Speaker 3: after the first observation, for a period of a couple
Speaker 3: of months. I was reading a press release about this
Speaker 3: paper that was giving some narrative about how the scientists
Speaker 3: came to these observations, and they interview the lead author,
Speaker 3: Jennifer E. Smith, who is an associate professor of biology
Speaker 3: at University of Wisconsin eau Claire, who ends up saying
Speaker 3: in this press release quote, this was shocking. We had
Speaker 3: never seen this behavior before, and emphasized she emphasizes how
Speaker 3: strange it is that like squirrels are, they're just such
Speaker 3: a familiar animal to people. People just see them in
Speaker 3: their yards in the park all the time. And here suddenly,
Speaker 3: after twelve years of intensive observation, we're seeing this predation
Speaker 3: behavior happening all over the place within the range of
Speaker 3: this particular study, and it's like what it's like out
Speaker 3: of nowhere. Apparently there were some undergraduate researchers who had
Speaker 3: been doing field work for the study, and they came
Speaker 3: in one day and just you know, ask one of
Speaker 3: the professors on the project about it. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we saw squirrels hunting and killing voles. And the professor
Speaker 3: was like what no, no, no, no, But then saw the
Speaker 3: footage and it's right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you can't argue with this footage, some of
Speaker 2: these grizzly photos.
Speaker 3: And as I said, after the first instance, they began
Speaker 3: to see this behavior basically every day, so they observed
Speaker 3: it as a summer behavior throughout June and July twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four. And the researchers did not during this period
Speaker 3: observe the ground squirrels hunting and killing other animals, only voles.
Speaker 3: That's kind of interesting. So it's previously unobserved behavior suddenly
Speaker 3: seems to be happening all over the place at least
Speaker 3: that they're noticing, and it's only targeting one prey species.
Speaker 3: They don't generally become predators. Why would this be Well,
Speaker 3: they ended up pairing this with a with an interesting observe,
Speaker 3: which was a massive increase in a documentation of voles
Speaker 3: logged by local citizen scientists in the area on an
Speaker 3: app called eye Naturalist, which is sort of a biological
Speaker 3: and wildlife social media platform kind of a place being
Speaker 3: log Wildlife and the Citizen Science app. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 3: so they noticed, h that's interesting. So we're seeing suddenly
Speaker 3: ground squirrels showing this thing we've never noticed before where
Speaker 3: they're hunting and killing voles. And also people are saying, whoa,
Speaker 3: there's tons of voles out here. Where did all these
Speaker 3: voles come from? And the authors compare the number of
Speaker 3: vole sidings reported on this app to the ten year
Speaker 3: average from before and found that the peak of vole
Speaker 3: sidings in the summer of twenty twenty four there were
Speaker 3: roughly seven times more vole observations than the previous ten
Speaker 3: year average. So suddenly all these voles coming out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what are you going to do? Right, what
Speaker 2: are you going to do when there's that many voles around?
Speaker 3: Exactly. So, according to the authors, it is normal for
Speaker 3: some vole populations to kind of boom and bust. They
Speaker 3: cycle through these population density patterns, and they tend to
Speaker 3: kind of peak every three to five years. But the
Speaker 3: peak achieved in the summer of twenty twenty four, rob
Speaker 3: you can see from a chart I've included, was like
Speaker 3: way way more than the normal peaks, even the previous
Speaker 3: peaks from like you can see in kind of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty or so.
Speaker 2: It's such a peak that it doesn't make you judge
Speaker 2: the squirrel the squirrels at all. You're like, maybe we
Speaker 2: should have been eating vowles as well. Clearly it's out
Speaker 2: of control, right.
Speaker 3: This brings us back to the idea from earlier about
Speaker 3: behavioral flexibility in response to changes in the environment. So,
Speaker 3: like the ecology of fear, there can also be an
Speaker 3: ecology of food abundance. So these two patterns are observed
Speaker 3: and they seem to line up in time. One of
Speaker 3: them is suddenly a big surge in vole populations, and
Speaker 3: the second one is squirrels shift their foraging strategy from
Speaker 3: let's mostly focus on grains and other plant matter to
Speaker 3: if you see a vole, chase it and kill it.
Speaker 2: I mean it's in season exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So to come back to kind of the crude human
Speaker 3: economics analogy I used earlier, you can think of this like,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't normally buy vole meat at the store,
Speaker 3: but you go to the store and vole meat is
Speaker 3: so so cheap they're practically giving it away, so why not.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: One of the authors of the paper. Sonia Wilde off
Speaker 3: UC Davis gave a quote to that press release I mentioned, saying, quote,
Speaker 3: the fact that California ground squirrels are behaviorally flexible and
Speaker 3: can respond to changes in food availability might help them
Speaker 3: persist in environments rapidly changing due to the presence of humans. Oh,
Speaker 3: And I thought that was kind of interesting because on
Speaker 3: one hand, you could just say, well, you know, these squirrels,
Speaker 3: this squirrel species has a certain amount of behavioral flexibility.
Speaker 3: That's part of its natural repertoire. You know, it can adapt,
Speaker 3: and that's just part of what kind of animal it is.
Speaker 3: And that's totally possible. But I also wonder if humans
Speaker 3: could have, inadvertently, by our presence, helped create populations of
Speaker 3: more behaviorally flexible squirrels. You know, if we're going around
Speaker 3: wherever we go, changing the nature of the environment, We're
Speaker 3: changing the you know, the very topography of the landscape,
Speaker 3: we're changing what kind of food is available, We're changing
Speaker 3: all sorts of things wherever we go, does that as
Speaker 3: sort of in our wake cause the secondary effects where
Speaker 3: we select for more behaviorally flexible populations of animals in
Speaker 3: the areas with proximity to human civilization.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, we even changes that we might
Speaker 2: not think of being that drastic. They have these ripple
Speaker 2: effects in the environment. And yeah, next thing, you know,
Speaker 2: it's squirrels ripping heads off.
Speaker 3: Now, plenty of unanswered questions remain, like how common? Is this?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 3: Unclear? Fascinating question we don't fully have the answers to,
Speaker 3: But how do the squirrels actually make this shift? Like
Speaker 3: where does the hunting behavior come from? Is it a
Speaker 3: learned behavior that's passed down from from parent offspring or
Speaker 3: is it a kind of instinctual ingrained behavior, In which case,
Speaker 3: what sort of instincts are harnessed from the normal foraging
Speaker 3: strategies and repurposed for hunting If it is instinctual? Another
Speaker 3: how like how does it get triggered? You know, how
Speaker 3: does the squirrel know to shift? It's it's say like okay,
Speaker 3: it is time to hunt now? And another interesting thing
Speaker 3: are like what are the secondary dynamics that emerge? We
Speaker 3: were talking earlier about secondary dynamics that you might not
Speaker 3: always envision that come out of animals changing their behavior.
Speaker 3: Does this change what the voles do? And does that
Speaker 3: have secondary effects?
Speaker 2: You know this I can't help but think about it's
Speaker 2: hard to really set aside this idea that squirrels are
Speaker 2: breaking bad here by eating meat, and like they have
Speaker 2: this really dramatic moment where they say, now I embrace
Speaker 2: death or something, you know, But I maybe the better
Speaker 2: way to think of it is to remind ourselves, perhaps
Speaker 2: that the squirrel doesn't see a difference between ultimately between
Speaker 2: the food that is obtained from seed or a shoot
Speaker 2: from a plant and from the body of a vowel.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like these are all like distinctions of
Speaker 2: vegetation and animal like. Yes, they're at present in the
Speaker 2: strategy that is employed, the methodology of obtaining that food,
Speaker 2: but in terms of like seeing this big divide between
Speaker 2: plant world and animal world, between plant food and animal
Speaker 2: food is maybe more of a human construct, and we
Speaker 2: bring that baggage into examining these creatures.
Speaker 3: What are these big furry nuts that run away from me?
Speaker 3: They're sure are delicious?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So I was looking around as well
Speaker 2: for some articles from the past several years on squirrels
Speaker 2: in general, but also squirrels eating meat. And yeah, another
Speaker 2: one that came to light since we last recorded the
Speaker 2: blood dripping mos of squirrels. This is one that was
Speaker 2: published in twenty twenty two. It was published in the
Speaker 2: journal Acta Ethologica and it's titled first Evidence for active
Speaker 2: carnivorous predation in the European ground squirrel by Kachamakova. At all, So,
Speaker 2: the European ground squirrel is Spermophilus setellus. Now did we
Speaker 2: already mentioned the genus Spermophulus close?
Speaker 3: The California ground squirrels are in the genus otto Spermophilus.
Speaker 2: Okay, so some similarities here in the naming. Anyway, some
Speaker 2: of you might be wondering what why are they thought
Speaker 2: of as spermophiles? Well, the translation to fixate on here
Speaker 2: is seed love. So they are seed lovers as in
Speaker 2: European ground squirrels sure do love to eat plant seeds. Yeah. So,
Speaker 2: the endangered squirrel species in question here is native to
Speaker 2: Eastern and Central Europe, and indeed a huge part of
Speaker 2: its diet consists of seeds, plant shoots, also roots and
Speaker 2: flightless invertebrates or in the mix as well. But this
Speaker 2: paper presented evidence for active predation by the European ground squirrel,
Speaker 2: in particular the hunting, killing, and eating of active animals,
Speaker 2: so not merely the weaken, the dead and the so forth,
Speaker 2: as we've been discussing, but actually going after I don't know,
Speaker 2: more formidable prey. You might say, I don't know with
Speaker 2: all the caveats of predation that we mentioned earlier. Now,
Speaker 2: to be sure, European ground squirrels are still mostly eating seeds,
Speaker 2: but in the spring they supplement their diet with bugs
Speaker 2: consisting of quote considerable amount of animal components, and researchers
Speaker 2: have also known for a while that they'll eat voles,
Speaker 2: they'll eat green lizards. These have been found in their
Speaker 2: stomach contents, which is a lot of the previous findings
Speaker 2: that we've had to go on. Ground nesting birds are
Speaker 2: also seem to be on the menu, and like many
Speaker 2: other animals, European ground squirrels are also opportunistic cannibals. If
Speaker 2: there is an opportunity to munch on a dead number
Speaker 2: of your own species, or perhaps there's there also scenarios
Speaker 2: where one might feast upon the young. That sort of
Speaker 2: thing is totally on the table, you know, it comes
Speaker 2: down to basic economy of energy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as we said, California ground squirrel does the
Speaker 3: same thing occasionally if the opportunity presents itself, they'll eat
Speaker 3: their own kind.
Speaker 2: Right, So, as has been the case with these other studies,
Speaker 2: a lot of the past evidence was based on stomach
Speaker 2: contents and observations of squirrels feeding on carcasses, but questions
Speaker 2: remain actively pursue live prey, hunting and killing them, or
Speaker 2: where they mirror you know, basically scavengers and at times
Speaker 2: very opportunistic carnivores. Well, the authors point out that there
Speaker 2: was no previous evidence of European ground squirrel's killing prey,
Speaker 2: hunting and killing prey until now and that was the
Speaker 2: that's the big finding of this paper. And getting into
Speaker 2: the observation portion of the study, they share the following
Speaker 2: on two six, twenty twenty at nineteen twenty seven, that's
Speaker 2: the time in the area of the town of Schumann,
Speaker 2: and they include of very detailed information about exactly where
Speaker 2: this occurs. A young learning to fly Eurasian tree sparrow
Speaker 2: Passer montanas was caught by an adult European ground squirrel.
Speaker 2: The ground squirrel ripped out the sparrow's abdominal cavity and
Speaker 2: started to feed on the bird's internal organs while still alive.
Speaker 2: And waving its wings.
Speaker 3: Oh, and they got a photo.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is the photographic evidence of what they refer
Speaker 2: to as the predation event. And yeah, you can see
Speaker 2: this little guy again very arguably cute creature. And you
Speaker 2: can also see that it is munching on the body
Speaker 2: of a bird and there is blood flowing from the
Speaker 2: mouth or look, I'm getting the sense of blood flowing
Speaker 2: from the mouth of the squirrel.
Speaker 3: I have to share you included in the outline here
Speaker 3: at the painting by Goya of Saturn devouring his son,
Speaker 3: and the resemblance is striking. Yes, this is absolutely a
Speaker 3: prelude to the witch's sabbath.
Speaker 2: Now as to why this particular European ground squirrel turned
Speaker 2: to the meat of the living, they suspect that it
Speaker 2: is a quote seasonal increase in the energetic needs of
Speaker 2: the European ground squirrel. So again, this photo was taken
Speaker 2: on June second. Interesting that our previous example was also
Speaker 2: more or less than the same window with the voles. Yeah, July,
Speaker 2: so the June second and the author's site that this
Speaker 2: is a crucial and delicate time for the European ground squirrel.
Speaker 2: So what's been happening in the European ground squirrel world
Speaker 2: at this point is the males have just finished fiercely
Speaker 2: competing with each other for mates, and so many of
Speaker 2: them are weakened or even injured from those ensuing battles,
Speaker 2: and just also just the energy expenditure of the whole endeavor. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the females have already given birth and they are nursing
Speaker 2: their young all right, which of course also requires a
Speaker 2: lot of energy. On top of all of this, highly
Speaker 2: nutritious seeds are not yet numerous in the environment, and
Speaker 2: what is available is ravaged by overgrazing. Meanwhile, in the
Speaker 2: bird world, juvenile birds have left their nests, so they're vulnerable.
Speaker 2: They're not ready for this cruel world. And so these
Speaker 2: seed loving rodents turn their ravenous attention to these available
Speaker 2: riches of the flesh. The way they're analyzing it and
Speaker 2: writing about it in the paper we have. Part of
Speaker 2: it is the fact that there is suddenly this in
Speaker 2: this case, a feathered fruit or nut that is available,
Speaker 2: that is presenting itself, is on the menu. But also
Speaker 2: on top of that, some of the seeds they really
Speaker 2: depend upon are not yet available, and they're you know,
Speaker 2: they're worn out and have increased nutritional needs, and so
Speaker 2: it just leads right to the blood feast.
Speaker 3: So the situation is, we just finished some strenuous activity,
Speaker 3: We're ravenously hungry. All the restaurants are closed. What what
Speaker 3: are we going to do? Here's something, here's something with
Speaker 3: feathers on it. It keeps flapping its wings. I'm just just
Speaker 3: trying to eat the seeds. Yeah, yeah, the seeds out
Speaker 3: of its belly. So another example here. And then you
Speaker 3: know there's the added importance that they discussed in the
Speaker 3: paper too, that this is an endangered species, and so
Speaker 3: you know there's there's even added there's added incentive to
Speaker 3: understand it and help us figure out, you know, how
Speaker 3: to protect now. In looking I was looking through various
Speaker 3: squirrel related news items from the past several years. Inevitably,
Speaker 3: there have been a number of news stories dealing with squirrels,
Speaker 3: generally in urban environments, behaving aggressively or even attacking human beings.
Speaker 3: I may be remembering this wrong, but I sort of
Speaker 3: think like they were the kind of reports that were like,
Speaker 3: you couldn't totally discount them, but you also weren't sure
Speaker 3: you should believe them either.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, a lot of these are, you know, anecdotal,
Speaker 2: and I don't know. It's one of those things where
Speaker 2: when squirrels are going about their normal business, nobody is
Speaker 2: writing about it in the local newspaper, but there's one
Speaker 2: attack and it gets written up. So I don't want
Speaker 2: to present the idea that these attacks are common, but
Speaker 2: they apparently did occur. So just a brief example of
Speaker 2: some of the headlines I ran across. Here's one from
Speaker 2: the Guardian from January twenty twenty one. It was angry
Speaker 2: vicious spate of squirrel attacks leaves New York City neighborhood
Speaker 2: in fear. At least three people in Rego Park and
Speaker 2: Queens have been jumped upon and bitten by a possibly
Speaker 2: deranged squirrel.
Speaker 3: Okay, I apologize for laughing. Squirrel attacks are in one
Speaker 3: sense inherently funny, but now I'm thinking about it like
Speaker 3: if a squirrel did jump on you and start biting you,
Speaker 3: that would be scary.
Speaker 2: It would be terrifying.
Speaker 3: Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry for laughing.
Speaker 2: But still it just drives home the fact that we
Speaker 2: often just totally disregard them or think they're cute and amusing,
Speaker 2: and then when we encounter the savage side of the squirrel.
Speaker 2: It is shocking and terrifying. Here's another one. This one's
Speaker 2: from BBC News December twenty twenty one. Squirrel injures eighteen
Speaker 2: people in two days of attacks in Buckley. A gray
Speaker 2: squirrel which attacked and injured eighteen people has been captured
Speaker 2: and put down.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna flag that one for later and go see
Speaker 3: how the eighteen people were chained together. Here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apologies, but I'm not going to respond to individual articles.
Speaker 2: You were going to do more generally.
Speaker 3: I'm not taking questions on these squirrel attacks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and here's another one. This was from NBC fifteen
Speaker 2: News September eighteenth, twenty twenty four. Squirrels on a train.
Speaker 2: Train ride canceled due to attacking squirrels Gomshal Suri. So
Speaker 2: these are just a taste of some of the headlines
Speaker 2: I ran across many more squirrel attack stories regarding isolated
Speaker 2: incidents which seemed to regularly get picked up by the
Speaker 2: media and sort of passed up the media chain. Now,
Speaker 2: these incidents don't necessarily represent anything new. I don't want
Speaker 2: to suggest that. That Guardian article, for example, by Oliver Millman,
Speaker 2: points out that the two most likely causes for this
Speaker 2: sort of behavior are, unsurprisingly disease on one hand, and
Speaker 2: on the other hand, becoming overly accustomed to feeding by humans.
Speaker 2: Ah yes, yeah, So on the disease front, of course,
Speaker 2: Raby's which we've talked about on the show before. It's
Speaker 2: apparently rare in squirrels, but it does happen according to
Speaker 2: DC Sea Health, and that source, which is undated on
Speaker 2: the DC Health website, claims that no person in the
Speaker 2: US has ever contracted rabies from a squirrel, but it
Speaker 2: is obviously possible for someone to contract rabies from a squirrel,
Speaker 2: as they can carry rabies. Rabies concern, they point out,
Speaker 2: is warranted, especially if the squirrel is behaving abnormally when
Speaker 2: it bites you. And I did look up some of
Speaker 2: this on the CDC website. Centers of Disease Control Prevention
Speaker 2: says it's extremely rare for squirrels to have rabies or
Speaker 2: to pass rabies to pets or humans in the United States. Now,
Speaker 2: on the other end of the spectrum, the idea that
Speaker 2: people are feeding squirrels that are getting close to squirrels,
Speaker 2: and in doing so they are eroding the healthy fear
Speaker 2: of humans that squirrels have. That is obviously a major issue. Squirrels,
Speaker 2: no matter how cute they are in your eyes, they
Speaker 2: should remain afraid of human beings and practices like feeding
Speaker 2: them by hand is certainly just asking for a bite.
Speaker 2: And also if they feel threatened it all, they will
Speaker 2: also attack you, which it comes into the scenario as
Speaker 2: well if you have already either you or other people
Speaker 2: have done something to erode that distance between you and
Speaker 2: the wild squirrel.
Speaker 3: This is the sinister inverse of the ecology of fear.
Speaker 3: This is the ecology of brazen This.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I probably shared this story in the last Squirrel episode.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell it again anyway. I only have so
Speaker 2: many stories, folks. But years ago, my wife and I
Speaker 2: encountered a very aggressive rock squirrel in Grand Canyon National Park.
Speaker 2: Luckily no one was bitten or injured. But we were
Speaker 2: out on a rocky hike along this like outcropping and
Speaker 2: we'd paused for a moment. My wife had pulled out
Speaker 2: a snack bar, and that's when a rock squirrel appeared
Speaker 2: and began to move in very close, ultimately jumping on
Speaker 2: her leg. Luckily, I believe she was wearing jeans at
Speaker 2: the time and then we drove the squirrel away with
Speaker 2: a hat. Luckily, again no one was hurt, but it
Speaker 2: is always struck stuck with us as a great example
Speaker 2: of why you don't feed wild animals, because again, you
Speaker 2: you erode that that healthy gap between you and the
Speaker 2: wild and then that animal thinks you are a source
Speaker 2: of food and it can come in closer, and you know,
Speaker 2: obviously it gets even worse when you're dealing with larger animals,
Speaker 2: more destructive animals, and potentially deadly animals. And you know,
Speaker 2: mainly thinking of bears here, but even with something like
Speaker 2: the squirrel, you're you are doing that squirrel a great
Speaker 2: disservice and potentially doing a great disservice to anyone that's
Speaker 2: going to be in contact with that animal.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, this is why they emphasize like the bearproof
Speaker 3: garbage cans in relevant areas and things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, you know, And that's that's another big
Speaker 2: thing too, Like you go through areas like Yosemite, and
Speaker 2: you know, you frequently pass signs to show, well, a
Speaker 2: bear died here because it was hit by a car, which,
Speaker 2: on one hand, you know, cut down on speeding obviously,
Speaker 2: but one thing that the Grand Canyon National Park points
Speaker 2: out about squirrels in particular, but also the supplies to
Speaker 2: other animals is if you're feeding them from vehicles, this
Speaker 2: too causes animals to congregate near roads and vehicles, So
Speaker 2: Grand Canyon National Park sometimes goes as far as to
Speaker 2: say the rock squirrel is the most dangerous animal in
Speaker 2: the park. If you're not familiar with the environment of
Speaker 2: the Grand Canyon National Park, you should know that. Of
Speaker 2: course they're much larger creatures, and some of those too.
Speaker 2: You can make a strong argument that their natural aversion
Speaker 2: to humans has been somewhat eroded. But squirrel incidents with
Speaker 2: rock squirrels do occur due to humans feeding them. They
Speaker 2: end up congregating near the places humans gather, including outside
Speaker 2: gift shops and snack bars, and as Joshua Bowling reported
Speaker 2: in an asy Central article from twenty eighteen, they've also
Speaker 2: been reported to bite people just for pointing at them.
Speaker 2: So again, this is not something that is going to
Speaker 2: get you bitten by a squirrel in the wild that
Speaker 2: is like naturally removed from your vicinity. But once you've
Speaker 2: eroded that healthy day distance, things like this apparently become possible.
Speaker 2: It feels threatened, it bites and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So when parks and other places say don't feed
Speaker 3: the animals, they mean it. They're not messing around. There's
Speaker 3: a good reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's the old saying a fed animal
Speaker 2: is a dead animal for many reasons. Roads, cars, contact
Speaker 2: with humans, threats to humans, and so forth. Grand Cash
Speaker 2: and the Canyon National Park advises you keep a distance
Speaker 2: from wildlife, including their squirrels, don't approach the wildlife, including
Speaker 2: the squirrels, and if the wildlife approaches you, you report it. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: I tattle on those squirrels. Yeah, yeah, squirrels are wild animals.
Speaker 2: I just want to. I'm not going to. There are
Speaker 2: other recent news items one could get into, and I'm
Speaker 2: not going to. But squirrels are wild animals and they
Speaker 2: should remain wild, and we should do whatever we can
Speaker 2: to keep them that way. It's our responsibility to the
Speaker 2: environment that we have shifted and changed, and not just
Speaker 2: because they might bite us. But let's that be the
Speaker 2: added a stick to the carrot.
Speaker 3: Well what do you think, Rob? Does that do it
Speaker 3: for today?
Speaker 2: I think so? We'll see what another five years. This
Speaker 2: full update the State of the Squirrel Kingdom.
Speaker 3: To another squirrel sequel, yeah, or.
Speaker 2: Sooner if they eat more interesting things, you never never know,
Speaker 2: never know what's going to come up.
Speaker 3: How do they level up from this? I guess they
Speaker 3: got to start eating things bigger than them and then
Speaker 3: they'd really get our attention once more.
Speaker 2: Absolutely all right, we're going to go and close it out,
Speaker 2: but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Do
Speaker 2: you have thoughts on squirrels, your encounters, your observations, how
Speaker 2: this information that we've discussed here or this podcast itself
Speaker 2: has changed your view of squirrels, Or maybe you're like
Speaker 2: just nodding your head and saying, yeah, this is squirrels
Speaker 2: to a t. This is what they do, this is
Speaker 2: who they are.
Speaker 3: Whatever your thoughts off.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, either way, write in let us know we'd
Speaker 2: love to hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 2: with core episodes in Twouesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays. Let's see, we have a weird house cinema
Speaker 2: on Fridays. That's our time to set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about weird films. And then the
Speaker 2: rest of the days we fill in with some classic
Speaker 2: content vault episodes and so forth.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Possway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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