Speaker 1: This is me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case underwear listening Hunt podcast, you
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are
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Speaker 1: where you stand with on X. All right, Everyboddy, this
Speaker 1: is the most special podcast episode we've ever had. That's
Speaker 1: because we're joined by John lad Is your middle name right, correct?
Speaker 1: John lads Kaprowski Kaprowski, you got it? Who has a
Speaker 1: genuine PhD in squirrels? More specifically, what would you say?
Speaker 1: I a wildlife conservation biologist, but I happened to work
Speaker 1: on squirrels. I appreciate the finer aspects of life, the smaller,
Speaker 1: less obvious things. Um. I gotta ask you this right
Speaker 1: off the bat, though, before we get into Clay as uh,
Speaker 1: Clay Newcom has a squirrel baculum pecker bone, which we'll
Speaker 1: get into in a minute. But um uh why school? Like,
Speaker 1: did you know when you were when you were a
Speaker 1: little boy and people said when your friends like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be a fireman, You're like, I'm gonna be a
Speaker 1: squirrel expert. First it was center fielder for the Cleveland Indians.
Speaker 1: And while that seems outlandish, the Indians were so bad
Speaker 1: when I was young, there was a recentable chance there.
Speaker 1: But soon after that I knew I had to do
Speaker 1: something with wildlife. And I grew up on the west
Speaker 1: side of Cleveland, and you had pigeons, robins, you know,
Speaker 1: Norway rats and squirrels and so it was like a
Speaker 1: wildlife deprived area. Yep. And it was my connection and
Speaker 1: my father. I grew up fishing. My father or love
Speaker 1: to fish. I like to fish. We'd go out at
Speaker 1: four in the morning. I'd fish untill about two. Then
Speaker 1: Dad would drop me off on the uh drop me
Speaker 1: off on the shore. I'd walk it looking for for squirrels,
Speaker 1: for turtles, anything that I could and uh. So that
Speaker 1: was my It was my connection when I came home
Speaker 1: to be able to look out the window and see something.
Speaker 1: So I sat out in the garage live trapping squirrels
Speaker 1: from a young age and then painting their sides or something.
Speaker 1: We got into that and we were little kids for
Speaker 1: a while. We try to be like our own mark
Speaker 1: and recapt Yeah, that's exactly what we do. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you went to my mom's house right
Speaker 1: now and went into her garage and went where they
Speaker 1: have a heart traps are sitting on a shelf, you
Speaker 1: would see that they're slathered in red paint from us
Speaker 1: trying to take a paint brush and uh do mark
Speaker 1: and recapture projects on chipmunks our squirrels. Easy to have
Speaker 1: tool to fool with the trap. Oh well, no, we
Speaker 1: would just do chipmunks. We had the chipmunks aze have hearts,
Speaker 1: and we didn't put too much effort into it. We
Speaker 1: thought it'd be cool if you could paint it and
Speaker 1: see him running around the yard and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the one. You know why had that same childhood experience.
Speaker 1: We would catch them in have a Hearts and then
Speaker 1: squirt whatever I could on him. And then the neighbors
Speaker 1: started complaining about the green squirrel the red squirrel, and
Speaker 1: so Mom and Dad weren't too thrilled about that part
Speaker 1: of it. But then I went to went to university
Speaker 1: Ohio State University, and I was like, oh, I can't
Speaker 1: wait to work on mountain lions or you know, elk
Speaker 1: or something something cool. And when I go forward and
Speaker 1: I started my master's and got a call from a
Speaker 1: professor said, hey, I got this great squirrel project. Like okay,
Speaker 1: but my next degree, I'm working on polar bears or
Speaker 1: wilds or something. And I worked on squirrels again University
Speaker 1: of Kansas, and then now I'm working on bunch of
Speaker 1: those other things. But they're just such a good way
Speaker 1: for people to connect, you know, to conservation, to value. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, value the kinds of places we value. And
Speaker 1: they tell us a lot about the quality of a forest,
Speaker 1: you know, how severe a fire was, all those things. Yep,
Speaker 1: they're just great indicators. I want to hit you up
Speaker 1: with some a couple of squirrel myth questions. Go for it. Well, no,
Speaker 1: not yet, except we went to talk about Clay's little
Speaker 1: clays back and go ahead, Clay, show show him your deal. There.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna narrate because actually his back all right. Ah.
Speaker 1: I was actually unaware that that squirrels had a a
Speaker 1: a vaculum, a bone penis. Uh. The other day I
Speaker 1: pulled this one out and and they do, and most
Speaker 1: a whole lot of placentals send to mammals have them.
Speaker 1: And it's I just measured at Steve. It's exactly a
Speaker 1: half inch. And this is a just a andered gray squirrel.
Speaker 1: He appeared to me to be of average age and maturity.
Speaker 1: So he's gotta he's got a he's a that that
Speaker 1: squirrels what a pound and a half john two pounds okay,
Speaker 1: so he's got a hat. So that's an inch per
Speaker 1: every four pounds generously, which goodness. But but described to
Speaker 1: people what you're like the because you know people at
Speaker 1: home was the driving to work right now. I can't
Speaker 1: tell what the hell you're holding, Uh, describe what you're holding.
Speaker 1: You know, if you saw this bone on the ground,
Speaker 1: let's say, you know, you found a just a bone
Speaker 1: pile and it was a squirrel it was the bone
Speaker 1: would be totally indiscernible in any recognizable shape. It just
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's about as small as a a
Speaker 1: pencil lead and a number two pencil. The thickness of that.
Speaker 1: It's a half inch long. The tip of the baculum
Speaker 1: flares out, which is pretty typical of all these vacula
Speaker 1: of bears of coons that kind of flares out at
Speaker 1: the end and towards the backside. It's kind of it
Speaker 1: kind of is bulbous slightly, you know, kind of kind
Speaker 1: of widen think at the back, almost like a baseball bat,
Speaker 1: that it would be a good baseball bat. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: before he wanted to be a squirrel ball. Yeah. So anyway,
Speaker 1: just a little indiscernible bone. Uh, how John are you?
Speaker 1: Are you? How schooled are you on like physiology and whatnot?
Speaker 1: I'm happy to go there. And I really loved Clay's
Speaker 1: description there. I thought you were just gonna stop. It's
Speaker 1: just this little bone, but all those those components that
Speaker 1: you talked about are are are what make that that
Speaker 1: bone function. Another name for it is the os penis,
Speaker 1: the penis bone literally. Um, and so Clay, could you
Speaker 1: take a look and does it look a little twisted?
Speaker 1: Usually they're also a little kind of corkscrewy if you
Speaker 1: if you look at there, reminds me a Limerick I
Speaker 1: used to know. It's this one, uh just a bit,
Speaker 1: I think for gray squirrels. This one still has a
Speaker 1: little bit of This one's pretty fresh, so it's not
Speaker 1: I don't have it clean totally. It appears to have
Speaker 1: almost like a thread towards the end. It looks like
Speaker 1: a yeah, kind of like a corkscrew. Yeah, I see
Speaker 1: one kind of rib, you got it. That's uh. So
Speaker 1: these are used as part of the squirrel reproductive mating system. Uh.
Speaker 1: Males form copulatory plugs, so when they copulate with a female,
Speaker 1: they they're the seaman hardens into a plug that tries
Speaker 1: to guarantee them their paternity. And I don't understand that,
Speaker 1: so that when uh once when you have a copulation
Speaker 1: with the female, within just a few seconds, the semen
Speaker 1: actually hardens into a waxy plug in the reproductive track
Speaker 1: and blocks other males from uh from breeding. And so
Speaker 1: the corkscrew shape that that kind of bulb his head
Speaker 1: that you talked about, that actually helps remove the copulatory
Speaker 1: plug of the previous mail. And so it's just kind
Speaker 1: of amazing detail in that if you pick one bone
Speaker 1: in a squirrel, the vaculum is probably the place to go, Clay.
Speaker 1: You just you just see that whole mating system laid
Speaker 1: out right there. Rodents do that or is that exclusive
Speaker 1: to them? All rodents have some form of a vaculum,
Speaker 1: but the plug part of the plug. Uh, it's not
Speaker 1: some thing that everyone's looked at in all rodents, but
Speaker 1: I think for all that where it's been studied, well,
Speaker 1: most um where it's been studied. H they're they've been demonstrated.
Speaker 1: Like red squirrels, there's not really good evidence that the
Speaker 1: red squirrel you find around here, there's not really good
Speaker 1: evidence that they form a copulatory plug. But like the
Speaker 1: whole squirrel family, most of the rats and mice do
Speaker 1: it as well. I hate the fact that a squirrel
Speaker 1: has to be lumped in with a rat and a
Speaker 1: mouse and you call it a a rodent. I always think
Speaker 1: about that with beavers, man Like, it bums me out
Speaker 1: that beavers are a rodent. Yeah, too cool to be
Speaker 1: a rodent. Yeah, yeah, but that's a scientific term rodent. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a whole order. So it's everything with those kind
Speaker 1: of you know, gnawing teeth. For the most part, rabbits
Speaker 1: are a whole different order, but somewhat closely related. And
Speaker 1: so rodents include beaver, muskrat, all the voles and field mice, rats,
Speaker 1: all of those things. The cappy barra cappy bar or
Speaker 1: you got it, chinchilla, chinchilla roding chinchilla are yes. I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say, going back to the the semen
Speaker 1: plug and then the corkscrew bacula. It's it seems counterproductive
Speaker 1: because if the semen plug is designed to keep other
Speaker 1: males from you know, actually breeding a female successfully, but
Speaker 1: then you've got an anatomical feature that defeats the semen plug,
Speaker 1: then it seems like you might as well, Like from
Speaker 1: adaptive standpoint of a squirrel, it doesn't do any good
Speaker 1: to have a semen plug or a corkscrew. Do you
Speaker 1: see what I'm saying. It's an arms race man, and
Speaker 1: that's it. Yeah, survival of the fittest. Yeah, they've got
Speaker 1: this feature, but then they've got another feature that defeats
Speaker 1: the first feature. Yeah, but what it pushes toward is
Speaker 1: that you would develop a really like that your plug
Speaker 1: is the best plug on the in the in the field,
Speaker 1: and your extractor is like a phenomenal extractor. So you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't care if you could he if he plugged it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I got the best unplugger and then I'm
Speaker 1: gonna throw something in there that no one will unplugged. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I once I asked an ecologists like, is there such
Speaker 1: thing as the evolution like to go backwards? And like,
Speaker 1: well no, because if it goes backwards, it's for a reason.
Speaker 1: It's just evolving more despite it like losing some trade
Speaker 1: or something. That's still evolution. It's not the evolution by
Speaker 1: going backwards, it's still going forwards. Yeah, I yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: that's John Well. And so that's this is an incredible
Speaker 1: opportunity where you can just kind of see this battle. Right,
Speaker 1: so you say, all right, we need more squirrels. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't really matter who is the one
Speaker 1: that breeds, who's the most successful, but in this case,
Speaker 1: you just see that battle played out. Right. You talked
Speaker 1: about plug characteristics. You know how much sperm is in
Speaker 1: the um, you know, is it is transfer transferred during
Speaker 1: that copulation and then this removal tool that helps you
Speaker 1: be successful. And the other thing is it's not just
Speaker 1: the males where this is happening. There are multiple males
Speaker 1: that mate with a female. You've probably seen one of
Speaker 1: these squirrel mating bouts where um, usually the females only
Speaker 1: in heat for a short time on a single day,
Speaker 1: usually just like six or eight hours, so you'll get
Speaker 1: really yep and you'll get eight or ten females. I've
Speaker 1: seen as many as males chasing a female. I've seen
Speaker 1: as many as forty five Eastern gray squirrels like the species. Uh,
Speaker 1: Clay was just talking about males chasing one in heat
Speaker 1: female for six hours yep. And for the female that's
Speaker 1: the one time time she gets to mate. So typically
Speaker 1: it's to her advantage to mate with a number of
Speaker 1: males and rodents. And so after a copulation, the female
Speaker 1: actually will remove the copulatory plug if it isn't um
Speaker 1: embedded far enough in a reproductive track, and then she'll
Speaker 1: mate with the next mail um you know that's able
Speaker 1: to gain out? How does it? She just reaches down
Speaker 1: and with her teeth pulls it out. So you know,
Speaker 1: rodents have those two two big upper incisors, two big
Speaker 1: lower incisors, like presumably she can feel that it's seeded
Speaker 1: properly or like not where it needs to be. So
Speaker 1: every time she mates, she'll actually groom herself and the
Speaker 1: male will groom himself as well, and then uh, there's
Speaker 1: there's a few minute period before she'll be receptive again,
Speaker 1: and during that time males are all attacking each other
Speaker 1: trying to gain access to the female. And then during
Speaker 1: that grooming, if it's if there's any plug sticking out,
Speaker 1: she'll she'll pull it out and throw it to the
Speaker 1: ground sometimes even eat it. There's a lot of It's
Speaker 1: a massive kind of waxy plug of protein. How do
Speaker 1: how does a male win about? Like does a female
Speaker 1: then select one? Or like what is what is the
Speaker 1: winning process? Like? So there's varies a little bit between
Speaker 1: different species um in, but it's typically based on size
Speaker 1: and just the ability to continue to track the female. Uh.
Speaker 1: Males can figure out that a female is going to
Speaker 1: be in heat about five days in advance, and so
Speaker 1: they start during the breeding season, males are just roaming
Speaker 1: around figuring out kind of the timing of when some
Speaker 1: of their female neighbors are going to are going to
Speaker 1: be receptive. And then before sunrise they're out there waiting
Speaker 1: for the for the female outside outside her nest yep,
Speaker 1: and you'll get dozens sometimes, you know, lined up and
Speaker 1: they're fighting each other. Where where were you though? You
Speaker 1: had forty five males? Like where were you? There's gray
Speaker 1: squirrels in one like Steve and I are going to
Speaker 1: go home there. I'm not telling you that's my secret
Speaker 1: spot is a park or there's just no predators around. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this was in Lawrence, Kansas, where I was doing
Speaker 1: my PhD, and so kind of open park land, pretty
Speaker 1: high density of animals, and it was the other part
Speaker 1: of this is during the breeding season, when mails start
Speaker 1: picking up that faint scent of a female that's coming
Speaker 1: close to being in heat, they really expand their range.
Speaker 1: And so for those five days they're they're roaming farther
Speaker 1: than they ever moved the rest of the year. The
Speaker 1: rest the rest of the year, they're in just a
Speaker 1: couple couple acres of their home range, but during this
Speaker 1: time they'll expand it five to ten times. And so
Speaker 1: they're trying to find mates and you know, be successful
Speaker 1: in the survival of the Fittest battle that we were
Speaker 1: just talking about by just finding as many females that
Speaker 1: might be in in heat. So they come We've had
Speaker 1: males move uh, three or four miles during to find
Speaker 1: a receptive female. So they are coming in from everywhere.
Speaker 1: So you get forty five coming in from you know,
Speaker 1: say a square mile or two. You've seen where one
Speaker 1: squirrel has moved how many miles three to five miles
Speaker 1: from his home during a mating chase. I've seen a
Speaker 1: move about about three miles. I've actually this is how
Speaker 1: how lonely I am. Guys um during my PhD, I
Speaker 1: would go out in the morning and follow male squirrels
Speaker 1: and see how far they went. And well, you know
Speaker 1: you weren't just spooking them along, so well at a
Speaker 1: great distance, and do I look scary? I'm a good dude.
Speaker 1: You're following him with some sort of tell him that
Speaker 1: try or this was the old fashioned way. It was
Speaker 1: an open park land, so I was just a little
Speaker 1: bit well like big oak and hickory forest. But because
Speaker 1: it was in in a small town Lawrence, Kansas, you know,
Speaker 1: mode grass, you know, some some houses even in that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And then the whole campus, which is
Speaker 1: so just take a pair of binoculars and keep an
Speaker 1: eye on them. Ye stayed at a distance, followed them
Speaker 1: around and and uh figured out how much time you puts.
Speaker 1: It used to be much better shape back then, following
Speaker 1: squirrels three miles. One of my questions was is there
Speaker 1: such a thing as a rut tree? And I think
Speaker 1: you've pretty much answered it. When we roll, when we
Speaker 1: sometimes find like a tree where you like, you shoot
Speaker 1: one and then alone and behold ten squirrels start, you know, jumping.
Speaker 1: He talks about finding a rut tree. Yeah, but so
Speaker 1: it's one female and nine males and they're just all
Speaker 1: working that But it's just that they happened to be
Speaker 1: in that tree, like that tree could move, not the
Speaker 1: tree doesn't move, but I mean you just happened to
Speaker 1: catch it where it's occurring in that tree. But it's
Speaker 1: likely to drift to the next tree, to the next tree.
Speaker 1: And so it's part of that uh spencer you were
Speaker 1: asking about what makes him successful. The female doesn't. She's
Speaker 1: moving around too. She's trying to feed that day and
Speaker 1: and and so she's moving out there in the forest.
Speaker 1: And if the males get they're all fighting, and that
Speaker 1: level of aggression, they're really hyped up, and they'll attack
Speaker 1: each other. Another male tries to mate with the female,
Speaker 1: males will try to interrupt it, and so it's risky
Speaker 1: for her. And you know the male that's the one
Speaker 1: that's the one day they have to you know, they
Speaker 1: have to be successful. The female has to raise that
Speaker 1: litter now for the next few months, and so she'll
Speaker 1: hold up in a cavity, you know, going one of
Speaker 1: these what we call leafness or dres is kind of balls.
Speaker 1: Was the word dre clay nuke. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: that word dre. I've seen it in the literature. I
Speaker 1: would not have used that word, but I've seen it written. Dude,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start using that word big time. Man. How's
Speaker 1: it spelled? Well, it depends if you're if you're British,
Speaker 1: you spell it d R E y or d R
Speaker 1: A y. Uh. And so yeah, if you if you
Speaker 1: really want to speak that you know speaks PhD and
Speaker 1: s stuff. And I'm gonna be Dr. Trey has to
Speaker 1: be sweet, man. Do red squirrels participate in gray squirrel
Speaker 1: bouts and vice versa? No, it's just a single species, uh,
Speaker 1: and so there, but there is some confusion that can occur,
Speaker 1: and so I did. I've worked in areas where fox
Speaker 1: squirrels and gray squirrels both occurred, and you would in
Speaker 1: that case where there are forty five Eastern gray squirrels,
Speaker 1: there were a couple of fox squirrels that were attracted
Speaker 1: by the noise, maybe like vaguely the scent, but they
Speaker 1: never really participated. You know. There there's enough difference between
Speaker 1: the species that you know, it doesn't seem to get there.
Speaker 1: And red squirrels are even more kind of taxonomically distant
Speaker 1: from fox squirrels and gray squirrels, so they're never seen
Speaker 1: any overlap there. Do you, um, have you heard? I
Speaker 1: think we might have asked you about this? Have you heard?
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with the theory that or the idea
Speaker 1: that people put out there that when males are competing
Speaker 1: they'll actually try to harm, that they'll like bite the
Speaker 1: testicles of another male. I like, are you familiar with
Speaker 1: this being an idea that people throw out there? I
Speaker 1: hear this all the time. And who from? Uh, well
Speaker 1: from you from St. John is the person I interviewed
Speaker 1: for the article. He was one of my tea. I
Speaker 1: don't trust things coming through your coming to you before
Speaker 1: we go here. I want to know can you handle
Speaker 1: the truth? Steve? You know I can that. If you
Speaker 1: notice my line of questioning, I haven't asked you does
Speaker 1: it happen? I said, are you familiar? And and and
Speaker 1: I want to then get into how far back in time?
Speaker 1: Like have you heard this theory? And where do you
Speaker 1: feel that it? Uh? Where do you feel that has
Speaker 1: come from? I almost FELFI Felfier skilled interview technique of
Speaker 1: sneaking into this. Yeah, I was very deliberate and my
Speaker 1: question as well and I'm also I listened to the
Speaker 1: podcast UM just last night where where you were discussing
Speaker 1: this previously, and you two have a relationship that's kind
Speaker 1: of tenuous, and this seemed like something that could really
Speaker 1: separate you. So the whole other thing that we're in
Speaker 1: a fight about that I don't even know about yet,
Speaker 1: as there was something he did to my friend Doug
Speaker 1: during Oh yeah, Well, so I know people who have
Speaker 1: said they're great grandfathers told them that. And I'm fifty
Speaker 1: nine years old, so we're talking like, you know, last century,
Speaker 1: you know, people two centuries ago, late eighteen hundreds. I
Speaker 1: know folks who have heard that story. And uh so
Speaker 1: it is something that's been passed along from you know,
Speaker 1: from generation to generation, which is zero zero evidence, zero evidence. Ye,
Speaker 1: And I mentioned following males for three miles. You don't
Speaker 1: do that and see lots of things going on between,
Speaker 1: you know, between different squirrels, and have never seen that.
Speaker 1: They do all the dirty trips. So they get in
Speaker 1: fights they don't need to. They've got the you know,
Speaker 1: the copulatory plug and the h the baculum that you
Speaker 1: know that helps them in that battle. But what happens,
Speaker 1: What does happen, and so you've hit on something that's
Speaker 1: kind of unique about rodent biology. Uh, you can see
Speaker 1: why someone thinks that they have an animal that doesn't
Speaker 1: have any testicles, because it's just a seasonal cycle in
Speaker 1: rodents and squirrels. During the breeding season, the testes descend
Speaker 1: into the scrotum and you know, in large produced sperm,
Speaker 1: and they're ready to get ready to mate day after
Speaker 1: day for sometime times two or three months, so they're
Speaker 1: they're really functional then. But then during the non breeding
Speaker 1: season there they move back into the abdomen up a
Speaker 1: canal and they're kind of held in the abdomen and
Speaker 1: they get really really small, so you you would have
Speaker 1: to if you're just gutting the squirrel, you're not even
Speaker 1: gonna notice. You could have to really look and see it.
Speaker 1: So just this natural natural pattern then and the screwed
Speaker 1: um itself to sort of just struggles up and it
Speaker 1: just becomes belly skin again. It looks like belly skin.
Speaker 1: You'll see if if you've got an older male, you'll
Speaker 1: see that there it takes on a darker pigment and
Speaker 1: you'll kind of see where the scrotum was and if
Speaker 1: you kind of spread the hairs a little bit. You'll
Speaker 1: notice that, all right, you know that this is you
Speaker 1: can tell us an adult male because of that, juvenile
Speaker 1: males will not have a pigmented screwed them. And then
Speaker 1: once they've gone through a breeding season or two, it
Speaker 1: gets dark and you could tell, hey, this guy's bread before,
Speaker 1: but it just it will. You wouldn't notice that this
Speaker 1: was even a male if you were just watching them,
Speaker 1: you know, from a distance with binoculars or something like that.
Speaker 1: Do you do you believe in squirrel migrations? Is that true? Yep?
Speaker 1: That historically massive squirrel migrations, and I think like like
Speaker 1: concerted movements where they're like all the squirrels are moving
Speaker 1: in a direction now now, so yeah, loosely using the
Speaker 1: word migration, there there have been historical reports and even
Speaker 1: relatively recently, I was getting reports two or three years
Speaker 1: ago in the Eastern US of following mass failures. So
Speaker 1: master you know, acorns, primarily hickory, some of those things,
Speaker 1: and when you get a failure, it's often a regional failure.
Speaker 1: And especially if you're looking at uh, you know, forests
Speaker 1: that aren't super diverse and there just you know, a
Speaker 1: long stand of just a couple of species. If it's
Speaker 1: a bad year, then there there are reports of literally
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of animals swimming across the Ohio River
Speaker 1: to get into Kentucky, um swimming across the Great Lakes
Speaker 1: um leaving some Some of the more recent reports of
Speaker 1: these kind of large scale movements are uh in Lake
Speaker 1: Michigan UM and I think Lake Superior, coming off of
Speaker 1: islands where you've had a failure of mass and then
Speaker 1: swim into the mainland. Yep, yeah, oh you know. Nothing
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about back to reproduction is
Speaker 1: what is the timing of the squirrel rut right now?
Speaker 1: Perfect time? These uh so right now they're the squirrel
Speaker 1: ruts starting. Uh it begins sometimes even late December. Kind
Speaker 1: of depends what, uh where you are in our in
Speaker 1: a country, but like the heartland of the country, going
Speaker 1: back to Michigan or or Ohio where where we're from, Steve, Uh,
Speaker 1: things are starting right about now. You'll be seeing these
Speaker 1: mating chases that I was talking about. And for many things.
Speaker 1: Many species like eastern gray squirrels and the fox squirrels,
Speaker 1: the two most common species around the country, those will
Speaker 1: have a second reproductive season during the summer also, and
Speaker 1: uh so there's kind of two peaks and that's when
Speaker 1: during those times are when males have squirrel testes that
Speaker 1: kind of real obvious case, you know that that it's
Speaker 1: the breeding season. So then the most females kick off
Speaker 1: two litters annually they can. Females in good condition will
Speaker 1: pull off to two litters. Uh most often the average
Speaker 1: female usually pulls off one during those times. And if
Speaker 1: if you have a late spring frost, that knocks back,
Speaker 1: so they're breeding now in places with deciduous forest that
Speaker 1: the uh the food crop is still not really determined
Speaker 1: and so you're just gonna start getting leaves starting to
Speaker 1: pop out and that kind of thing. If you have
Speaker 1: a late spring frost and all that gets knocked back,
Speaker 1: often females will absorb their litter and not produce that
Speaker 1: first breeding season, and then they'll they'll be in better
Speaker 1: shape and uh reproduced during that second season. But some
Speaker 1: really some older females and females and good condition, if
Speaker 1: you had a good uh you know, mass crop the
Speaker 1: previous year and they're they've fattened up over winter, they
Speaker 1: are you know, ready to go, uh in in really
Speaker 1: good breeding condition, you'll get a couple of litters, they'll
Speaker 1: they'll be able to pull off. During a mass failure,
Speaker 1: nobody will reproduce sometimes and you'll have no reproduction in
Speaker 1: a given year. And what's the average litter and then
Speaker 1: a great litter size? So usually about three So two
Speaker 1: and a half to three and a half is average
Speaker 1: for most most tree squirrels. And the records are kind
Speaker 1: of eight or nine um, depending on which which sources
Speaker 1: you believe, but they're published records of seven eight nine
Speaker 1: uh nine squirrels. Ground squirrels have have larger litters typically,
Speaker 1: but most of the tree squirrels are kind of in
Speaker 1: that three animals two and a half to three animals
Speaker 1: that half animals always difficult to difficult to count. Do you, uh,
Speaker 1: what's been your relationship with um squirrel hunters and squirrel
Speaker 1: hunting like, do you find that that's where most of
Speaker 1: your of the sort of popular interest in your work
Speaker 1: comes from or do you find it more more from
Speaker 1: wildlife observers. That's the great thing about squirrels, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of across the board. It's one of the
Speaker 1: things to me, you know that the reason I'm doing
Speaker 1: what I do and wildlife conservation is to bring people
Speaker 1: together to save these kinds of opportunities, you know, keep
Speaker 1: our wild and working lands, um, you know, for future generations.
Speaker 1: And squirrels are one of those species that you can,
Speaker 1: you know, can bring everyone together. Sure there's an occasional
Speaker 1: squirrel hater because they're bird feeders being attacked, but you know,
Speaker 1: that's just the cost of having a bird feeder, uh it.
Speaker 1: I have a number of folks who are very interested
Speaker 1: because just like I mentioned when when I grew up,
Speaker 1: it was the connection that someone has with the you know,
Speaker 1: with the natural world. And then you know, squirrel hunters also,
Speaker 1: it's a connection they have with the natural world. And
Speaker 1: then you don't have any animosity to squirrel hunters. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I've hunted squirrels, I've I've eaten squirrels. Every
Speaker 1: time I go to my brother in law's house, he's
Speaker 1: got a different squirrel recipe for me to try. You
Speaker 1: never feel bad about it. There's this one moment perhaps,
Speaker 1: but you know, but then if it's well cooked, of
Speaker 1: course I don't feel bad about it. Um. Can you explain,
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about how the the
Speaker 1: color phases work with at the eastern gray squirrel. I
Speaker 1: find there is like endless confusion about it's a black squirrel,
Speaker 1: it's a gray squirrel. There used to be a lot
Speaker 1: of black squirrels. Now it's all gray squirrels, like, which
Speaker 1: is true. Yeah, it's like shifts over time. Just watch
Speaker 1: my mom's yard. You're like, most of gray squirrels are black.
Speaker 1: Then it's like a while later, it's like, most of
Speaker 1: gray squirrels are gray. What's going on? So they're all
Speaker 1: gray squirrels, you know, to someone who's interested in kind
Speaker 1: of the taxonomy classification, they're all gray squirrels. They were
Speaker 1: that species. They can interbreed eastern eastern because the western
Speaker 1: gray he doesn't have a black phase. Right, there's just
Speaker 1: been a couple of cases of of uh, and in
Speaker 1: the most species you you have this rare these rare
Speaker 1: occurrences of melanic forms, the you know, the black forms,
Speaker 1: and then also some Albanistic or just uh, you know
Speaker 1: forms that are that where some of the pigments gone,
Speaker 1: so they'll be some kind of something in between are
Speaker 1: mostly white but not completely. But yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: you know, just like hair color, eye color in humans,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's all due to genetics and the
Speaker 1: So I'm guessing your mom lives in in Michigan still. Ye.
Speaker 1: So once you start getting north far enough, the black
Speaker 1: forms become more common and that actually has a physiological advantage,
Speaker 1: like with heat. Yep, that's exactly. It heat better, Yep,
Speaker 1: that's it. So the advantage is during winter, during the summer,
Speaker 1: people have done physiology on him. Doesn't make a difference.
Speaker 1: They you know, they they're both color morphs, have this
Speaker 1: you know, kind of same metabolic cost. But during the winter,
Speaker 1: the ability to absorb and retain heat in that black color.
Speaker 1: You know, we've all watched the sunshine and they come
Speaker 1: out and splay out on that s that sun up exactly,
Speaker 1: and that's usually in the winter. The first thing they
Speaker 1: do in the morning, they come out of the nest
Speaker 1: and just lay flat, warm up and and and then
Speaker 1: start their day. While the black forms have an energetic advantage.
Speaker 1: And when you're on that kind of razor's edge of
Speaker 1: you know, do I have enough energy to survive to
Speaker 1: produce offspring? You know, any little advantage um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's something that could be capitalized on. So Toronto, you know,
Speaker 1: southern Ontario, lots of black color morphs. But if you
Speaker 1: go down to eastern gray squirrels get all the way
Speaker 1: down to the floor to South Florida and close to
Speaker 1: the Florida keys, black forms are are hardly ever seen
Speaker 1: down there? Is there right now? Can one litter have
Speaker 1: full on like full on gray and full on black ones? Yep,
Speaker 1: that we just talked about. We started off talking about
Speaker 1: the mating system, multiple fathers for a single litter, and
Speaker 1: so you've got that possibility, and then just the heritability.
Speaker 1: People are still working out how that black color morph
Speaker 1: you know how dominant it is in that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But uh, typically that melanic form, we do know that
Speaker 1: it is a dominant morph. So if it's if that
Speaker 1: gene is present, then you're going to get the production
Speaker 1: of lots of black pigment. God should be dark individuals.
Speaker 1: So you can have you can have mixed litters of
Speaker 1: mixed coloration, usually that kind of grizzled gray color that
Speaker 1: you're familiar with, and then the black morph. Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: I'll go I'll go on for three hours. Man, you
Speaker 1: got do you want to throw one in there? So
Speaker 1: I read from an aerospace engineer once that squirrels can
Speaker 1: survive a fall from any reasonable distance, like any height
Speaker 1: of any building. What's like the furthest You've seen one
Speaker 1: fall and live. I've seen one fall seventy ft and
Speaker 1: hit the ground and just get up and start running.
Speaker 1: They're always a little dazed. They're always a little dazed
Speaker 1: when they hit the ground. Um they so that's excusable, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: And it's just like you if you fell, you know,
Speaker 1: usually see them kind of shake their head, blink their
Speaker 1: eyes a few times, and doesn't shatter every bone body.
Speaker 1: I guess they're not like they got like enough air resistance.
Speaker 1: And that's it. It's kind of a surface area to volume.
Speaker 1: You know that people of people said, no one has
Speaker 1: experimentally looked at this, but you know that a mouse
Speaker 1: could fall off the Empire State building and and still
Speaker 1: and survive that fall. Uh you know where a squirrel
Speaker 1: with its size, when they've calculated it, they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to survive fall that far. But during those mating
Speaker 1: chases I mentioned all that, aggression males do not sit
Speaker 1: there passively. When you've got you know, ten fifteen forty
Speaker 1: five males, they'll knock each other out of the trees
Speaker 1: all the time, and you know, it sets their competitor
Speaker 1: back a little bit. But I've I've seen I've seen
Speaker 1: them fall, you know, seventy feet and hit the ground.
Speaker 1: They shake around a little bit, you know, they're stunned
Speaker 1: for a few minutes, and then they're they're back at
Speaker 1: it during those mating chases. So we what was going
Speaker 1: on at the seventy ft fall. So they were at
Speaker 1: the top of a large tree. The male and female
Speaker 1: were copulating, and another male came and knocked him both
Speaker 1: out of the tree. The female was able to hold
Speaker 1: onto the tree. The male fell seventy feet and you
Speaker 1: know he went from you know, thinking that he was
Speaker 1: going to be successful that day, trying to work his
Speaker 1: way back. You know. So have you ever seen one
Speaker 1: die from a fall? Then nope. But people have looked at,
Speaker 1: uh looked at skeletons in museums to look for breakage
Speaker 1: of longbones and that kind of thing, and not surprisingly, uh,
Speaker 1: somewhere from five to ten percent of the animals have
Speaker 1: broken longbones, so they may sustain some damage on those falls. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, those broken longbones could have come from lots
Speaker 1: of things, but uh, you know, they there's some evidence
Speaker 1: that maybe maybe you know they they do, you know,
Speaker 1: take on some some real physical damage too. We've come
Speaker 1: across dead squirrels laying like inexplicably on the forest floor.
Speaker 1: It's exactly my question deduce with for no reason whatsoever,
Speaker 1: that they must have fallen. Yeah, it might be an
Speaker 1: impossible question to answer, but yeah, you're like, it's probably
Speaker 1: been the same squirrel a couple of times. But I
Speaker 1: know that just with my kids, I've been walking through
Speaker 1: the woods squirrel hunting, and there is a perfectly fine
Speaker 1: looking squirrel, not eaten, not eaten, no claw marks, no
Speaker 1: talent marks, uh, no twenty two hole in it. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, looks fresh as as a daisy. Like you
Speaker 1: do almost want to just put it in your game
Speaker 1: pouch and take it home, but you don't because you
Speaker 1: don't know what killed it. So a couple of things.
Speaker 1: Often when you find those animals and you and you
Speaker 1: actually if you skinned them out and looked, you'd see
Speaker 1: that there was a talent that whacked him, and the
Speaker 1: and you know, the hawk or uh, the owl ended
Speaker 1: up you know, losing it. Sometimes they'll fight over each other.
Speaker 1: So we've had a number of times where where I'll
Speaker 1: get an animal, I'll say, oh, there's absolutely absolutely no
Speaker 1: reason for this animal dieing. And when you skin it out,
Speaker 1: you just see those you know that you can see
Speaker 1: where the talent marks were. So it's possible that it's
Speaker 1: that I hate to go back to squirrel mating systems again,
Speaker 1: but we're going to go there. Uh So, where I
Speaker 1: have seen animals fall dead was that during the breeding season,
Speaker 1: those males are getting up early every morning, going out,
Speaker 1: trying to mate with females during the day, then trying
Speaker 1: to figure out when the next female is going to
Speaker 1: be in heat, and you know, plan their next day
Speaker 1: of activity. And when you do that for forty fifty
Speaker 1: sixty days, males are often in horrific condition and they're
Speaker 1: fighting each other. So we've had I've seen probably a
Speaker 1: dozen animals that have They'll wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: and fall dead to the ground and you'll and you
Speaker 1: will just find them. They'll look like there's malnurished. Yep,
Speaker 1: they're just malnurished. Skin them out and we do a
Speaker 1: knee cropsy on them and you'll see often puncture marks
Speaker 1: from other males the incisors where they beat each other up,
Speaker 1: and then they've got no body fat on them, so
Speaker 1: you know they're they're giving it. They're all you know,
Speaker 1: and and you know, as far as survival to finish,
Speaker 1: if they've made it with some females, you know that
Speaker 1: they've done all they need to do for that year.
Speaker 1: But so I have come across male squirrels like that
Speaker 1: on the ground and they have and I've watched them
Speaker 1: fall out of fall out of a you know, from
Speaker 1: a den first thing in the morning or early in
Speaker 1: the morning, just haven't been had enough energy to to
Speaker 1: continue to move. I was at the Durren's house, he's
Speaker 1: a buddy bars in Wisconsin deer hunting one time and
Speaker 1: I heard uh noises like that most people wouldn't recognize,
Speaker 1: but it was a mink. They have a very high pitch,
Speaker 1: like like this high pitched squeal when they're agitated. There's
Speaker 1: a mink trying to gain entrance into a squirrel hole,
Speaker 1: and there is a squirrel fighting yep like the dickens
Speaker 1: to keep him out of that hole. And eventually the
Speaker 1: mink gains entrance into that hole. And I never heard
Speaker 1: another peep and never saw that mink come out. Well,
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of food for a while he
Speaker 1: like went in there. I don't really know, but it's
Speaker 1: like he went in there, killed the thing and then
Speaker 1: just settled in. Well, I'm sure that's the case. They
Speaker 1: there may have been more than one squirrel in their
Speaker 1: Most squirrels, especially during the winter, you'll you'll get groups
Speaker 1: of especially female squirrels. Eastern gray squirrels are actually really
Speaker 1: highly social, so there'll be several generations living together of females.
Speaker 1: During the day they're out, you won't see them in groups,
Speaker 1: but at night they all come back and it's that
Speaker 1: same Instead of a predator trying to get in, it's
Speaker 1: another squirrel trying to get back into that nest. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, they use each other's body heat. That gives
Speaker 1: them an advantage, and so you'll see multiple animals. I've
Speaker 1: seen nesting groups I think I think the largest I've
Speaker 1: seen is fourteen related females together in a nest, and
Speaker 1: then males will get together and nest um uh. And
Speaker 1: they're not based on relatedness, So you'll sometimes find eight
Speaker 1: or ten males in the coldest nights nesting together, and
Speaker 1: then first thing in the morning they take off. But
Speaker 1: that's a finding a quality nest that they can defend
Speaker 1: from inside is one of the biggest resources. You know.
Speaker 1: We always think of food and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but those quality dens that you get in big old
Speaker 1: trees are huge for these these groups of related animals.
Speaker 1: So when we think about managing forests, retaining some of
Speaker 1: those big old trees, you know, becomes really important to
Speaker 1: quality forest management. I'll tell you something. You got to
Speaker 1: write a paper on two years ago. I was hunting
Speaker 1: squirrels and Brodie Henderson was there. He can back me
Speaker 1: up on this. We're hunting squirrels and we got a
Speaker 1: bad hit on a fox squirrel. He goes into a
Speaker 1: hole of a cottonwood tree. But then a fight ensues
Speaker 1: and another fox squirrel kicks him out of the hole,
Speaker 1: fought him back out, and then we want up getting him.
Speaker 1: I would call that. I don't know what to call
Speaker 1: that paper. How how how would you name a paper like that? Uh,
Speaker 1: Steve is a poor shot and and elicits the assistance
Speaker 1: of because we uh Hefflefinger. Heffle Finger who you know
Speaker 1: recently sent a paper where a guy got a publication
Speaker 1: off of the fact that, Uh, they got a publication
Speaker 1: off of that they had a trail camp set up,
Speaker 1: and a jaguar came and drank from the whole leaves
Speaker 1: and auslot sons and drinks. The jaguar kills the aslot,
Speaker 1: and this guy gets a scientific publication out of it.
Speaker 1: It's just like an observation. And then you're like, huh,
Speaker 1: so I do feel that you could publish this piece well,
Speaker 1: but with that attitude, but you know, yeah, I'd be
Speaker 1: game as long as we can put the steve as
Speaker 1: a poor shot um like in the abstract. It could
Speaker 1: be the first line of the abstract. But those kinds
Speaker 1: of rare observations are really critical. And you know, I
Speaker 1: know some some scientists get a little snobby about oh,
Speaker 1: sample size and things like that, and for some things,
Speaker 1: we obviously want to have enough sample size so we
Speaker 1: you know, we can make rigorous management decisions and conserved species.
Speaker 1: But you know, for these really rare events, to me,
Speaker 1: it's really important to get that information out. And so
Speaker 1: I am all four of those kinds of kinds of
Speaker 1: publications my health. I mean, I sent that jaguar awesol
Speaker 1: Lot thing to my brother who's an ecologist. Um, he
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting, but he felt that in that
Speaker 1: article that talking about the that this was possibly something
Speaker 1: to do with climate change. He felt that was a
Speaker 1: little ting too far. He thought that was a little
Speaker 1: so it's important, but understanding the significance more talent. John,
Speaker 1: I've got to I've got a question for you about
Speaker 1: something that I read. And it was a research project
Speaker 1: and it was actually done in between nineteen thirty nine
Speaker 1: and nineteen forty three, and this guy was studying squirrel
Speaker 1: populations in Illinois the height of World War Two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the height of Americans that's what he's thinking about, Yeah,
Speaker 1: right of American squirrel hunting. To um. He said that
Speaker 1: the earliest they saw a female squirrel coming to estrus
Speaker 1: was December eleven, and the latest that they saw a
Speaker 1: female squirrel come in was January, you know, for the
Speaker 1: winter rut. And he was real clear that there were
Speaker 1: two breeding cycles, especially with older females, and he get
Speaker 1: He said that that from northern Illinois to southern Illinois
Speaker 1: there was a ten to fourteen day delay, Like the
Speaker 1: southern Illinois squirrels came into breeding cycles earlier than Northern Illinois.
Speaker 1: And I just saw that parallel. I guess with a
Speaker 1: lot of mammals that are the breeding cycles of the
Speaker 1: North are gonna be later, so that the the offspring
Speaker 1: survival is better because it happens later in the spring.
Speaker 1: But I was just gonna say, like here in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: if you were to ask just the squirrel hunter down
Speaker 1: the road, when's the squirrel rut, they'd say early December.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's kind of what they would say.
Speaker 1: But like I heard you talking about Michigan being is
Speaker 1: it later John up there? Yeah? Correct, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit later up there. And it actually varies between species
Speaker 1: a little bit. If you have both gray and fox squirrels.
Speaker 1: Fox squirrels usually are a week to ten days earlier.
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure why that is, but that's kind
Speaker 1: of a widespread pattern, and they'll start a little bit
Speaker 1: earlier in December. And you hit on it, Clay that
Speaker 1: that the farther you go north, they're usually a little
Speaker 1: bit delayed, And that all makes sense, right. Reproduction is
Speaker 1: all about producing young. Those young You want them to
Speaker 1: emerge when all those buds are coming out on the spring,
Speaker 1: on the spring trees, so that the female is going
Speaker 1: to be in in good condition while she's producing milk.
Speaker 1: Because the most energetically costly event for a female mammal
Speaker 1: is lactation, not pregnancy. Pregnancy is costly, but trying to
Speaker 1: nurse those young and produce all that protein and you know,
Speaker 1: fat rich milk that takes energy. And so the timing
Speaker 1: of these things are really critical. And so as you
Speaker 1: go a little further north, springs coming a little bit later,
Speaker 1: and you're going to see that that that change in
Speaker 1: the timing. You're right on the money, Clay. I asked
Speaker 1: a veteran guy, veteran squirrel hunter here in Arkansas the
Speaker 1: other day. I said, what's the toughest time of year
Speaker 1: to squirrel hunt? And he said late January because the
Speaker 1: females are dinning and not leaving their nest munths much.
Speaker 1: Can you is there any research on the movement of
Speaker 1: males and females during that time of year, because it
Speaker 1: is really tough right now and it it uh And
Speaker 1: he said, it's because they're dinning up, they're close to
Speaker 1: their nest, their their dentries. Is that is that about right? Well,
Speaker 1: if we eliminate poor squirrel hunting from this, then uh,
Speaker 1: what you're exactly dogs not great dogs, So you're exactly right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the females have gone through and reproduced already. Now
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're pregnant, and so they hold up.
Speaker 1: They don't they're not using much energy. They usually go
Speaker 1: out for literally just an hour or two a day, feed,
Speaker 1: you know, eat whatever nuts they can, and then go
Speaker 1: back in the males though it's it's usually still the
Speaker 1: end of the breeding season and they're still roaming around
Speaker 1: and they start ranging even more widely trying to find,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the last females that might still
Speaker 1: be available. So you're you're you're basically trying to hunt
Speaker 1: half the you know, half the population now because females
Speaker 1: are hold up and unless you know where Dan is
Speaker 1: you know where the female might be coming out, Um,
Speaker 1: you're you're not even going to see them very much
Speaker 1: during during that time. So you nailed it. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the interesting thing you brought about. The lactation takes so
Speaker 1: much energy because and people that hunt, um, people the
Speaker 1: hunt a lot of wild pigs. We'll say, the best
Speaker 1: wild pig, the best condition is a pregnant sou And
Speaker 1: always thought that like that they'll be fatty, And I thought, like,
Speaker 1: how could that be? Because how's it not so taxing
Speaker 1: to produce it, and they're saying, the worst pig is
Speaker 1: a nursing sou Yeah, that just get like sucked dry. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly it. You know, milk is really expensive
Speaker 1: to produce, and so typically they're putting everything into just
Speaker 1: producing as quality and offspring as possible, giving them the
Speaker 1: best start in life. And so with with female squirrels,
Speaker 1: they won't even the second most energetically expensive part of
Speaker 1: their life is changing their pellage, you know, molting their
Speaker 1: fur and grow a new fur. It's all protein, right,
Speaker 1: a bunch of its protein. That's costly. They don't do
Speaker 1: that until after they've finished nursing their young, so you'll
Speaker 1: see these really raggedy looking females late in the spring.
Speaker 1: I get calls where someone's like, oh, there's some kind
Speaker 1: of you know, horrific disease going through the squirrels. You know,
Speaker 1: look all mangy and manges that you know can be
Speaker 1: a problem, but it's just they're just females who are
Speaker 1: given everything they can to their offspring, and so they're
Speaker 1: producing and producing that milk. And if you look at
Speaker 1: fat stores of females at the end of nursing, there's
Speaker 1: no fat store, just just like males are invested in
Speaker 1: everything in those breeding seasons, and I mentioned some of
Speaker 1: them dying because they you know, don't have any they're
Speaker 1: just so malnourished. That's exactly what you can see with
Speaker 1: females at that kind of end of nursing. You're exactly right.
Speaker 1: I got a double question for you. Rattle off, like
Speaker 1: what normally kills squirrels like from predator from a predatory standpoint,
Speaker 1: and then what are some of the freakish things you've seen?
Speaker 1: So usually avian predators, hawks and owls are the number
Speaker 1: one predator. Then you start getting into things like you know,
Speaker 1: foxes and bobcats also take a large number of them,
Speaker 1: catching them off the ground. Catching them off the ground
Speaker 1: much harder, obviously, you know, they squirrels can get into
Speaker 1: the trees pretty quickly, but raptors nail them. Raptors and
Speaker 1: some of the studies we've done raptors account of the
Speaker 1: mortality of red squirrels. And then the remaining of predation
Speaker 1: events are from foxes, bobcats, that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: when they're in those I mentioned the necessity of those
Speaker 1: quality den cavities and that being part of you know,
Speaker 1: kind of good forest management. If you don't have a
Speaker 1: quality den cavity, lots of things can get in. Raccoons
Speaker 1: will will come in and you know, eat a whole
Speaker 1: litter ant or a group of these nesting adults that
Speaker 1: are in there. You mentioned the mink, you know, being
Speaker 1: able to get in. Uh, we'll see crows. Crows will
Speaker 1: go into those nests. Crows actually the leaf nest the
Speaker 1: dreys that we were talking about, those piles kind of
Speaker 1: a basketball side eyes ball of leaves up in the trees.
Speaker 1: Crows will fly from tree to tree, from from tree
Speaker 1: to tree, looking at those nests and trying to pull
Speaker 1: out squirrels from within. Some raptors will do that as well,
Speaker 1: but uh, gopher snakes, bull snakes will there. There's a
Speaker 1: really cool study that showed they actually will climb trees
Speaker 1: that have those leaf nests in them more than they'll
Speaker 1: climb trees without them. Yeah, yep, and they go in.
Speaker 1: It just smells the activity at the base of the
Speaker 1: tree could be um Usually, though, squirrels they come in
Speaker 1: from they don't come from the bottom up into their
Speaker 1: nest tree. They're usually coming in from the canopy. And
Speaker 1: that's something we should talk about is some of the
Speaker 1: kind of subtle scent communication that goes on between squirrels.
Speaker 1: But that so snakes are are great nest predators as well.
Speaker 1: But there's some incredible records documented a lot like the
Speaker 1: jag are an awesome lot that you were talking about. Um,
Speaker 1: they've been reported in the stomachs of bullfrogs. Uh that's
Speaker 1: that's a big bull frog in a small squirrel. But
Speaker 1: h and they've been uh large mouth bass had plucked
Speaker 1: them off of tree branches. Uh. So there are a
Speaker 1: couple of reports of you know, seeing a bass come
Speaker 1: out with a squirrel, you know, eating some berries, you know,
Speaker 1: in this idyllic setting. You know, you can imagine the
Speaker 1: you know, the Bambi music in the background, and then
Speaker 1: out leaps this uh, this large mouth bass. So you
Speaker 1: know there anything that you know, they're a nice chunk
Speaker 1: of meat. So anything that can anything that can get
Speaker 1: them is going to go for it. I had read
Speaker 1: that squirrels, like all road into their teeth never stopped growing,
Speaker 1: so they have to grind them down and if they don't,
Speaker 1: they'll grow into their skull and kill them. Is that
Speaker 1: something you've ever like witnessed or seen. Yeah, So you're
Speaker 1: so you're partially right. The cheek teeth don't the mohlers
Speaker 1: don't grow, they're not everlasting. You actually can age squirrels
Speaker 1: by looking at their cheek teeth. So if you're out
Speaker 1: there hunting and you know you can't you get a
Speaker 1: young of the year, it'll look like a kid's molars,
Speaker 1: you know, human child's molars where you can see every
Speaker 1: little nook and cranny. But they get worn down, you know,
Speaker 1: as they get older. So really old animals, you'll see
Speaker 1: those teeth worn down to the gum line, you know,
Speaker 1: just like Heffelfinger was in here. I'm sure probably talking
Speaker 1: about deer aging numerous times, but uh, you can do
Speaker 1: the same thing with squirrels. And but the incisors are
Speaker 1: ever growing, and that's really the you know, the business
Speaker 1: end of the squirrel. If they can't gnaw into things,
Speaker 1: then you know they're not going to be able to survive.
Speaker 1: So those are ever growing. And you know, if you
Speaker 1: take a look at them, they've got that kind of
Speaker 1: orange or yellow part that you'll see looking head on
Speaker 1: at a squirrel that is harder than the white portion
Speaker 1: that's behind. And that's so they sharpened to a wonderful
Speaker 1: point that you know then and they're able to you know,
Speaker 1: open a hickory or or a walnut. And so occasionally
Speaker 1: those will get offline. They rub up against each other
Speaker 1: and they kind of, you know, just like you would
Speaker 1: sharpen your knife. That's essentially what's going on with each
Speaker 1: each bite that the squirrels taking. But if they're injured,
Speaker 1: you know, in a fall, in a battle, whatever you know,
Speaker 1: causes some injury and they get offline, that's where you
Speaker 1: see these things grow back and they you've got that
Speaker 1: kind of wonderful circular shape that helps with the self sharpening.
Speaker 1: But if they're offline, that means it circles right back
Speaker 1: and usually hits the eye or something like that. So
Speaker 1: now they're not able to gnaw into things. You know,
Speaker 1: they're going to be weakened condition and so you don't
Speaker 1: see it very often, but you do occasionally get an
Speaker 1: animal that survives long enough and still you know, still
Speaker 1: able to get enough food to be able to uh
Speaker 1: to see that you know, a death. That's there's aldo
Speaker 1: that malleclusion. Do they use those teeth to like kill
Speaker 1: little animals since they're omnivores, that's right, excellent point. They
Speaker 1: are they're they're omnivorous. They will eat lots of insects.
Speaker 1: They'll eat you know, other they'll eat small mammals. But
Speaker 1: there are also are cannibalistic at times, and they'll uh
Speaker 1: we've there are a number of cases in some ground squirrels,
Speaker 1: like prairie dogs, they're actually infanticidal. They'll they'll kill uh
Speaker 1: other young they'll go into the borough of their sister
Speaker 1: and kill her young, um to give uh the advantage
Speaker 1: to that individual's own young. In tree squirrels, uh, we've
Speaker 1: seen them kill birds. Uh, they'll they'll frequently kill birds.
Speaker 1: They're known red squirrels are kind of really nasty egg
Speaker 1: predators and nestling birds. Uh. Most most ornithologists that there's
Speaker 1: a group that will well hate squirrels, perhaps because of
Speaker 1: they they the nest predation that they have. But I've
Speaker 1: even seen cases where where they won't they haven't killed
Speaker 1: the individual. Uh. Three or four times in my career,
Speaker 1: I've seen a young animal who's just learning to kind
Speaker 1: of walk and hold onto a tree fall to its death.
Speaker 1: And so we talked about adult animals surviving falls. Juveniles
Speaker 1: that don't have the muscles too and probably the balance,
Speaker 1: yet they'll followed their death. I've watched the mother go
Speaker 1: down check the individual bumpet a few times, realize that
Speaker 1: it's dead, and then literally picked the animal up and
Speaker 1: they start eating the brain, and then they move on
Speaker 1: to other tasty bits of their own offspring that you know,
Speaker 1: they were just nursing up in the tree maybe that morning,
Speaker 1: and um, you know now they're they're uh, they're going
Speaker 1: for they've switched at carnivory. That that's called being like
Speaker 1: a pragmatist man. That's that's really something like they invested
Speaker 1: a lot in that offspring. Hey, when I was in
Speaker 1: h middle school, I had a friend that was at
Speaker 1: like the city park and he saw a squirrel get
Speaker 1: hit on the road, and for whatever reason, he went
Speaker 1: out and picks up the squirrel. And the thing, you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about squirrel teeth and now sharp they are,
Speaker 1: and the squirrel bites him right in the webbing between
Speaker 1: the thumb and his pointer finger just nails him deep
Speaker 1: into the meat right there. And he like shakes the
Speaker 1: squirrel off his hand, and he cut his tendons in
Speaker 1: his hand and he had to have major reconstructive surgery
Speaker 1: in his hand. Yeah, yeah, I think about that when
Speaker 1: we hunt picking one up that's half a live I've
Speaker 1: had him bite through my thumbnail before, so yeah, they
Speaker 1: and cut all the way the bone instantly. H that's
Speaker 1: story that you just mentioned, Clay. I was my first
Speaker 1: time ever in Arizona. Was driving along and I wanted
Speaker 1: to see an abert squirrel, a tassel eared squirrel if
Speaker 1: you guys have seen a pretty amazing, super interested in
Speaker 1: and uh, we were driving along. I hadn't seen one yet,
Speaker 1: just north of Flagstaff and I just turned to my
Speaker 1: wife and said, I can't believe, you know, squirrel biologist
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to see one of these. And I'm
Speaker 1: driving along and literally right uh one runs out from
Speaker 1: the Ponderosa Pine forest and I hit it and um,
Speaker 1: and so I'm like, crap, you know, what what do
Speaker 1: you do? You know? And one I wanted to see
Speaker 1: it and too, I'm like, well, you know it's now
Speaker 1: donated its body to science, and I had a collecting
Speaker 1: permit so I could legally go back and pick it up.
Speaker 1: So I turned around, pull over and it's just kind
Speaker 1: of a narrow two lane road with forest right there,
Speaker 1: so I had to pull over probably a couple hundred
Speaker 1: yards away. I'm walking walking along long and almost up
Speaker 1: on it, and this Winnebago drives over and as it
Speaker 1: that suction is that goes over, you see the tail
Speaker 1: flip up. But I kind of thought the body also
Speaker 1: popped up a little bit. And uh so I go
Speaker 1: running up, not wanting it to, you know, to be
Speaker 1: hit by another car, so i'd have a good carcass.
Speaker 1: And I go to grab it and it jumps up,
Speaker 1: runs off the road and does that just like the
Speaker 1: falling squirrel that we talked about before, climbs up a tree,
Speaker 1: sits there and just keeps trying to shake it off.
Speaker 1: And U so I got a really good look at
Speaker 1: the at the squirrel. But it turns out that that's
Speaker 1: that's actually really common what squirrels do when they're when
Speaker 1: they're going to be attacked. Right, if you're getting attacked
Speaker 1: by a hawk, you jump first and then then you
Speaker 1: hit the ground and start running. And that works really
Speaker 1: well if there's a hawk coming in or a fox,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't work well if there's a you know,
Speaker 1: Chevy minivan, you know that's that's driving over. You jump
Speaker 1: right up. And so they often just knocked themselves out
Speaker 1: undercarriage and then and then get hit you know, by
Speaker 1: the next car that comes by. Uh but yeah, I've
Speaker 1: so I almost had that same experience myself. Okay yan,
Speaker 1: he's got his app you with some questions, he's got
Speaker 1: some doozies. Uh, well, real quick before we get off.
Speaker 1: What kills him? What's just average lifespan, average light span? Uh?
Speaker 1: If they if you start from when they're born, you're
Speaker 1: just talking a little over a year. Very few animals
Speaker 1: make it to adulthood. Once they reach that first year,
Speaker 1: which is when they can start reproducing, typically sometimes a
Speaker 1: little bit earlier. You're you're looking at two and a
Speaker 1: half to three years. It's kind of a good lifetime.
Speaker 1: If you're looking at pet animals, Uh, they've read squirrels,
Speaker 1: fox squirrels, gray squirrels have all been people have had
Speaker 1: them for about twenty years. Uh. So they can even
Speaker 1: live that long. And in some of our studies where
Speaker 1: we've monitored, you know, animals and known age for decade
Speaker 1: or more, we've had animals get to about ten years
Speaker 1: in the wild, um and maybe a little bit more
Speaker 1: in some species, a little bit less, but for a small,
Speaker 1: small mammal you think, you know, isn't gonna isn't gonna
Speaker 1: live very long. They actually, once they figure it out,
Speaker 1: once they have that den, once they you know, have
Speaker 1: know where their food is, they actually and they're weary
Speaker 1: enough of predators, they actually can survive pretty long. Mhm.
Speaker 1: Did you like the ones I had highlighted? Are the
Speaker 1: ones that I had under my name there under your name,
Speaker 1: And I added a couple of doozies in there, but
Speaker 1: stumbled across the across that section under Yanni's I stumbled
Speaker 1: across that section under Yanni's name and my document, Um,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about how they stash stuff and like
Speaker 1: that whole process. And Spencer's gotta follow up there too
Speaker 1: about about stashes. But were you were you involved in
Speaker 1: that study everybody got all excited about about whether they
Speaker 1: could remember where they put their nuts or not. Well,
Speaker 1: then part of a couple of those studies. Well, so
Speaker 1: a couple of different strategies that that you're looking at.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about red squirrels or Douglas squirrels out
Speaker 1: here in the in the West, mostly they're what we
Speaker 1: call larder hoarders. So you've come across I'm sure around
Speaker 1: here around Bozeman you've come across there what we call middens,
Speaker 1: these big piles of cone scales that they actually bury
Speaker 1: more cones in. Those are those middens. Those cone scale
Speaker 1: piles are effectively a refrigerator for the squirrel. They keep
Speaker 1: their they bury cones from subsequent years in there, and
Speaker 1: we've actually studied put little temperature transmitters in and studied
Speaker 1: that that they functioned just like a refrigerator does. The
Speaker 1: cones don't open. If the cone scales open, seeds fall out,
Speaker 1: anything can eat them. If they stay closed, mostly just
Speaker 1: squirrels can can eat them. So by keeping them in
Speaker 1: the refrigerator, you know, you know, food isn't spoil. So
Speaker 1: that strategy works really well with pine cones and and
Speaker 1: um in places where there are lots of coniferous trees.
Speaker 1: But it's those men's are also just a result of
Speaker 1: them just sitting in the same tree, on the same
Speaker 1: branch and just chewne on pine cones, right, and so
Speaker 1: that's often how these things start. You'll you'll have, you know,
Speaker 1: you'll have a tree that's got lots of lots of
Speaker 1: cones that in a good year the animals just start
Speaker 1: feeding there, and you get a little bit of a pile,
Speaker 1: and then a juvenile squirrel that's trying to find a
Speaker 1: place to live often starts with that place, buries a
Speaker 1: few cones there, tucks a few in the log, and
Speaker 1: then keeps eating and building these piles. Sometimes they get
Speaker 1: three or four ft high, kind of the size of
Speaker 1: a baseball pitchers mound. Uh And they're they're typically a
Speaker 1: huge resource. You can imagine, you know, a refrigerator that's
Speaker 1: you know, already proven itself in previous years. That becomes
Speaker 1: a huge resource, and so they're passed on from generation
Speaker 1: to generation. We've followed middens that have been occupied by
Speaker 1: squirrels continuously for thirty years, forty years, not the same squirrel,
Speaker 1: you know, just as soon as one one dies, another
Speaker 1: one moves in. As soon as sometimes when we're doing
Speaker 1: some of our live capture studies and market them, even
Speaker 1: when the animal gets in the trap, the neighbor realizes, hey,
Speaker 1: I can go steal a few cones. So we have
Speaker 1: to check these live traps and let animals go quickly
Speaker 1: because the neighbor comes over and starts stealing cones right away.
Speaker 1: Uh So that that's a strategy that works really well
Speaker 1: with with pine cones out here, and you know it's
Speaker 1: and the the red squirrels that we have around here
Speaker 1: in bows men are territorial, so that's their whole life is,
Speaker 1: you know, packed into one of these middens. Everything that's
Speaker 1: going to enable them to survive this winter is found
Speaker 1: there because these guys don't hibernate and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're relying on stored fat and then whatever pine
Speaker 1: cones that they've that they've saved. So being territorial and
Speaker 1: piling them in one pla it works here. The other
Speaker 1: other strategy that you see in more indeciduous forest, typically
Speaker 1: with fox squirrels and Eastern gray squirrels predominantly here in
Speaker 1: the US, they they they're scatter hoarders, so rather than
Speaker 1: pile them all in one place where they can defend
Speaker 1: them and it's just there's uh and they last for
Speaker 1: a long time because your refrigerators working uh with things
Speaker 1: like acorns, they spoil relatively quickly and tons of things
Speaker 1: can eat acorns, right, you know, those decisious force In
Speaker 1: those good years, you've got turkey, deer, every small mammal,
Speaker 1: some other crows and some other kind of you know,
Speaker 1: good sized birds uh will will eat them beside squirrels.
Speaker 1: So they take a different strategy and they scatter them out.
Speaker 1: So they actually go under a tree that has a
Speaker 1: concentration of them and they spread them out. Um and
Speaker 1: uh so that reduces the risk of other things eating them.
Speaker 1: But the problem is, you know, how do you find
Speaker 1: them again? And so it turns out that part of
Speaker 1: its memory, part of it is a strategy that they
Speaker 1: uh you know, this is their general area. Um. So
Speaker 1: there's there's not it's not territorial where it's just exclusive
Speaker 1: use they will, but they tend to bury them in
Speaker 1: the same general area. So a squirrel goes back to
Speaker 1: that area uses its memory to say, hey, over here,
Speaker 1: you know, I know I buried buried some nuts. Um
Speaker 1: you know if you're thinking like this from a from
Speaker 1: a person. But they actually find them, typically not solely
Speaker 1: by memory. It's the smell. They've got an incredible sense
Speaker 1: of smell. Their eyesights just okay, but their sense of smell.
Speaker 1: They've they've been shown to be able to find a
Speaker 1: nut three or four ft under the snow by s
Speaker 1: So it gets there, you know, it says, okay, this
Speaker 1: general spot, I know I buried them, and that makes
Speaker 1: sense if you know it looks a lot different with
Speaker 1: three ft of snow. We've all, you know, been hiking
Speaker 1: in a forest and said, you know, and no notice
Speaker 1: how different it looks in the winter. So memory alone,
Speaker 1: you know that log now is covered up, and you
Speaker 1: know the uh even parts of that tree are covered up.
Speaker 1: So they go in and they they smell through three
Speaker 1: or four ft of snow, they'll they'll pick up that set.
Speaker 1: I got two related questions here. One is do they
Speaker 1: ever stash meat? And then the other one is can
Speaker 1: you explain deceptive cashing and have you ever witnessed it?
Speaker 1: I'll take the first one. Yes, you are correct, Steve. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know you know the problem that you're I think
Speaker 1: your field has created. I don't say red squirrel. I'm
Speaker 1: all about solutions. So I'd like to problem get expunge
Speaker 1: red squirrel from your vocabulary. Pine squirrel, pine squirrel, unless
Speaker 1: there's a problem there, because I find like I got
Speaker 1: a buddy from Missouri who now lives in Michigan, and
Speaker 1: he calls fox squirrels red squirrels, like it's not a
Speaker 1: red squirrel I'm like, okay, I said, just to clean up,
Speaker 1: I said, listen with him. I'm like pine squirrels, which
Speaker 1: he is not accustomed to because he didn't grow up
Speaker 1: with them. I'm like, you got pine squirrels once you
Speaker 1: live in a place with pine squirrels. Don't say red
Speaker 1: squirrels because everybody gets mixed up. I feel that, like nationally,
Speaker 1: like Biden's is signing all these executive orders, I think
Speaker 1: you should add that in and clean that up. And
Speaker 1: in terms of Spencer's question, I read a paper one
Speaker 1: time where they're doing a study immortality study and Alberta
Speaker 1: on Leverett's so baby snowshoe hairs, and they would find
Speaker 1: the bulk of the dead ones in pine squirrel middens.
Speaker 1: And I'll add quickly that I have seen were grizzly
Speaker 1: bears dig up and raid middens. I'm back out now, Okay.
Speaker 1: So first I'm gonna go with your pine squirrel suggestion.
Speaker 1: While I am incredibly appreciative of your suggestion there and
Speaker 1: will take it into consideration. Everybody loves clarity. So red squirrels,
Speaker 1: and I said, red squirrels U in the Eastern US.
Speaker 1: You find him in deciduous force, so there aren't even
Speaker 1: pines around. You can find red squirrels. Well, ee, it's
Speaker 1: still it's still a red squirrel too, So I don't
Speaker 1: haven't grown up in the Midwest. Lots of people call
Speaker 1: fox squirrels red square you know, the red ones ye
Speaker 1: like in their orange right. Yeah, So let's go with
Speaker 1: orange squirrels. We'll talk to Joe Biden and see if
Speaker 1: he goes. I can't get in the executive more orange
Speaker 1: orange squirrel orange squirrels. Um. So those the middens that
Speaker 1: you talked about, uh, and that we've kind of discussed
Speaker 1: as a refrigerator, the refrigerator for more than just just cones.
Speaker 1: They'll squirrels will put mushrooms in there, and they will
Speaker 1: store meat. So I found chipmunks and uh Leverett's uh,
Speaker 1: we found them buried in cash within the those cone
Speaker 1: scale piles. It's kind of risky though, because lots of
Speaker 1: things eat meat. So what more frequently what they do
Speaker 1: is they hang them up in the trees. They hang
Speaker 1: mushrooms up in the trees, but they hang it's stuff
Speaker 1: man like muskrats, sorry, mushrooms in trees like someone put
Speaker 1: it there, No kidding. So they're they're putting them up there,
Speaker 1: and they actually manage them. So you guys have seen
Speaker 1: red squirrels, you know, they just they're constantly run and
Speaker 1: back and forth protecting this pile in the midden, and
Speaker 1: they're they're also is you know, anal about managing their
Speaker 1: uh there mushrooms. They will just pick them up and
Speaker 1: move them around the sun, you know, the sunny side
Speaker 1: of the tree. They'll put them there to dry out
Speaker 1: a little bit, and they'll move them back. But they
Speaker 1: do the same thing with little rabbits as well. So
Speaker 1: we've we've seen them a few times kill uh kill rabbits.
Speaker 1: But the first time that we came across this probably
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, when I first moved to Arizona, I'm
Speaker 1: looking up and I think that there's a squirrel in
Speaker 1: this tree above me, because there's a big dark blob,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of backlit, and and it's kind of
Speaker 1: blowing in the wind a little bit. So I thought
Speaker 1: it was its tail, and you know, it was a
Speaker 1: small rabbit that had been hung up there, probably to dry.
Speaker 1: You know, you've got to make good jerky if you're
Speaker 1: gonna use this man all winter along, so amazing. The
Speaker 1: next question was about deceptive cashing. Can you explain it
Speaker 1: and have you witnessed it? Yea. So this goes at
Speaker 1: that you're scatter hoarding. You're not these nuts around, right,
Speaker 1: You're trying to spread out a resource that's concentrated under
Speaker 1: one tree, and you want to end up with as
Speaker 1: much of that as possible. So there have been a
Speaker 1: few cases that I've seen, and it's been reported a
Speaker 1: little bit in the literature that squirrels will you know,
Speaker 1: do the head fake and uh, you know, go in
Speaker 1: and and fake cashing things. I've seen them pick up
Speaker 1: like a rock, put it, dig a little hole, drop
Speaker 1: it in, move a move a leaf over it, and
Speaker 1: then you know, go back and you know, grab an
Speaker 1: acorn and bury it somewhere else. And so there there's
Speaker 1: this thought that and it makes sense that this is
Speaker 1: such a competitive you know, if you don't get enough energy,
Speaker 1: you're gonna die over winter, So every little advantage, you know,
Speaker 1: can can play out. So we've seen that, and we
Speaker 1: think that's due to different squirrels, you know, trying to uh,
Speaker 1: trying to be deceptive. But because squirrels can smell so well,
Speaker 1: you know that probably isn't a great technique solely to
Speaker 1: to reduce predation seed competition from other seed predators, but
Speaker 1: for birds that typically birds can't smell. You know, there
Speaker 1: are a few that do, you smell, but most birds can't,
Speaker 1: so they buy going in and faking. Here's where I'm
Speaker 1: burying this, where I'm cashing this this seed. A bird
Speaker 1: is not going there. They're going by those visual cues
Speaker 1: and hey, he's you know that squirrels bearing nuts over here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go check it out and bounce around until
Speaker 1: I can find one. And uh so we think that
Speaker 1: it actually may be more advantage us for that kind
Speaker 1: of competition then within your own species, where you know
Speaker 1: you can you can pick up the smell of a
Speaker 1: nut much more easily. I watched one. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he was doing a deceptive cash or if he
Speaker 1: just wasn't happy with his first spot I was. I
Speaker 1: was quite surprised to find I was on a maybe
Speaker 1: a hundred foot sort of null knob in an oak
Speaker 1: forest in Wisconsin, but a solid hundred yards from the
Speaker 1: nearest stock of corn. I'm standing there just observing, and
Speaker 1: up up onto this null pops the squirrel with at
Speaker 1: least a half a corn cob in its mouth, runs
Speaker 1: along some logs, goes to a spot, sets it down,
Speaker 1: digs What I thought was pretty like put some effort
Speaker 1: into making a hole. I mean, he's talking about a
Speaker 1: half a corn cob and then just leaves picks up
Speaker 1: his corn cob, you know, goes ten feet farther, and
Speaker 1: then stashes it in there. But two things, Well, the
Speaker 1: biggest thing that struck means that how far he had
Speaker 1: gone to go get get that. I'm guessing the color
Speaker 1: value of what he was dashing was worth that trouble
Speaker 1: and putting him away. But my, uh that what you
Speaker 1: said earlier brought up a question you keep talking about
Speaker 1: like near the same tree, Like how big is that
Speaker 1: stash zone for a squirrel? So it can be the
Speaker 1: size of the home range, the area that they're roaming
Speaker 1: really varies on the kind of the quality of the forest.
Speaker 1: So if you're in a really poor forest, you've got
Speaker 1: to range more widely, and so the zone that they're
Speaker 1: burying them, you know, varies by those kinds of conditions.
Speaker 1: But typically you're looking at the home range of most
Speaker 1: squirrels is kind of a football field or two or
Speaker 1: talking just a couple of acres and you are although
Speaker 1: males during the breeding season rome you know times sometimes
Speaker 1: more than that, and they but within that they typically
Speaker 1: will yeah, they'll they'll bury. If you're talking out in
Speaker 1: an oak forest, they'll be bry them in kind of
Speaker 1: concentrated areas. But they also, you know, it's it's energetically
Speaker 1: costly if you're you're going to going to grab an acorn,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have to run a mile to
Speaker 1: bury it, you're not gonna you know that that makes
Speaker 1: no energetic sense. So they typically don't go very far,
Speaker 1: but they're spreading them out, sometimes hundreds of yards away
Speaker 1: from the tree. And that's actually kind of the thought
Speaker 1: to be that's to the advantage of the tree. You
Speaker 1: know that the acorn fall straight down. Now it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's parent tree is the competitor for sunlight and water.
Speaker 1: But giving this nice tasty tidbit that a squirrel is
Speaker 1: going to take out and bury, you know, is that
Speaker 1: really the advantage of the trees looking for out of
Speaker 1: the deal. So we have seen them there. They they're
Speaker 1: known when you get a walnut tree that's in fruit,
Speaker 1: you can actually smell it if you're if you're out there.
Speaker 1: Squirrels are known to come from a couple of miles
Speaker 1: away to get a walnut tree that's a black hole
Speaker 1: nut tree back east that's in you know, in fruit,
Speaker 1: and just think they're smelling it. Yep, they smell it, yep, definitely,
Speaker 1: just like they find females from from far away. That
Speaker 1: scent is really the way that squirrels communicate. I know
Speaker 1: we've all heard the same probably you know, even a
Speaker 1: blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes they don't use their
Speaker 1: eyes to find squirrels really technically should be even an
Speaker 1: anosmic squirrel finds finds a nut sometimes because you know,
Speaker 1: you they used smell to find these things. They used
Speaker 1: smell to find females, they smell to find food. They
Speaker 1: also used smell to communicate in clay. I'm really be
Speaker 1: really curious if you've seen this. Uh, they use scent
Speaker 1: marking sites fox squirrels and gray squirrels. In particular, if
Speaker 1: you look at the underside of a branch or the
Speaker 1: base of a big cottonwood tree, you'll see areas that
Speaker 1: look like something's you know, and you know, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: a buck has come by and scraped along there. Uh.
Speaker 1: But if you look at it closely, you'll see squirrel
Speaker 1: insiz remarks. These are a set marks that all the
Speaker 1: males roam by and mark there. Sometimes they'll sometimes they'll
Speaker 1: urnate on it, but they have glands in their cheeks
Speaker 1: and they just they'll wipe them. They got a little
Speaker 1: scrape out in the woods, a little buck yep, theys
Speaker 1: some big trees. Never never seen that, never never seen it.
Speaker 1: Never never heard that. Look at some hickories, and look
Speaker 1: at some oaks, and especially on the underside of the
Speaker 1: lowest big branches, or if their trees got a little
Speaker 1: bit of a tilt on it where it's less exposed
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, to weather, where that scent probably stays.
Speaker 1: You'll see these things that Sometimes they'll get as big
Speaker 1: as maybe two ft by like a foot and a
Speaker 1: half or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll see them. They're
Speaker 1: all over I'm coming. I came here from Laramie where
Speaker 1: we've got fox squirrels. They're all all over the trees there.
Speaker 1: So like, would that be a good strategy to sit
Speaker 1: that little scrape? So if you sit there that and
Speaker 1: I was going to say, if you sit there long enough,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll see animals come through, especially as you're approaching
Speaker 1: the breeding season. So in the spring it is a
Speaker 1: good place to go to to see squirrels and likely
Speaker 1: to hunt squirrels. And it's it's male biased, so you
Speaker 1: know you're you're not you're not hunting the big bucks.
Speaker 1: You're getting you're getting the big one point two pounders.
Speaker 1: What are some other things like that that hunters are
Speaker 1: probably ignoring or don't know about, Like if if they're
Speaker 1: in the woods and they're trying to find a good
Speaker 1: place to hunt besides the obvious, like actual squirrels, what
Speaker 1: are some indicators that this is gonna be a good place. Well,
Speaker 1: if you put your deer stand up, you can almost
Speaker 1: be sure that that's one of the best places. But
Speaker 1: so a couple of things those in the mornings, animals
Speaker 1: come out, and almost the first thing they do, if
Speaker 1: you're talking fall, winter in spring, is they'll bask in
Speaker 1: the sun. And that's when you get a group of squirrels.
Speaker 1: So you'll have you know, six, eight, ten, twelve squirrels
Speaker 1: all nesting together, and so finding those big old trees
Speaker 1: that have some cavities in they're not they don't like
Speaker 1: the incredibly decomposed one wind and we're going to fall
Speaker 1: over kind of kind of tree. But if you're if
Speaker 1: you're in a place where you've got some pretty good older, large,
Speaker 1: older trees, they may not even produce they may be
Speaker 1: so old they're overmature, aren't producing any tree seeds, but
Speaker 1: they've got some good cavities. That's the place to go.
Speaker 1: You've you've all seen those den cavities probably and you
Speaker 1: can tell where squirrel has been gnawing it, and the
Speaker 1: tree keep kind of keeps re growing, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of a nice smooth edge. That's you know, that's a
Speaker 1: good indicator. And uh. To to assess whether the animals
Speaker 1: might be there, I like to go out the night
Speaker 1: before because that's when animals are going back to the nest.
Speaker 1: And so if you follow animals back, that's when you
Speaker 1: get six or eight animals coming together right at you know,
Speaker 1: right before before sunset. So picking up an animal in
Speaker 1: the woods and following it back, you can usually figure
Speaker 1: out what tree or a couple of trees they're going
Speaker 1: back to, and and that's that's a really good indicator.
Speaker 1: Uh uh. And then just the noise of them, and
Speaker 1: most hunters will you know, use that noise or the
Speaker 1: falling of you know, cone scales. If you're looking at
Speaker 1: red squirrels, you're looking at pieces of of nuts that
Speaker 1: are falling. Uh, that's always a great indicator. But these
Speaker 1: scent marks are something like Clay Clay sent I know
Speaker 1: Clay loves loves squirrel hunting. And most people haven't seen that.
Speaker 1: But if you go out and look, I guarantee that
Speaker 1: you'll that you'll find a bunch of those. Red squirrels
Speaker 1: don't do that as far as we can tell, but
Speaker 1: all squirrels had these scent glands in their cheeks, and
Speaker 1: when they're going back to the nest, they wipe those.
Speaker 1: They'll stop every few feet on a branch and wipe
Speaker 1: their head back and forth. Called it face wipe, and
Speaker 1: their depositing scent that probably says there's an animal here.
Speaker 1: This nest is going to be occupied. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a friend, come join me, share your body
Speaker 1: heat for the you know, for the night or uh,
Speaker 1: you know, be prepared to like that mink who won
Speaker 1: the battle, to be prepared to do to do get
Speaker 1: out there. I once did that by accident. Followed I
Speaker 1: was not just like following it to see where the
Speaker 1: dentry was. I was chasing this group of squirrels, and
Speaker 1: they got to the dentry ahead of me. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: by golly, I'm hunting tomorrow morning. I know where I'll
Speaker 1: be sitting in the dark and waiting for him. Now.
Speaker 1: I had a very successful first ten minutes of the morning. Uh,
Speaker 1: am I doing anything? Uh? Like? Am I hurting the
Speaker 1: squirrel population by by doing that? I felt bad about, Like,
Speaker 1: just like, you know, getting close to three quarters of
Speaker 1: my limit in the first ten minutes of the morning
Speaker 1: out of that one tree. So spreading, spreading your your
Speaker 1: hunting effort out would be a good strategy. Uh. Those
Speaker 1: groups though, especially if you're not taking all the animals
Speaker 1: in the group there, they're either groups of related females,
Speaker 1: and that that group of females, although they're not territorial,
Speaker 1: is you know, that's kind of their space. So if
Speaker 1: you're not taking all the animals, you know there are
Speaker 1: some that are still going to be there. Or it's
Speaker 1: a group of males, and the males are typically if
Speaker 1: you're not a male youngster who's with your mom and
Speaker 1: your grandmother and you're you know, you know, maybe a
Speaker 1: great grandmother kind of in that spot then, Uh, that
Speaker 1: you're you disperse from where you're born and you're in
Speaker 1: a group with males, and you know, as we know,
Speaker 1: the really important demographic class is going to be those females.
Speaker 1: So you know, just being a little bit attentive and
Speaker 1: spreading it around. You know, they have good litter sizes,
Speaker 1: they typically rebound from hunting pressure that's not you know,
Speaker 1: constant and immense without any problem at all. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think you don't have to feel so guilty,
Speaker 1: and I can see it in your eyes, but I
Speaker 1: think you're okay with all the raptors and everything killing
Speaker 1: them and all the other stuff that kills him. Is
Speaker 1: that have you ever seen where um where squirrel hunters
Speaker 1: have had like a localized impact on population that was
Speaker 1: of note? So there's no I've never seen it. And
Speaker 1: because of the difficulty in finding them, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we've just heard from Yanni that he can only find
Speaker 1: him ten minutes out of a day, So we've got
Speaker 1: that kind of an aptitude. You know, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: always going to you know, going to be squirrels around. Uh,
Speaker 1: they tend to have good litter sizes, They tend to
Speaker 1: be able to have two litters a year if the
Speaker 1: resources are high. So when densities start to get low,
Speaker 1: you see, and you have a good cone crop or
Speaker 1: or good mass crop, you have the ability to respond
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. There was a study back east in Virginia
Speaker 1: where they they tried to have an impact. They hunted
Speaker 1: them exceedingly high and it's something like Jesus should I
Speaker 1: want to say sevent mortality something like that, where they
Speaker 1: really were hunting an area very heavily. Then in that
Speaker 1: case they showed some impacts of hunting. But what happens
Speaker 1: is you have more individuals producing two litters a year.
Speaker 1: You know, kind of compensate for that because now they're
Speaker 1: they're getting more food, they're in better shape, you know,
Speaker 1: don't have they're not being chased around by other squirrels
Speaker 1: as much, and they can squirrels. Tree squirrels can reproduce
Speaker 1: at about six months of age. So if you're in
Speaker 1: a time when you have a really good mask here
Speaker 1: younger the year will reproduce really early. So you're born
Speaker 1: in February March and you can reproduce in that. There
Speaker 1: are cases where they've reproduced even in that second breeding season.
Speaker 1: So they're born in one breeding season and able to
Speaker 1: uh to reproduce just a few months later. So you
Speaker 1: know they're they're geared to be able to take advantage
Speaker 1: of these boom and bust mass crops. So a good year,
Speaker 1: you know a mask, you're going to get lots of young.
Speaker 1: They're going to reproduce quickly and capitalize on them. Squirrel
Speaker 1: hunting is really so inefficient. I mean you realize that
Speaker 1: when you do a lot of squirrel hunting, how you
Speaker 1: may hunt this big block of timber and you realize
Speaker 1: how many times your dogs tree and you don't kill
Speaker 1: that squirrel, or how many squirrels you see that you
Speaker 1: don't kill, And so I mean you you have to
Speaker 1: You would have to hunt very very hard to be
Speaker 1: able to knock them down. And there's there there. They
Speaker 1: seem to be a species, like you said, that just
Speaker 1: bounces back so quickly and the other way, I think
Speaker 1: about it as a hunter, and I'm trying to calm
Speaker 1: Janice's nerves here and bring him back a little more
Speaker 1: center here. Uh, I'm joking you honest um. Is that
Speaker 1: that you know, if you had a hundred acre track
Speaker 1: of land to squirrel hunt and you just pounded it
Speaker 1: and maybe you killed sevent the squirrels in there, which
Speaker 1: you probably couldn't. The there would be a vacuum around
Speaker 1: that place. I mean, like there, you know, I've squirrels
Speaker 1: would just fill that in because think of all the
Speaker 1: land you're not hunting around that. Like so if you
Speaker 1: could like grid off and just hunt equally, like some
Speaker 1: huge portion of land, like maybe you could knock them down.
Speaker 1: Does that sound about right, John? Yeah, exactly. The you know,
Speaker 1: prime sites are always somewhat limited out there, and you've
Speaker 1: got when you're having a litter size of two and
Speaker 1: a half, you know, three and a half young maybe
Speaker 1: a couple of times a year. Animals we talked about
Speaker 1: how long they can live. You know, there's not this
Speaker 1: massive turnover of adults, and so when when an animal
Speaker 1: dies another animals moving in really quickly. Always have individuals
Speaker 1: that are are looking for quality spots with red squirrels
Speaker 1: that are territorial. Even more so, as I mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: we put it, we catch an animal in a live
Speaker 1: trap and you know, just for thirty minutes and the
Speaker 1: neighbor knows that this spot is available, and you know
Speaker 1: we'll be over there in a minute. So, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: exactly right, Clay. I didn't want your honest to be
Speaker 1: too soft hearted when he comes to Arkansas here later
Speaker 1: this winter. You take what you can get when you're
Speaker 1: squirrel hunting, buddy. Listen, I've put a lot of time
Speaker 1: effort into hunting squirrels and I've only had one episode
Speaker 1: like that. So yeah, I've I've yet to not bullet
Speaker 1: bullet trigger on a on a scroll opportunity. All right, vocalizations,
Speaker 1: let's do it like just the because I'm guessing fox
Speaker 1: and grays are pretty similar, right, so let's do then,
Speaker 1: because that's what most hunters concentrate on. I know, I
Speaker 1: think that like red pine squirrels have interesting vocalizations. I've
Speaker 1: heard a lot of them, and I think that they
Speaker 1: can sort of be valuable to know, maybe to like
Speaker 1: an elk hunter, because you hear them in the woods
Speaker 1: and stuff, how it might be associated with you. So
Speaker 1: let's let's break it up. But let's let's kind of
Speaker 1: maybe go through all the ones that you know of
Speaker 1: what they mean and then maybe how we can use
Speaker 1: them to our advantage. So it's there are a series
Speaker 1: of chucks, you know, kind of that cluck cluck cluck.
Speaker 1: That that kind of noise very good. Yeah, that's really good.
Speaker 1: That's very good. So uh that uh And basically it's
Speaker 1: it starts there and they become more prolonged, closer together,
Speaker 1: louder with the level of threat or you know, the
Speaker 1: y it no, I can't do it. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like it's like it becomes a home almost right. So,
Speaker 1: and and that's it. You take these kind of you know,
Speaker 1: separate notes that are just cluck cluck, cluck, and then
Speaker 1: you push them, push them together, and it becomes a
Speaker 1: bit of a hum and then if they're really upset,
Speaker 1: then you get the wine at the end. So why
Speaker 1: why And that is and that's even worse than you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's like a super agitated piste off exactly. And
Speaker 1: he's telling his buddies there's trouble bruin. We think that
Speaker 1: it's more they're telling the predator that I know you're there,
Speaker 1: and I'm really piste off. And so they'll usually stand
Speaker 1: their ground things like something, Yeah, I was gonna I
Speaker 1: was gonna interrupt and say that. Usually when I hear that,
Speaker 1: I feel like I got a good chance of killing
Speaker 1: that squirrel. Because I feel like he's sitting there and like,
Speaker 1: I don't care if you're walking towards me exactly. So
Speaker 1: they're gonna sit there and they're just letting you know
Speaker 1: that they know. And you know, that typically works if
Speaker 1: you're you know, if you're a squirrel against other squirrels,
Speaker 1: probably most predators who aren't gonna waste their time and effort,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a if you're a bobcat or
Speaker 1: you know, a gray fox, and I've seen gray foxes
Speaker 1: climb trees going after squirrels. Uh, you know, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna spend all that effort if you've got something already
Speaker 1: knows you're there, like you're you're bust did and there's
Speaker 1: nothing you're gonna do about it now. Okay. So it's
Speaker 1: just the fact that I'm aware of you that's gonna
Speaker 1: make him not go, not because he's like, oh there's
Speaker 1: a mad squirrel. I'm not gonna mess with that squirrel.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of ground squirrels that live in groups,
Speaker 1: there is advantage to alling and letting, you know, letting
Speaker 1: all your neighbors sometimes are related animals know, uh, and
Speaker 1: so you'll hear those alarm calls. You've you've been walking
Speaker 1: in a you know, a meadow and heard a bunch
Speaker 1: of yellow belly marmots, you know, start sending off their
Speaker 1: alarm calls. That's those are often related individuals. They're alerting
Speaker 1: other members of their own species in that group know
Speaker 1: that there's a predator there. But it also lets the
Speaker 1: predator know that you've been recognized. And initially we used
Speaker 1: to think that was altruistic. You know, that you'd have
Speaker 1: you'd have ground squirrels alerting everyone and drawing attention to themselves.
Speaker 1: Turns out that when you actually watch what predators do,
Speaker 1: they don't go for the one that saw them and
Speaker 1: is making the call. They're going for the one that's
Speaker 1: running for its borrow because it doesn't know where the predators.
Speaker 1: So now we think that that's actually kind of a
Speaker 1: selfish activity. You call, Hey, watch all these other animals
Speaker 1: scurry around, and you know the hawks gonna get one
Speaker 1: of them, and they're not gonna at you because you
Speaker 1: know you've already identified that that you see them. Plus,
Speaker 1: those high pitch calls are really hard hard to locate sometimes,
Speaker 1: and that that's the thing the chucks that you hear
Speaker 1: those individual notes. The barks A lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of times you'll read about squirrels barking. Those are a
Speaker 1: little easier to locate when they go into that high
Speaker 1: pitched mode. You know. It's those high pitched calls are
Speaker 1: really hard. They're harder to locate. So once they get
Speaker 1: to that level of agitation, uh, you know, they it's
Speaker 1: thought that if they're that level of agitation, the predators
Speaker 1: really close, then it's a little bit harder to actually locate.
Speaker 1: I know they're in this tree somewhere, but the squirrel
Speaker 1: is going to see him before you know, the predators
Speaker 1: sees the squirrel. I've seen them when they're like chased
Speaker 1: each other, like rutting around. I've seen him do some
Speaker 1: amount of agitated chirping at each other. But one like
Speaker 1: when you're squirrel calling, Like my my understanding of this
Speaker 1: is eyes that you're making the alarm call when you
Speaker 1: do that noise, thinking that other squirrels are gonna wonder
Speaker 1: what the story is and come out to try to
Speaker 1: figure out what the problem is. It's not very effective.
Speaker 1: It's very like at a certain time a year, making
Speaker 1: the distress noise seems to get females out, but I
Speaker 1: don't it's squirrel calling is not like a great thing.
Speaker 1: I don't think. Yeah, the squirrel calls to Penny. Which
Speaker 1: ones you have? You know, the ones that I've used
Speaker 1: to when we're trying to locate them. You know, you're
Speaker 1: it's it's a percussion kind of instrument. You know, you're
Speaker 1: pound and it's the chucks. You're getting this little plunger yep.
Speaker 1: And and that makes sense because that's one they're easier
Speaker 1: to locate. So and usually use them when the squirrels
Speaker 1: in the back side of the tree or a big
Speaker 1: branch and they kind of look around, you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's where they're effective, is actually getting there, you know,
Speaker 1: getting their attention. Rarely do do they can you draw
Speaker 1: them out of a nest uh? And so so you
Speaker 1: use those for research. Per We use them for research
Speaker 1: if we know, if we're trying to check on is
Speaker 1: this individual live and we don't have radio collars on
Speaker 1: all our animals, you can go in and use that
Speaker 1: chucking call or use my really lame chucks. That's enough
Speaker 1: for a squirrel typically to to peek around a tree,
Speaker 1: and so you'll hear them, you'll hear them skirting around
Speaker 1: the tree a little bit that you know, running against
Speaker 1: the bark, um, and that's it's a great way to
Speaker 1: locate individuals. And oh yeah, it's ready red right ear
Speaker 1: and green left ear kind of thing. The other call
Speaker 1: that you'll hear during those mating chases is that it's
Speaker 1: kind of a snorting of males and as they run along,
Speaker 1: it's a great way to locate. That's how we locate
Speaker 1: mating chases in kind of natural forest that's not a
Speaker 1: park land like I was describing before. So we work
Speaker 1: on endangered gram red squirrels in Arizona and really dense forests.
Speaker 1: But during the breeding season you can hear this kind
Speaker 1: of sneezing or snorting um as all these males are
Speaker 1: chasing the female. And it's thought that one there's they're
Speaker 1: trying to clear their uh, their their nasal passages so
Speaker 1: they can pick up scent and figure out where the
Speaker 1: female is as quickly as possible. Um. So it's thought
Speaker 1: that it's related to that. The only other call with
Speaker 1: a couple other really rare calls, but um the probably
Speaker 1: the the other one that's similar to some of these
Speaker 1: that high pitched wine that we talked about females. If so,
Speaker 1: during these mating chases, the females will avoid males um
Speaker 1: and kind of incite this chase so that the it's thoughts,
Speaker 1: so the most, you know, the animal that's in the
Speaker 1: best shape, has the best ability to locate a limited
Speaker 1: resource can find her, and so she'll run through shrubbery
Speaker 1: and things like that, and then she'll just sit at
Speaker 1: the base of a tree and and it's usually the
Speaker 1: first male that finds her that will get to mate
Speaker 1: with her. So the success is a little bit on dominance,
Speaker 1: but it's on your skill in locating the female. If
Speaker 1: they don't find her, she's now you know, she has
Speaker 1: to meet. She's only in heat for six hours. If
Speaker 1: she doesn't, you know, then she's not going to repridase.
Speaker 1: So she'll actually issue that alarm call, that really high
Speaker 1: pitched call, and it will attract all those mails again
Speaker 1: to the site, and then she'll mate with the first
Speaker 1: one if they find her before the other males do.
Speaker 1: So the same calls used in a slightly different context.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with I'm sure you are. When when
Speaker 1: they're sitting there doing that piste off call, that their
Speaker 1: tails moving it and that's what gives them away. I
Speaker 1: heard someone suggests that they're using that tail to to
Speaker 1: trick predators, because when the hawks come to slap them,
Speaker 1: they hit that tail because they see the tail moving,
Speaker 1: and then the squirrel skinnies out because they got him
Speaker 1: by the tail. So a couple of things. One that
Speaker 1: flicking the tail also kind of correlated with how piste
Speaker 1: off they are, so the more worked up there about something,
Speaker 1: you'll see them flicking that tail more. People have tried
Speaker 1: to see how much information is really conveyed in that,
Speaker 1: you know, is there a hidden squirrel language, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's not at that level where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's a you know, meaning of that flicking the tail,
Speaker 1: but it does, uh seem to be correlated with how
Speaker 1: risky the situation is, so that perhaps the predator sees that,
Speaker 1: but other individuals may see that as well and recognize, okay,
Speaker 1: you know there's something really close here that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's bothersome. But that tail itself has a couple of
Speaker 1: different functions. One is that it is used for dissipaining heat.
Speaker 1: So if you if you watch a squirrel during the
Speaker 1: heat of the summer and clay, you know, in Arkansas
Speaker 1: you probably see this sometimes, but you'll see them splaited
Speaker 1: out sometimes on the ground in some moist soil. They'll
Speaker 1: flick their tail up and if you look at the
Speaker 1: base that if you look at the base to the tail,
Speaker 1: they actually spread the hairs and you'll see blood pulsing
Speaker 1: through there. So it's a way that they dissipate heat.
Speaker 1: And you can in Arizona some of the squirrel species
Speaker 1: that we have down there, like the Mexican fox squirrel,
Speaker 1: you know they're they're in a hundred and ten degree
Speaker 1: temperatures and you know, if you're out running around, you've
Speaker 1: got to get rid of that heat fast. And you're
Speaker 1: wearing this, you know, this fur coat. So they literally
Speaker 1: sit there and use that tail, so they'll flip it
Speaker 1: up over themselves, send blood through it and sound blood
Speaker 1: through it. It's just a surface to get rid of heat.
Speaker 1: It Also, we know that they'll use them during the winter.
Speaker 1: It's like kind of an added layer of insulation that
Speaker 1: so you'll see it laying over their back. Some of
Speaker 1: the kind of classic squirrel pictures in the winter are
Speaker 1: usually just here's another another blanket you're throwing on, or
Speaker 1: they use them like an umbrella. You know, they're I've
Speaker 1: seen them with you know, half inch of snow on
Speaker 1: the on the top of the tail and they're just
Speaker 1: you know, kind of huddled down. So there's that advantage
Speaker 1: as well. But if you're going to have if you're
Speaker 1: going to be attacked by a predator, you know, talents
Speaker 1: in talents in the uh you know, in the tail
Speaker 1: are much better than talents in the rib cage. So
Speaker 1: they do. You do occasionally find tailless animals. Some of
Speaker 1: that maybe due to predators, but really if a predator
Speaker 1: gets you, you know, and you're that close, predators are
Speaker 1: really good at making sure they know seal the deal. Uh.
Speaker 1: More often we see these broken tails and clip tails
Speaker 1: are actually the result of battle between animals, so they
Speaker 1: don't they don't clip each other. He's going for the
Speaker 1: nuts and gets the tails. Gonna say, they're not going.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go back there, Steve, I thought
Speaker 1: we were past this, but uh, you know, we can
Speaker 1: revisit if necessary. Uh. So they don't go for the
Speaker 1: for those but the testicles, but they will go four tails.
Speaker 1: And so every time I see a squirrel of the
Speaker 1: broken tail, I make up a mind movie where the
Speaker 1: fox gets him by the tail and he busts off,
Speaker 1: and I'm like certain that that's what's happened. I never
Speaker 1: thought it was like squirrel on squirrel violence. It's usually
Speaker 1: squirrel on squirrel violence very rarely. I have seen probably
Speaker 1: thirty or forty predation events by by mammal predators and
Speaker 1: never once had they've grabbed him by the tail. But
Speaker 1: never once have has that tail broken off before they've
Speaker 1: got the kill shot in there already. But when squirrels,
Speaker 1: especially during these mating chases, when two males are fighting,
Speaker 1: they'll often grab the other one by the tail and
Speaker 1: literally kind of fling them around and throw them out
Speaker 1: of the tree. So, uh, that's where we think most
Speaker 1: of the broken tails come from. And you see them
Speaker 1: more commonly in males than females because exactly that kind
Speaker 1: of biology got any more calling questions, Johnny, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess if you think there's something interesting there with
Speaker 1: the with the red pine squirrel chatter that like ice
Speaker 1: always walk this, uh the irrigation ditch. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a great way to sneak through the woods, and it
Speaker 1: kind of cut through a piece of woods separated some
Speaker 1: agg fields these elk fed and and up above it
Speaker 1: was where they where they betted. And I used to
Speaker 1: just hate it when up ahead of me or near me, boy,
Speaker 1: you get one barking atch it and I just felt
Speaker 1: like matt every elk within you know, hundred fifty yards,
Speaker 1: just like I know, yohn, he's coming down the ditch. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But what what I like is when you um are
Speaker 1: aren't doing anything and you're being real quiet or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you hear one light up, you hear a piste
Speaker 1: off pine squirrel, and then you're like, there's no way
Speaker 1: he's mad at me, Like there's no way he knows
Speaker 1: about me. Then I get real curious over in that direction,
Speaker 1: like what is mad about? Because I think they'll bark it.
Speaker 1: I think they'll bark it anything coming through the woods,
Speaker 1: you know, So is that true? They will bark it
Speaker 1: anything elk walking through the woods, they'll bark at it
Speaker 1: because they're annoyed by it. I have seen him bark
Speaker 1: at elk and deer before they tend they use it
Speaker 1: for uh more often they'll use it for other animals,
Speaker 1: their squirrels, same species. So it's it's a territorial That's
Speaker 1: why I should have pointed out that I have never
Speaker 1: heard one light up and then lo and behold, here
Speaker 1: comes like here comes an elk. It's always like I
Speaker 1: never could find out what he's mad about. So they'll
Speaker 1: use it. They used the same kinds of calls that
Speaker 1: we were just we're talking about for fox squirrels and
Speaker 1: gray squirrels. Typically for like a predator, that's that's come through.
Speaker 1: But they use that territorial rattle call. It's that that
Speaker 1: kind a call. Okay, that's that's cool. I'll take that,
Speaker 1: take whatever I can get. You know, I think I
Speaker 1: think having that call when you're when you're hunting some
Speaker 1: other animal other than a squirrel, I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: to be paying attention to a barking squirrel. Like what
Speaker 1: I've seen is there's some percentage of times that squirrels
Speaker 1: gonna bark at a deer, and they love barking at bears.
Speaker 1: If you're hunting bears over bait, be listening for squirrels.
Speaker 1: They'll bark at a bear for sure, But but then
Speaker 1: you know, some percentage of the time they're gonna be
Speaker 1: barking another squirrel. So it's you know, not relevant information.
Speaker 1: But I mean lots of good woodsmen are listening for
Speaker 1: squirrels barking in some percentage of the time, maybe of
Speaker 1: the time they're barking at, you know, a target animal
Speaker 1: that you're after. Yeah, I would agree class, especially those
Speaker 1: Eastern grays and fox squirrels, they very often do that.
Speaker 1: The rattle calls that we're talking about with the red
Speaker 1: squirrels are uh those are a territorial call that tends
Speaker 1: to be focused on members of their own species. Although
Speaker 1: they had no idea, man, that explains so much. So
Speaker 1: you can blame your lack of success on well, no,
Speaker 1: I just I mean, I'm like, I'm like, I hear one,
Speaker 1: and I'm always dissatisfied of like that. I could never
Speaker 1: find out like what it was he was mad about.
Speaker 1: But I know he's just mad at some other squirrel,
Speaker 1: because if I saw two squirrels sitting there, I would
Speaker 1: be like, oh, he's mad at his buddy. So it
Speaker 1: really is an indicator that the space is occupied. So
Speaker 1: during and especially when when you'll see it most often
Speaker 1: is the fall, when they've when they've built these new
Speaker 1: piles of cones, and it is letting their neighbors know
Speaker 1: that there's somebody there that's there. That's their pile of
Speaker 1: cones where you do see it used is you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: you know that bears will go in, you know, grizzlies
Speaker 1: like to go in and rip open these and uh
Speaker 1: these middens and sometimes eat the little bit of meat
Speaker 1: or mushrooms, but they're mostly going for, like, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the larger pine seeds. Then that will be
Speaker 1: stored in there, and that's where you will hear those
Speaker 1: rattle calls, that territorial call of of red squirrels. That
Speaker 1: because now you've got another competitor for seeds. So we
Speaker 1: tend to see that call used against competitors, mostly other
Speaker 1: members of your own species. But you know, grizzlies like
Speaker 1: to go in and rip those open for for food.
Speaker 1: This is I didn't write this down on our little list,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna hit someone else's question here. Whose question
Speaker 1: is it about how to get him out of a
Speaker 1: dre I put that in there. Check this out. Let's
Speaker 1: say you're a squirrel biologist and you're trying to observe
Speaker 1: a squirrel and you see him running across the forest
Speaker 1: floor and you're like, I spooped, and then he runs
Speaker 1: up and goes into a dre or goes into a
Speaker 1: hole and you're just a biologists trying to do a
Speaker 1: friendly squirrel study short of like smoke bombs and whatnot,
Speaker 1: Like how would you be like, I'll show you how
Speaker 1: I'll get him to come out. Tricks of the trade.
Speaker 1: You're asking me for tricks of the trade here. But
Speaker 1: let's say a friendly squirrel biologis is a situation. So
Speaker 1: in those leaf nests, those dreys that you know, the
Speaker 1: basketball sized ball of leaves, really hard to get them
Speaker 1: out of those. They typically are going in when they
Speaker 1: have young, they're almost always in cavities. They the whole
Speaker 1: you know, the tree cavities that the old rotten hole um.
Speaker 1: So once they're up in those balls of leaves, it's
Speaker 1: really difficult to get them out. That's what I've found
Speaker 1: to be true. But in the in cavities, uh, you
Speaker 1: know you you mentioned this with the with the mink,
Speaker 1: that the animals seem to know that that animal is.
Speaker 1: You know, there's an animal outside and just like you
Speaker 1: we've all heard a squirrel walking up bark and kind
Speaker 1: of how noisy that is. The animal in the den
Speaker 1: cavity knows that you've got something. An individual coming up.
Speaker 1: So the way we if we were doing a survey
Speaker 1: as friend leave squirrel biologists, we would you just take
Speaker 1: a stick and you work it up the side of
Speaker 1: the tree like an animal that's a potential predator, an
Speaker 1: animal that's coming up. And if there's a if there's
Speaker 1: a group of squirrels in particular, they'll come out right
Speaker 1: away to kind of defend the turf. So let's talk
Speaker 1: more about there. There's so many there's so many cavities
Speaker 1: that don't have squirrels in a few that's gonna be
Speaker 1: your soul stretch as you see of go in there,
Speaker 1: you know, always get a bad feeling. And then I
Speaker 1: always think this, maybe you can answer this. Uh. I
Speaker 1: always think I'm gonna sit here until that some bitch
Speaker 1: comes back out. But man, that could wear a fell out.
Speaker 1: Well one out of ten times, yeah, he comes out
Speaker 1: in less than ten minutes. It seems like the other
Speaker 1: nine times you sit there for thirty and he hasn't
Speaker 1: showed up. Be like, all right, it's more efficient to
Speaker 1: keep walking. So those those cavities are limited resource for squirrels,
Speaker 1: and and so they'll go in and just explore to
Speaker 1: kind of you know, likely see what their options are,
Speaker 1: you know, are they going to upgrade and move into
Speaker 1: this this cavity? Uh? And and then females when they're
Speaker 1: pregnant will often go around and start exploring these more
Speaker 1: protected cavities where they're gonna where they're gonna raise their young.
Speaker 1: And so either get there. This is you know, a
Speaker 1: quick visit and you know we've all gone looking for
Speaker 1: a house or an apartment. You walk in like, no,
Speaker 1: not for me, and I turn around and come back out.
Speaker 1: So sometimes you'll get those kinds of experiences. But when
Speaker 1: you spook them in and he runs and you're like,
Speaker 1: it's obvious he knew where that hole was, he ran
Speaker 1: to it to get away. How long do you think
Speaker 1: on average it would be so he's going to naturally
Speaker 1: come back out again, it will often be ours. So
Speaker 1: it's it's typically so yeah, well, you know when we're
Speaker 1: doing our research and you're following animals and you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: what you know, I'm trying to find this animal's nest
Speaker 1: for the night or you you know they're kind of
Speaker 1: in this area. You want to, you know, see if
Speaker 1: they're still alive. Uh, And then you spook them by accident,
Speaker 1: it often is hours, and during the heat of the summer,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll they'll go in and they'll spend sometimes
Speaker 1: three or four hours in the middle of the day
Speaker 1: keep cool to cool off, and then females with young
Speaker 1: go back and usually nurse for a couple of hours.
Speaker 1: So if you just happen to, you know, catch them
Speaker 1: on the way back to the nest or uh, you
Speaker 1: know you spooked them in and they're close enough to
Speaker 1: the nests that they ran in, they're not going to
Speaker 1: come out for for several hours. So the stick trick though,
Speaker 1: like diameter of the stick and then is it like
Speaker 1: a tapping or you more of just like like making
Speaker 1: some friction by rubbing. Do you have to get a
Speaker 1: ten ft long stick so you can actually make it
Speaker 1: work all the way up towards the whole itself. It
Speaker 1: really just depends on how far up the hole is,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't always work, but you'll have pretty good
Speaker 1: success rates with it if if there is an animal
Speaker 1: in there. How is that not broken into the squirrel
Speaker 1: hunting world? I almost think it doesn't work so well. Oh,
Speaker 1: so now you're calling me a liar. I spend a
Speaker 1: couple hours of my day with you and then right
Speaker 1: at the end comes out damn still feeling a little
Speaker 1: salty about the squirrel. Testical questions and we will report
Speaker 1: back guarantee. Yeah, but I know, is it more of
Speaker 1: like a tapping or just like are you just like
Speaker 1: like a rubbing. It's a rubbing. You're trying to imitate
Speaker 1: an animal coming up if you watch so, I would
Speaker 1: encourage you to go out sometime in the evening and
Speaker 1: follow animals back to the nest, especially during the colder seasons.
Speaker 1: This is what fox and grays and what red squirrels
Speaker 1: are pretty solitary, although in winter sometimes they'll nest together
Speaker 1: the but and you'll watch the animal. It'll it'll typically
Speaker 1: come in from the side. It won't typically come straight
Speaker 1: up the nest, but it'll it'll come in through the canopy,
Speaker 1: jump on the main stalk and and go up to
Speaker 1: the cavity. You'll see animals inside just kind of peek
Speaker 1: their head out just a little bit. And we know
Speaker 1: that they have ultrasonic calls to um and they haven't
Speaker 1: been very well studied, so we're talking about vocalizations. We
Speaker 1: can't hear the ultrasound, but we know that they can
Speaker 1: hear in that range, and so they're probably and those
Speaker 1: ultrasonic calls don't travel very far, so they're good for
Speaker 1: that really close use, you know, really close distance, so
Speaker 1: we think that they're actually communicating you know, friend or foe,
Speaker 1: you know something there. Sometimes you'll see that they'll they'll
Speaker 1: they'll get chased out, they'll run down, pick up some leaves,
Speaker 1: like some warm bedding, and try to use that almost
Speaker 1: as a gift to get in. Sometimes it works, um,
Speaker 1: but the uh so you're really trying to imitate something
Speaker 1: moving up, you know, maybe a predator that they all need.
Speaker 1: If it's if it's a you know, if it's an
Speaker 1: animal that could a member should be part of the group,
Speaker 1: those ultra sonic calls are probably gonna work. So you
Speaker 1: really want to imitate you know, you're it's a raccoon
Speaker 1: coming up where they're all going to jump out of
Speaker 1: the nest and and um, you know you'll be able
Speaker 1: to see if that's you know, if if it's occupied
Speaker 1: or not. But it's more just a scratching, a light scinching,
Speaker 1: And so I think I think that's something most people
Speaker 1: won't be familiar with. But if you watch the animals
Speaker 1: in the evening, you'll you'll you'll see that. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing is the scent marks that we talked
Speaker 1: about that can tell you if if if the area
Speaker 1: is occupied, can actually if you smell enough of them,
Speaker 1: you can tell here's one that's really active and that
Speaker 1: there are probably a higher density of of animals that
Speaker 1: are in that site. So those are those are a
Speaker 1: couple of tricks of the trade. This is my last question.
Speaker 1: Then these guys can ask their last questions to My
Speaker 1: last question is in your in your field as an academic,
Speaker 1: Let's say you got curious about squirrels falling. Okay, when
Speaker 1: you consider the limits of animal ethics, could you ever, like,
Speaker 1: would you be allowed to propose and execute a study
Speaker 1: in which you took squirrels and dropped them from various
Speaker 1: heights to see what happens to them? Or would that
Speaker 1: just get shut down as being like just sort of
Speaker 1: like the reward wasn't there wasn't enough to like justify it, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that's it. It's it's the kind of
Speaker 1: weighing the benefits and the and the cost, you know,
Speaker 1: the ethical costs of doing that, so you know they're
Speaker 1: in that case, you'd want to know. You know, I
Speaker 1: do the study of looking at museum bones and see
Speaker 1: you know how many are broken? Is you know, does
Speaker 1: that seem to be an issue? There may be other
Speaker 1: ways that you get there. And you know, while that's
Speaker 1: while it's interesting, you know, learning about their mortality, uh,
Speaker 1: that may not be you know, in my mind, that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be enough to sway it to let's drop squirrels
Speaker 1: from you know, a bunch of a bunch of different heights, Uh,
Speaker 1: to learn the little bit that we might add to
Speaker 1: just like the pain and suffering doesn't warrant the But
Speaker 1: for instance, we we've worked on some squirrel removal projects
Speaker 1: where you've got an invasive and non native species and
Speaker 1: that's in a place on Mount Graham. We have federally
Speaker 1: endangered species of red subspecies of red squirrel there and
Speaker 1: there's introduced abert squirrels, and so we've done some removal
Speaker 1: studies because because the real conservation goal is let's make
Speaker 1: sure we still have the native species here. And in
Speaker 1: that case, you know, we viewed it and so did
Speaker 1: our Institutional Review Board UM and the state with their
Speaker 1: permits viewed it as a reasonable trade off this species
Speaker 1: that wasn't supposed to be here. Um. And so what
Speaker 1: we've actually done is the state of Arizona increased the
Speaker 1: length of the season, bag limits, all those things as
Speaker 1: a way to kind of control that non native species.
Speaker 1: So I think that you know, in that case, you say, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know it's a lethal method. We're removing these individuals, um,
Speaker 1: and they're you know, they're being hunters, are taking them
Speaker 1: and helping with conversation conservation. Um. In that case, you know,
Speaker 1: we we thought that that the balance, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they're the cost versus benefits warranted. You know, they're doing
Speaker 1: that kind of lethal removal to try to have an
Speaker 1: impact on a species that you know might otherwise go extinct.
Speaker 1: You've written multiple books and like dozens of papers on squirrels, right,
Speaker 1: I have that, right, hundreds of papers. Okay, okay, So,
Speaker 1: like I know it's not a secured Olson Award when
Speaker 1: it kind of I've done my homework here. Do you
Speaker 1: do you prioritize like studying squirrelds in wild areas or
Speaker 1: would you do a study in Central Park and be
Speaker 1: satisfied with the observations. It really depends on what your
Speaker 1: question is. You know, if you're what you're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, if you wanted to know, uh
Speaker 1: something like social behaviors and some of the things that
Speaker 1: we've talked about, being able to observe animals is really critical.
Speaker 1: And although some of their social structure might change, some
Speaker 1: of the basics, you know, are they willing to nest
Speaker 1: with other individuals? Set marking those things are thing that
Speaker 1: things that would be almost impossible to study with radio
Speaker 1: telemetry or you know, with with observations in a real
Speaker 1: natural woodland with you know, lots of different layers to
Speaker 1: the canopy and uh, you know, it just would be
Speaker 1: very difficult to see. Uh. But but we can learn
Speaker 1: a great deal in those kind of open areas. And
Speaker 1: we can also by comparing the you know, an urban
Speaker 1: area and urban park land and a more wild natural situation,
Speaker 1: we can also learn something what might change and how
Speaker 1: habitat might be influential, how human impacts, you know, might work.
Speaker 1: Squirrels are just to me, there are a great indicator
Speaker 1: of change, uh, you know, things that we might not
Speaker 1: even yet see. Squirrels are able to pick up on
Speaker 1: those things, and and uh, because they're common enough, we
Speaker 1: can see changes in density, we can see changes in behavior.
Speaker 1: I've mentioned a couple of times, things like the size
Speaker 1: of the home range changes based on the quality of
Speaker 1: the forest. We go in and we look at a
Speaker 1: forest and say, yeah, maybe, you know, maybe not enough
Speaker 1: mature seed producing trees here, but it looks pretty similar
Speaker 1: structurally to other places. But squirrels, you know, that require
Speaker 1: enough food energy, enough of those seed producing trees will
Speaker 1: let us know that there's a problem. You know, beetle kill,
Speaker 1: huge problem in many of the forests here in the West.
Speaker 1: By the time we often even notice beetle kill, we've
Speaker 1: seen squirrel decreases and squirrel numbers in those areas that
Speaker 1: they're already responding to those changes. So in some ways,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot like the canary in a coal
Speaker 1: mine that you know coal miners would take in. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're kind of an early warning system, and they're common
Speaker 1: enough that they can that we can learn relatively quickly,
Speaker 1: and because they don't live that long, they respond pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Their numbers respond quickly. You have in your notes that uh,
Speaker 1: noise can impact them. Yeah. One of the things that
Speaker 1: we've all been down, you know, dirt roads with lots
Speaker 1: of red squirrels on each side of the road and thought, ah,
Speaker 1: you know, not many people go down this this road,
Speaker 1: probably very little impact. We've actually done some studies where
Speaker 1: we've mapped the noise in so we we've gone out
Speaker 1: in the forest with a bunch of noise detectors and mapped,
Speaker 1: you know, had a map of the amount of noise,
Speaker 1: and then we've just driven a single truck through there
Speaker 1: and looked at how that noise level changes and and uh,
Speaker 1: there's enough of a change that that squirrels can avoid
Speaker 1: those roads a little bit. And uh, and and red
Speaker 1: squirrels in particular, they won't build middens near the near roads.
Speaker 1: And it's not the structure of the forest, it's actually
Speaker 1: the noise that's there. So they are really sensitive. And
Speaker 1: I guess you know that makes sense. We're talking about
Speaker 1: all these vocalizations and if you're trying to listen for
Speaker 1: predators all the time, you know, you're kind of a
Speaker 1: bite sized morsel for lots of things. Then you know
Speaker 1: your ability to uh to detect predators has probably decreased
Speaker 1: a little bit. So they're they're kind of a good
Speaker 1: they're a good indicator. You know, if you have the
Speaker 1: occasional vehicle moving down the road, that's not problematic, you know,
Speaker 1: but if you've got if you're hitting a point where
Speaker 1: there's so much traffic now that's going down down these areas,
Speaker 1: squirrels are kind of an early warning system that, Okay,
Speaker 1: something's changed, traffic levels are getting a little bit too
Speaker 1: much here, So you know, maybe we need to to
Speaker 1: look at how we're using the forest, how we're using
Speaker 1: those roads. If if you google squirrel expert, your name
Speaker 1: comes up right, like, that's that's how we's That's what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get at here. That's like how we tracked
Speaker 1: you down right like you are North America regretting that
Speaker 1: right authority on squirrels. Okay, this this is gonna be
Speaker 1: an ignorant question, but like, how how does someone like
Speaker 1: yourself the squirrel expert, end up at Arizona and Wyoming
Speaker 1: That that seems to me like the nation's elk expert
Speaker 1: being in Nebraska, or like the white tail expert being
Speaker 1: in Washington State. It just doesn't really fit in my mind. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I think many people would say that initially. Uh,
Speaker 1: But for instance, the greatest diversity of squirrels in the
Speaker 1: US is in Arizona. So you know, we we've talked
Speaker 1: about when you think of that kind of basin and
Speaker 1: range landscape where you've got you know, mountaintops that are
Speaker 1: forested where you're gonna find squirrels, and then you've got
Speaker 1: ground squirrels first of all, in the you know, open grasslands,
Speaker 1: the kind of seas in between the these mountains. Uh.
Speaker 1: In many places in the West, you may have different
Speaker 1: species and this is the case in Arizona. When you
Speaker 1: just move move fifty miles between two different mountains, you've
Speaker 1: got a couple of different species. You know, they've been
Speaker 1: most of those mountains in Arizona been isolated since the
Speaker 1: Ice Age and uh, you know, from a squirrels perspective.
Speaker 1: So it's just it's really fascinating for diversity Wyoming. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just the the wonderful, wide open kind of
Speaker 1: wild and working lands that so many of us value
Speaker 1: about the West. Same here in Montana. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: the ability to have species like this that are great
Speaker 1: indicators of change, ability to go in and you know, uh,
Speaker 1: really helped manage these these natural areas really really is
Speaker 1: critical when you have you know, a species like this
Speaker 1: that can be wonderful indicators, be an early warning system.
Speaker 1: You know. The opportunity to make a difference here, you know,
Speaker 1: is is really wonderful. So I've I've enjoyed living in
Speaker 1: the West and and having moved to the hobb School
Speaker 1: of Environment and Natural Resources, you know, just in the
Speaker 1: last few months for exactly that same opportunity to have
Speaker 1: an impact. And that's why you guys are as much
Speaker 1: fun as you have in these kinds of shows. You know,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that we have these opportunities
Speaker 1: in the future. And and that's that's the same for me.
Speaker 1: So that's that's what's brought me here. I can't speak
Speaker 1: for the elk biologist in Nebraska, though, Clay, what you got?
Speaker 1: You got your final, final questions, final thoughts. Man. You know,
Speaker 1: my only question was about squirrel meat. Just real quick.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to fuel this narrative that we all have
Speaker 1: that squirrel meat is like rocket fuel and like this
Speaker 1: great meat. Um, do you have any info on protein
Speaker 1: and nutrient content and squirrel meat as compared to other meats? No,
Speaker 1: I don't, Clay. Um, you know it is very tasty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I I've enjoyed squirrel but I don't I
Speaker 1: don't have a comparison. Um. Sorry, yeah, you know, most people,
Speaker 1: a lot of people have the have kind of a
Speaker 1: stigma with squirrel meat. You know. I was just thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, their diet is just so much plants, fruits
Speaker 1: and nuts. I mean, they're that's a really clean animal.
Speaker 1: I mean when you skin them and eat them, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's really a lot of just mental stigma. But well,
Speaker 1: since you don't have that data, I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and just keep telling my story that it's like the
Speaker 1: most healthy meat in the world. That's all Steve Well
Speaker 1: I Clay, I will say that. You know, I think
Speaker 1: I think you're right that that squirrels get a bad rap.
Speaker 1: It's probably back to the tree rat kinds of things
Speaker 1: where we started today. Uh. You know, there's a bit
Speaker 1: of a stigma. But they are they're they're omnivorous, they're
Speaker 1: eating a variety of different foods. Uh, and so in
Speaker 1: that sense, you know, they are a good meat. The
Speaker 1: other thing that I think, you know, from a hunting perspective,
Speaker 1: it's a great way to get kids involved. Um, you
Speaker 1: know early it's one of those species they see enough of. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you know you may not you may not have
Speaker 1: to have great luck in the day, but you're out,
Speaker 1: you know, moving through the woods, appreciating the forest. Lots
Speaker 1: of sign to teach, you know, kids about You can
Speaker 1: see those, you know, the hull nuts, you can see
Speaker 1: some of the diggings, you can see these scent marks.
Speaker 1: It's just a great way to teach, you know, teach
Speaker 1: folks how to how to really enjoy those natural areas. Okay,
Speaker 1: what do you got, Yanni, wrap it up. I don't
Speaker 1: have anything else. I'm just gonna throw to John and
Speaker 1: see if there's anything that we uh, that you wanted
Speaker 1: to add that you feel like we missed a big
Speaker 1: squirrel conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed this time and and and
Speaker 1: hope hopefully everyone's learned a little bit about things. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're filming this on the twenties. We're taping this on
Speaker 1: the twenty second of January, the day after Squirrel Appreciation Day,
Speaker 1: so I know it's probably hard for any of you
Speaker 1: to pull yourself out of bed. And Appreciation Day. That's
Speaker 1: my brother's birthday, so so it is every year January
Speaker 1: twenty one. It's it was just designated as Squirrel Appreciation Day.
Speaker 1: So we're kind of in the high holy days of
Speaker 1: squirrel biology because I'm very second Groundhog Day coming up.
Speaker 1: So this is you know, you're lucky that that I
Speaker 1: was willing to drive here on squirrel appreciation because appreciation day. Appreciate, right,
Speaker 1: and so I really have appreciated the discussion. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's just, uh, I really feel that
Speaker 1: that squirrels. We've talked about them, you know, as a
Speaker 1: as a resource for us to enjoy, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: as hunters. You've got folks in urban environments like me
Speaker 1: growing up, really the only mammal that I could, you know,
Speaker 1: could see and enjoy. You know, their teachers use them
Speaker 1: for you know, for projects and biology early on, and
Speaker 1: then their their indicator species of you know, of forest change.
Speaker 1: So to me, I really appreciate. You know, anyone can
Speaker 1: appreciate the beauty of an elk moving across you know,
Speaker 1: a meadow, but to have the finer level of apprecia,
Speaker 1: it takes that special level of appreciation. How does someone
Speaker 1: find your books on squirrels? Uh, They're they're all on Amazon. Uh,
Speaker 1: you've got Squirrels of the World. Is the is the
Speaker 1: one that we uh that we're most proud of and
Speaker 1: we're working on a new new edition of that. North
Speaker 1: American Tree Squirrels. Uh, there's a book on the College
Speaker 1: of Endangerment in Mount Crme Red Squirrels, and and most
Speaker 1: recently the book I shared with you is um International
Speaker 1: Wildlife Management that looks at things broadly, but there are
Speaker 1: a few squirrel mentions in there. I wouldn't mind getting
Speaker 1: me a signed copy of North American Tree Squirrels. We
Speaker 1: can make that happen. I just read that book, but
Speaker 1: I need to read that one. You think hunters can
Speaker 1: learn something from your squirrel books most definitely. I think
Speaker 1: Squirrels of the World is kind of a compendium that
Speaker 1: shows everything from chipmunks. So when we talked, we've talked
Speaker 1: mostly about tree squirrels, but you've got flying squirrels, which
Speaker 1: are mostly nocturnal. You've got prairie dogs, you know, groundhogs, marmots, chipmunks,
Speaker 1: all of those things are are squirrels as well. That
Speaker 1: covers all of them. North American tree Squirrels a lot
Speaker 1: of these uh topics we've talked about. One of the
Speaker 1: great things about writing a book like that is those
Speaker 1: few those observations where you only have a couple of
Speaker 1: cases of them, you can weave them into a book
Speaker 1: more than you get a scientific publication out of it.
Speaker 1: So North American Tree Squirrels has has a bunch of
Speaker 1: these kinds of things. Talks a lot about the scent
Speaker 1: marking sites and nesting behavior, social behavior. So it would
Speaker 1: be a good one to to learn a learn a
Speaker 1: fair amount from. All right, John, once again, John, lad
Speaker 1: you do the last name Kaprowski. That's not that, all right,
Speaker 1: John led Kaprowski, Dean and Wyoming Excellence Chair at the
Speaker 1: Hobb School of Environment and Natural Resources, and a squirrel man.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of all of this. Doctor. Thank you for
Speaker 1: doctor squirrel. Thank you very much for coming on. This
Speaker 1: is great. You answered a million questions for us. Uh
Speaker 1: thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks. You know, hardly anyone wants to
Speaker 1: talk about squirrel, so when you have the chance, you
Speaker 1: guys are lucky. I'm not staying an extra day. I Uh,
Speaker 1: it's great. It answered a lot of lifelong questions. I'll
Speaker 1: look at him, um differently now and I can tell
Speaker 1: you that, um, I am going to start trying to
Speaker 1: find some of those uh, those buck rubs those squirrel rubs,
Speaker 1: which is fascinating. I can't believe I didn't know about it.
Speaker 1: So if you find some, send me some pictures everyone
Speaker 1: out there, of your buck rubs squirrel rubs. All right,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Thanks Sean, thank you,