Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back for part two of our two part
Speaker 1: exploration of the world of skugs. That's right, squirrels. Squirrels.
Speaker 1: If you did not listen to our last episode, our
Speaker 1: most recent episode about squirrels, go back and listen to it,
Speaker 1: because it will. It will provide some necessary, horrific revelations
Speaker 1: about the squirrel that you really need going into this episode.
Speaker 1: And we should warn at the beginning that, uh, if
Speaker 1: you didn't listen to the last episode you want to
Speaker 1: listen to this one anyway, you should be forewarned. This
Speaker 1: is going to be one of the most gruesome things
Speaker 1: we've ever explored on the show. I think how squirrels,
Speaker 1: I would say that the last episode, which largely dealt
Speaker 1: with the fact that squirrels eat meat and do act
Speaker 1: really stalk prey. Uh Like, that's an episode I would
Speaker 1: listen to with my six year old son and I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have any problem with it. I've talked about the
Speaker 1: topics on that episode with him. This episode, I would
Speaker 1: probably not listen to with nice year old son. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't think it would roll out this way. But
Speaker 1: but our exploration of squirrels is one of the most
Speaker 1: inappropriate for children of all things we've ever we've ever
Speaker 1: explored here. Yes, but we're walking in deep truth tonight
Speaker 1: at children, So so stick with us as we explore
Speaker 1: more horrific facts about squirrel behavior. So again, last episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about squirrels eating meat, squirrels stalking their prey,
Speaker 1: squirrels messing around with snakes. Uh, squirrels, and their relationship
Speaker 1: with Benjamin Franklin. This time now. In the last episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about certain myths about Benjamin Franklin and the
Speaker 1: reality of Benjamin Franklin having a pet squirrel named Mungo
Speaker 1: who he wrote analogy for when it was killed by
Speaker 1: a dog. Um. This time, I want to start off
Speaker 1: with another possible myth, possible fact that that dwells in
Speaker 1: that hazy middle world of rumor. I want to know, Robert,
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard the same rumor I have. It's
Speaker 1: a horrifying rumor. It's one I've heard for years, and
Speaker 1: it's about the competition between squirrels and the rumor goes
Speaker 1: something like this. When two adult male squirrels come into
Speaker 1: conflict over food, over territory, over mating, or whatever. The
Speaker 1: two squirrels fight with a horrible aim, and that aim
Speaker 1: is to castrate the other by biting off its squirrel testicles.
Speaker 1: I had never heard of this before. I would say
Speaker 1: the closest thing i'd heard was, you know some details
Speaker 1: about competition between chimpanzees. Yeah, by biting off Well, I
Speaker 1: just know that genital attacks um have have have been
Speaker 1: reported among chimpanzees. Uh, but I don't know with what
Speaker 1: degree of frequency. But it's the kind of thing where
Speaker 1: I heard about it in relation to chimpanzees, and now
Speaker 1: makes me look at chimpanzee is a little uh well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot with chimpanzees to be you know, a
Speaker 1: little concerned about. But but I've never heard about this
Speaker 1: with squirrels. Well, I I've heard about this for years.
Speaker 1: I don't remember where I heard it first. It might
Speaker 1: have been from some old, some good old Tennessee woodsman
Speaker 1: somewhere who spoke wisdom of the forest into my ears.
Speaker 1: But this is important for us to remind all of
Speaker 1: our listeners, is that Joe and I both grew up
Speaker 1: with with with with access to the Tennessee woodlands. Yes,
Speaker 1: so there is a lot of I'm rather surprised that
Speaker 1: I didn't hear this story from from from people who
Speaker 1: wandered out of the out of the Tennessee of forests
Speaker 1: with tales of the skug. Well, if you want to
Speaker 1: hear about the horrors of skug castration from the lips
Speaker 1: of the true speakers, you should go to YouTube, because
Speaker 1: there will be many a video of some bearded hunter
Speaker 1: standing there and Camo talking into his phone in the
Speaker 1: middle of the forest saying, here's what happens when these
Speaker 1: here squirrels buy it off each other's nuts. But it
Speaker 1: turns out there are many variations on this base rumor.
Speaker 1: So one is that you've got one squirrel species that
Speaker 1: supplants another in an area by castrating all the males
Speaker 1: of the other squirrel species. Sometimes this version goes, you've
Speaker 1: got gray squirrels doing it to red squirrels. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: say it's red squirrels doing it to gray squirrels. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the fox squirrel is thrown in there somewhere. And so
Speaker 1: what we want to look at is is there any
Speaker 1: truth to this? Is it true or is this just
Speaker 1: a horrible woodsman myth? My uh guess, of course would
Speaker 1: be that it is a myth, because it just doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like behavior one finds in animals, especially against another species.
Speaker 1: You know, it is a certainly strange targeted behavior, one
Speaker 1: thing that I wanted because because you don't have to
Speaker 1: castrate another species to drive it off. We see plenty
Speaker 1: of examples of one one species driving off another from resources,
Speaker 1: competing for the same resources, or of course, uh, two
Speaker 1: members of the same species competing for re sources or mates.
Speaker 1: But you can drive they will drive each other off
Speaker 1: through through fighting, through displays, much more conventional means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: usually genital mutilation doesn't come up. Yeah, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like a necessary step. But then again, well we'll we'll
Speaker 1: come back to this, will weigh the pros and cons
Speaker 1: later on. So one of the best things about this
Speaker 1: myth is that it doesn't just come from the woodsman
Speaker 1: and Camo talking into his phone by a forest stream.
Speaker 1: There's a rather crazy back and forth about this in
Speaker 1: several volumes of the Journal of the American Medical Association
Speaker 1: in JAMMA for more than a century ago. So in
Speaker 1: the year eight for some reason, Jamma got a little
Speaker 1: bit obsessed with rampant squirrel castration. So it started when
Speaker 1: the American surgeon Edmund Andrews wrote an article for the
Speaker 1: Journal in eight about unux and about the physiological effects
Speaker 1: of castration. And in this article Andrews puts together sort
Speaker 1: of a round owned up of what he knew about
Speaker 1: the natural effects of castration and many different animals, and
Speaker 1: one of those animals was the squirrel. And he writes
Speaker 1: quote naturalist state that the black or gray male squirrels
Speaker 1: in fighting seek to castrate each other with their teeth,
Speaker 1: so that many of those taken by hunters are thus mutilated.
Speaker 1: As they do it only in adult life, it does
Speaker 1: not materially change their general development. Because he was talking
Speaker 1: about this in the context of, well, what happens if
Speaker 1: a young animal is castrated? How does that change the
Speaker 1: way it develops into an adult? Okay, so the the
Speaker 1: the idea here is that it is it's reached material. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately Andrews does not say who these naturalists are, and
Speaker 1: makes me wonder, especially given the time, is this is
Speaker 1: this real empirical data or is he just repeating the
Speaker 1: eight version of an urban legend? Or maybe a rural
Speaker 1: legend just against somebody wandering out of the wood saying, yep,
Speaker 1: squirrels in there. They're buying each other's nuts, and they're
Speaker 1: they're they're buying the next year. That's good you called
Speaker 1: to mind. In the last episode, we talked about some
Speaker 1: rumors about squirrel attacks that seemed very unlikely to be
Speaker 1: true about like in Borneo Hunters talking about squirrels taking
Speaker 1: down deer and killing them seems hard to believe. But
Speaker 1: so this first mention is just this one off in
Speaker 1: in Andrew's article about eunux in general. And Andrews comes
Speaker 1: back to this in another volume of Jamah with an
Speaker 1: article called do adult squirrels cast rate each other? So
Speaker 1: Andrews writes, in this article, remember we asked who that
Speaker 1: naturalist was or the natural square that he got his
Speaker 1: information from. He says he got the information about squirrels
Speaker 1: from quote a distinguished naturalist, but he still doesn't say
Speaker 1: who it is. Good good lessons, cite your sources with
Speaker 1: possible folks. Apparently he got a contradictory response to this
Speaker 1: claim from a doctor named Dr A. S Allen of
Speaker 1: Mercy Hospital, Chicago, and Alan claims first of all, about
Speaker 1: a third of wild squirrels captured by hunters are found
Speaker 1: to be castrated. I assume he means one third of
Speaker 1: may squirrels, but it doesn't say I hate to be
Speaker 1: this low brow, but I'm I'm wondering if mistaking dead
Speaker 1: female squirrels for dead male squirrels could be causing some
Speaker 1: confusion among some hunters here. Perhaps perhaps, Alan says he
Speaker 1: thinks that this castration is not done in fighting between
Speaker 1: adult males, as Andrews did in his original article. He
Speaker 1: writes quote. He says that a number of gray squirrels
Speaker 1: lived protected in these trees above his former residence. A
Speaker 1: female raised a litter of young in a tree close
Speaker 1: to the house. One day, when the young were about
Speaker 1: one quarter grown, he observed the male trying repeatedly to
Speaker 1: enter the nest, but the female, which in that species
Speaker 1: is the largest of the two, fought him off and
Speaker 1: drove him away. This repeated several times, and the male
Speaker 1: finally desisted. Sometime later, the female went away, apparently to
Speaker 1: gather food. Before she returned, the male reappeared, entered the
Speaker 1: nest and created a great disturbance there, so that the
Speaker 1: doctor climbed the tree and examined the young. He found
Speaker 1: four young quarter grown males and one or two females.
Speaker 1: Three of the young males had been freshly castrated, the
Speaker 1: old male squirrel having bitten their squrotum and testies cleanly
Speaker 1: and smoothly off with his sharp incisors. That's terrifying, that
Speaker 1: is gruesome. So Alan claims that he's had a career
Speaker 1: of squirrel hunting, and he has found castrated adult males,
Speaker 1: but never freshly castrated adult males. And so Andrews considers
Speaker 1: that it would be difficult for an adult male squirrel
Speaker 1: to hold another adult male still enough to bite off
Speaker 1: his testicles, but this might be easier if the victim
Speaker 1: is a juvenile. Thus, he seems to think that Dr
Speaker 1: Allen's story is probably a better explanation for why hunters
Speaker 1: report finding so many castrated squirrels. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: he thinks this is very weird in light of natural selection,
Speaker 1: since it quote would hardly tend to benefit or perpetuate
Speaker 1: the species. Not to be condescending, but this indicates to
Speaker 1: me a kind of poor understanding of the level at
Speaker 1: which natural selection acts. Like members of a species are
Speaker 1: constantly doing things that do not benefit other members of
Speaker 1: that same species. Right, there is that there is a
Speaker 1: great deal of selfishness. Again we talk about you know,
Speaker 1: males that are competing with each other for mates, or
Speaker 1: just members of the species in general that are competing
Speaker 1: with other members of the species for resources. Right, but
Speaker 1: that is not at all I think a good argument
Speaker 1: that this is really going on. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: how to explain what Alan claims he observed in this
Speaker 1: nest of assuming the story is true, but there are
Speaker 1: a few other reports, so uh. In Spratling's follow up
Speaker 1: again in the Journal of the American Medical Association, quote
Speaker 1: how squirrels become unix. This is another volume of JAMA
Speaker 1: and there is just a flurry of letters about squirrel castration.
Speaker 1: The this really seemed to get the turn of the
Speaker 1: century physician engines revving like they were like, oh, I've
Speaker 1: got a squirrel castration story, and they wrote in one
Speaker 1: is from Dr William Spratling of New York, and Spratling
Speaker 1: writes that he spent a lot of years squirrel hunting
Speaker 1: in eastern Alabama with an experienced squirrel hunter in his sixties,
Speaker 1: and one day he shot a young male squirrel to
Speaker 1: discover it had a fresh castration wound. His companion said
Speaker 1: it must have been done by an older male and
Speaker 1: that he had often found young male squirrels like that
Speaker 1: sometimes still in the nest. Spratling asked him why the
Speaker 1: older males did it. His companion replied that Spratling should
Speaker 1: ask the squirrels. Okay, you have to kind of wonder
Speaker 1: if he just shot the squirrel. Perhaps it could have
Speaker 1: been injured in the shooting, but who knows. And of
Speaker 1: course there are a number of different ways of squirrel
Speaker 1: could be injured. You know, let's let's not limit the
Speaker 1: ways that a squirrel can could lose its scrowed them
Speaker 1: to mirror, you know, you know, hunting practices, or the
Speaker 1: the teeth of a rival male. Sure, here's another one.
Speaker 1: This one's a really choice. So this is from Dr. E. H.
Speaker 1: Smith of Santa Clara, California. First, I should know this guy.
Speaker 1: His whole writing style and everything. He sounds a little off.
Speaker 1: So Smith writes that he observed plenty of squirrels in
Speaker 1: southwestern Michigan, and he claims that the adult males do
Speaker 1: indeed fight in order to castrate, looking for opportunities to
Speaker 1: dive beneath one another and bite off the rival squrotum.
Speaker 1: He says this is primarily the red squirrels that do this,
Speaker 1: and they do it to other kinds of squirrels for heat.
Speaker 1: For the red squirrel quote is the hardest fighter of
Speaker 1: them all. And Smith says he tested this out by
Speaker 1: putting a red squirrel and a ferret in a box
Speaker 1: with each other, quote, expecting of course, that the ferret
Speaker 1: would make short work of the squirrel. Instead, he said
Speaker 1: that the squirrel went right for the ferrets testicles, and
Speaker 1: it was only by Smith intervening to protect the ferret
Speaker 1: with a stick that he avoided the doom chomp of
Speaker 1: the red squirrel. And I just wonder, like, what is
Speaker 1: worse if the guy made this up or if he's
Speaker 1: telling the truth. Yeah, and I do not really like
Speaker 1: this experiment that he claims to have performed. That is
Speaker 1: not a good experiment, that is not rigorous, and it
Speaker 1: is it's also not nice. I'm more comforted by the
Speaker 1: fact that this guy, maybe this was just some fourteen
Speaker 1: year old writing dajama making up a fake identity in
Speaker 1: the story. One last letter from a doctor Samuel J.
Speaker 1: Ford of Elliott City, Maryland, and Fort writes that he'd
Speaker 1: been hunting squirrels for years and has never noticed any
Speaker 1: castrated squirrels. That he admits he hasn't been on the
Speaker 1: lookout for this in particular, and he doubts that the
Speaker 1: biting off procedure could really be done cleanly in a
Speaker 1: way that the victim usually survives, given the shape of
Speaker 1: squirrel incisors, Like if you think about picturing them, they're
Speaker 1: more like, you know, they are kind of chompy, but
Speaker 1: they're narrow. Yeah, the survivability of the wound is something
Speaker 1: that I in my mind keeps turning to because we're
Speaker 1: talking about a pretty grievous injury, but one for for
Speaker 1: enough males to survive. And then you know, so that
Speaker 1: hunters could comment on them, they would need to not
Speaker 1: die of either blood loss or or secondary infection. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a very good point. And also think about this again,
Speaker 1: we we mentioned this earlier, but why would there actually
Speaker 1: be any incentive for an older male to do this?
Speaker 1: Why not just kill the rivals? Like, if you're actually
Speaker 1: fighting and there's some kind of serious competition, why not
Speaker 1: just injury or kill? Why this very specific targeted type
Speaker 1: of injury that's so sillacious and the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that a hunter might repeat in in rumor to another.
Speaker 1: But Ford gives a couple of rival explanations for the
Speaker 1: discovery of neutered male squirrels. He says, quote, could it
Speaker 1: not be congenital absence of the organs or failure of
Speaker 1: the organs to descend into the scrotum. I think Fort's
Speaker 1: maybe onto something there, and we can come back to
Speaker 1: that later on when we discuss possible explanations for these stories.
Speaker 1: But he also says, quote, the theory has been advanced
Speaker 1: by many hunters I have met that during the absence
Speaker 1: of the mother squirrel, the young utilize the male appendages
Speaker 1: as teats, and in their in their kind effort to
Speaker 1: produce something that is not there cause in time and
Speaker 1: atrophy of the organs. I don't know if he is
Speaker 1: he making a joke there. I can't maybe I'm not
Speaker 1: reading through the writing style has been he has been
Speaker 1: a victim of a hoax on this one. There are
Speaker 1: somebody else's joke. I mean. One thing that that I
Speaker 1: keep thinking too with each of these doctors is that, yes,
Speaker 1: these appear to be medical doctors. Assuming their realfe assuming
Speaker 1: they're real. But then also just because their medical doctors
Speaker 1: do not mean that they are really they're not biologists
Speaker 1: with any expertise in observing uh, squirrel behavior. This seems
Speaker 1: very or it smacks very much of amateur biology. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're even from someone who who should, by all rights,
Speaker 1: you know, be familiar with the scientific method to to
Speaker 1: a significant extent. These are people who practice human medicine
Speaker 1: and human medicine in the eighteen nineties. These are not
Speaker 1: not squirrel experts. They're not zoologists, they're not animal behaviorists. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know so though, on the other hand, we
Speaker 1: do have to deal with Okay, well, at least people
Speaker 1: are making these reports. What do these reports mean? That
Speaker 1: they could certainly be mistaken, But we've got plenty of
Speaker 1: reports of people who claim to have one heard stories
Speaker 1: about squirrel castration from people who deal with a lot
Speaker 1: of squirrels, seen lots of examples of castrated squirrels, both
Speaker 1: young and old, and a few kinds of dubious seeming
Speaker 1: claims of witnessing castration from adult squirrel fights. So despite
Speaker 1: the claims of people to have witnessed it themselves, that
Speaker 1: this really does have all the hallmarks of an urban legend.
Speaker 1: To me, I believe people have found squirrels missing their genitals,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure I buy the causes people have proposed.
Speaker 1: And I keep coming back to this idea, Why this
Speaker 1: one particular gruesome kind of attack. Why not just a
Speaker 1: general fighting attack, an attempt to injure or kill the
Speaker 1: other squirrel? All right, Well, on that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will look for more answers concerning this myth. Thank you,
Speaker 1: all right, we're back. Okay. So I found a book
Speaker 1: by former National Wildlife Federation executive Warner Shed called Owls
Speaker 1: Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind and Naturalists Debunks our
Speaker 1: favorite fallacies about wildlife, which addresses a version of this
Speaker 1: claim about squirrel castration. So, first of all, Shed is
Speaker 1: writing about this in the context of a chapter on
Speaker 1: squirrel myths, specifically the myth that red squirrels drive out
Speaker 1: gray squirrels from any area they inhabit, and Shed writes
Speaker 1: that while it isn't necessarily true that red squirrels will
Speaker 1: drive gray squirrels out of a forest, it is true
Speaker 1: that red squirrels tend to be very territorial and if
Speaker 1: any animal like a gray squirrel, gets too close to
Speaker 1: the red squirrels hidden cash of nuts, the red squirrel
Speaker 1: will sometimes get aggressive and try to chase the gray
Speaker 1: squirrel off. And shed says that this territorial chasing tendency
Speaker 1: might be somehow linked to the version of the castration
Speaker 1: claim that says red squirrels castrate gray squirrels, which he
Speaker 1: claims is simply the result of quote an overheated imagination
Speaker 1: or quote a deliberate tall tale. And he argues that
Speaker 1: it makes no sense for a squirrel to bite another
Speaker 1: squirrels testicles off merely consider the facts. The gray squirrel
Speaker 1: generally weighs from two to three times as much as
Speaker 1: the little red. Even what are normally the most peaceable
Speaker 1: of animals will fight savagely if necessary to protect themselves.
Speaker 1: Nor could a red squirrel, with its little teeth neatly
Speaker 1: snip off the testicles of the gray with one or
Speaker 1: two bites. The notion that the much bigger gray would
Speaker 1: allow its testicles to be gnawed off by this little
Speaker 1: relative is preposterous. Long before that happened, the gray would
Speaker 1: make squirrel hash out of the offending red, and that
Speaker 1: has an exclamation point on it, by the way, that
Speaker 1: is like, so he's really he's really driving it home.
Speaker 1: He also adds that if in general Red's had a
Speaker 1: successful strategy of sterilizing grays, grays would tend to disappear
Speaker 1: in areas where reds existed, and he says this is
Speaker 1: not the case. So it's Shed's judgment that that's his judgment.
Speaker 1: But if he's correct, and squirrels do not castrate each other,
Speaker 1: what should we make of all these reports in jama
Speaker 1: and elsewhere of people finding squirrels with castration wounds all
Speaker 1: over the place. Now, of course it's possible some of
Speaker 1: these could be lies or hoaxes. And I think with
Speaker 1: some of the even a couple of those letters into
Speaker 1: jama you have kind of have to wonder. I mean,
Speaker 1: these these supposedly are doctors writing in but I don't
Speaker 1: know that's smith guy. Well, we've discussed time and time
Speaker 1: again that even very educated individuals can either be the
Speaker 1: perpetrators of hoax hoaxes or the victims of hoaxes. And
Speaker 1: then also there's that interesting relationship between the the the
Speaker 1: the what, the hoaxer and the hoaxe um Karl Sagan
Speaker 1: talks about this in the demon Haunted World and points
Speaker 1: whether it's like a magic trick, a magic trick, is
Speaker 1: it is? It is something that exists because of a
Speaker 1: silent pact between the magician and the audience. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: don't want to admit they've been tricked. If they've been tricked,
Speaker 1: even momentarily, they kind of don't want to admit that
Speaker 1: they fell for it, and will fight to defend the
Speaker 1: reality of the illusion. But then again, I don't think
Speaker 1: I would explain all of these cases in terms of hoaxes,
Speaker 1: deliberate hoaxes or tricks. I think in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases you're probably going to be dealing with people who
Speaker 1: were mistaken about what they saw or who were interpreting
Speaker 1: misinterpreting something. So that brings us to the question of
Speaker 1: what else could cause a squirrel to appear incorrectly to
Speaker 1: have suffered this type of injury or attack. Now, there's
Speaker 1: one hypothesis that's pretty far out there. It's not exactly
Speaker 1: a perfect fit, but it is kind of worth a look.
Speaker 1: And this is an explanation put forward by Ernest Thompson Seton,
Speaker 1: who was an early influence on the formation and mythology
Speaker 1: of the boy Scouts of America. Uh Seton noted that
Speaker 1: there is a species of parasitic bot fly that is
Speaker 1: an obligate of tree squirrels. Intends to lay eggs in
Speaker 1: the squirrels groin, and these eggs hatch and the larva
Speaker 1: erupt from the skin and it's gross, but the squirrel
Speaker 1: can usually survive it. It doesn't really benefit the bot
Speaker 1: fly to kill its host. And if this larva eruption
Speaker 1: were to happen in the groin as it apparently, sometimes
Speaker 1: US hunters seeing wounds of this kind might think that
Speaker 1: the squirrels had had their groins violently attacked. And this
Speaker 1: bot fly does exist, It's called coutarebra emasculator, or the
Speaker 1: tree squirrel bot fly. And bot flies on their own
Speaker 1: are fascinating subject we we we could return to them endlessly.
Speaker 1: Oh yes. The bot fly also known as the heel fly,
Speaker 1: the gad fly, or my favorite, and especially as it
Speaker 1: relates to squirrels, is the warble fly. Now why is
Speaker 1: that your favorite as it relates to squirrels, Because you
Speaker 1: will sometimes see what is often described as a lumpy squirrel.
Speaker 1: If you spend as much time looking at squirrels as
Speaker 1: we have, and certainly any kind of like rural southern environment.
Speaker 1: Then I bet you've either seen or heard of a
Speaker 1: warble squarbled squirrel, a lumpy squirrel. It I remember seeing
Speaker 1: one when I was young and find it found it
Speaker 1: rather grotesque. Why is that squirrel lumpy? What is going
Speaker 1: on with that squirrel? And you're saying a warble fly
Speaker 1: is a good explanation, y Oh, yeah, I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's the explanation. So but again, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of bot flies. They're like something like a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty species worldwide, and most of their larva are
Speaker 1: obligant parasites of mammals. Their maggots grow in the flesh,
Speaker 1: usually the skin of the animals, sometimes in the gut.
Speaker 1: South America's human bot fly, or Dermatobia home menace, is
Speaker 1: the only species that routinely grows it's young and human flesh.
Speaker 1: And if you're a big time podcast listener, like a
Speaker 1: lot of you are, I'm sure you've heard accounts of
Speaker 1: these infections, particularly on w n y c's Radio Lab.
Speaker 1: In particular, evolutionary biologists Jerry Coyne observed the growth of
Speaker 1: a bot fly larva in his own scalp and uh,
Speaker 1: and he remarked on how it was not just growing
Speaker 1: inside of him, but out of him. The resulting creature was,
Speaker 1: in a strange way, part of him. It was like
Speaker 1: like his offspring. I actually read about this in a
Speaker 1: fantastic book in one of my high school biology classes.
Speaker 1: It was a book called Tropical Nature by Adrian Forsyth
Speaker 1: and Kin Miata, and they had a chapter on this
Speaker 1: incident called Jerry's Maggot. That's all about Jerry having the
Speaker 1: bot fly growing out of it. I think it was
Speaker 1: it was out of his head, right, yeah, his scalp um.
Speaker 1: I remember that. That was an eye opening read when
Speaker 1: I was like fourteen or whatever. But that's the human
Speaker 1: bot fly. We should get back to this specific squirrel
Speaker 1: a bot fly that we're talking about here, right, Kudeebra emasculadder,
Speaker 1: the tree squirrel bot fly. So it's a parasite of
Speaker 1: tree squirrels and chipmunks. It's found throughout eastern North America.
Speaker 1: There are multiple species of kudarebraa bot fly which infect
Speaker 1: different hosts and emasculator as you you can kind of
Speaker 1: hear something going on in the name there It was
Speaker 1: named by the entomologist Asa Fitch based on his mistaken
Speaker 1: belief that the larvae of the species eight the testicles
Speaker 1: of hosts squirrels, and the hypothesis about this being the
Speaker 1: explanation for apparent squirrel castration is not as strong as
Speaker 1: it once was. Maybe isn't as strong now as when
Speaker 1: um Seaton proposed it, since scientists actually no longer believe
Speaker 1: that the grubs of the bot fly eat the squirrels gonads.
Speaker 1: I was reading more recent stuff about the spot fly,
Speaker 1: and it looks like there's not any particular tendency or
Speaker 1: attention of the spot fly to concentrate in the groin
Speaker 1: or the genitals or anything. But then again, it need
Speaker 1: not actually eat the gonads to be interpreted as such
Speaker 1: by a like about an average like hunter or even
Speaker 1: a medical doctor who just picks up a squirrel or
Speaker 1: sees one trotting around on the defense. Right, right, so
Speaker 1: maybe say, oh, that's a kind of a bloody scrotum.
Speaker 1: I wonder what's going on there. The explanation must be, uh,
Speaker 1: this weird squirrel scrotum attacking explanation, right, So maybe they
Speaker 1: just see a bot fly some kind of weird growth
Speaker 1: or protuberants that looks a nasty somewhere on the underside
Speaker 1: of a squirrel, and they're like, Oh, what happened there?
Speaker 1: But I don't know. So it's possible this could explain
Speaker 1: some occasional observations of genital injuries and squirrels, but I
Speaker 1: would say this doesn't really seem like a good general
Speaker 1: explanation for all of the observations. Now, Joe, I do
Speaker 1: have to return to the Tennessee and aspects of this
Speaker 1: story for a second. Um. I worked for a small
Speaker 1: Tennessee newspaper back in two thousand four, and I definitely
Speaker 1: remember information pieces that we published covering this vital question.
Speaker 1: Is it safe to skin and eat a lumpy squirrel?
Speaker 1: That's some service journalism, it is. I mean, you've given
Speaker 1: You've given the people what they need and what they
Speaker 1: need to know. Um which I remember being horrified by
Speaker 1: this because I'd seen a warrib old squirrel and my
Speaker 1: first thought was, I wonder if I can eat that.
Speaker 1: I would think I'm going to pass on the war
Speaker 1: bold squirrel and maybe go with one of these non
Speaker 1: warb old um squirrel specimens. Squirrel fritters are on the
Speaker 1: menu tonight. And I'm I've got a hurt and for
Speaker 1: some squirrel meat? Will this do in a pinch? Well?
Speaker 1: So I looked into it a little bit to see
Speaker 1: if I could find some more recent examples of this
Speaker 1: same kind of of journalism, and I did run across
Speaker 1: the one from two thousand seven in the Chattanoogan, Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: And there's a quote in it in the peace from
Speaker 1: wildlife biologist Alex Coley, Department of Natural Resources, Wildlife Resources Division,
Speaker 1: and he says, quote, the good news is that the
Speaker 1: lumps many hunters are observing are not tumors. In fact,
Speaker 1: they are caused by warbles, which are bought fly larva
Speaker 1: growing just under the squirrel skin. Robert, why are you
Speaker 1: making me wait to find out if I can eat
Speaker 1: it or not? All right, Well, hold on, Joe. The
Speaker 1: Wildlife Resources Division or w r D here advises squirrel
Speaker 1: hunters across the state. The consumption of affected squirrels is safe.
Speaker 1: Once the squirrel is skinned. The parasites come off with
Speaker 1: the hide. Because the larva are strictly on the skin
Speaker 1: of the squirrel. The squirrel meat remains unaffected unless there
Speaker 1: is a secondary infection. But do you trust yourself to
Speaker 1: know if there's a secondary infection. I guess not, but
Speaker 1: you know, I think that the other Another take come
Speaker 1: here is that eating bot flies is an actually that crazy.
Speaker 1: There's actually evidence from Paleolithic art that indicates that early
Speaker 1: humans may have eaten reindeer bot flies rather routinely. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the practice seems to have survived among Inuit people.
Speaker 1: I was reading a book titled The Nature of Paleolithic
Speaker 1: Art by our Dale Guthrie, and Guthrie writes there are
Speaker 1: thousands of images that can give us a more rounded
Speaker 1: view of Paleolithic people in their times, images that are
Speaker 1: not customarily shown in coffee table volumes. Take, for example,
Speaker 1: these little worm like creatures from Paleolithic art. Eskimo from
Speaker 1: northern Alaska to light in eating the large spring maggots
Speaker 1: or larvae of the reindeer warble fly. I suspect your
Speaker 1: Asian people did the same in the Paleolithic. This is
Speaker 1: one of the few insects eaten by the Northern people.
Speaker 1: When the reindeer are killed, the highe is skin back
Speaker 1: and the warbles are exposed on the underside, they are
Speaker 1: fat and salty. A spring treat I have tried them
Speaker 1: several times during this time of year. Many people in
Speaker 1: the village have sore throats from the raspers of the
Speaker 1: maggot sides. I'm struggling here because I make a strong
Speaker 1: effort not to stigmatize what other people eat, but the
Speaker 1: image of the raspers scraping the inside of the throat
Speaker 1: is disturbing me. It is, it's a little it's a
Speaker 1: little much to take, um. But I mean, I do
Speaker 1: not have any issue with with eating insects. I think
Speaker 1: eating insects has been a practice by human beings for
Speaker 1: a very long time, and very sustainable, very sustainable. It will,
Speaker 1: I think invariably become a part of increasingly a part
Speaker 1: of our diet as as we continue to figure out
Speaker 1: how to survive in this world of of exhaustible resources.
Speaker 1: Uh So, it's a very good and clever thing to do.
Speaker 1: I think I have an irrational bias against it, Yes,
Speaker 1: But it's the raspers, yeah, and the throat that that
Speaker 1: is a little, a little bit much to take. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we kind of this has been kind of a detour
Speaker 1: from the basic scuirrel castration um discussion, but I think
Speaker 1: we needed a detour, even though this one was a
Speaker 1: little bit gruesome in its own. Yeah, we needed to
Speaker 1: depart from the nastiness of squirrels and discuss something refreshing
Speaker 1: like bot fly consumption. So let's solve this mystery. What
Speaker 1: is it? Okay, So we think that the the bot
Speaker 1: fly on the squirrel's growing might explain some sightings, but
Speaker 1: probably not all of them. Another thing that that occurred
Speaker 1: to me as a possibility is you've got this thing
Speaker 1: called squirrel parapox virus or squirrel pox, which can cause
Speaker 1: swelling or the appearance of tumors or lesions around parts
Speaker 1: of the squirrel's body, including the genital area. But this
Speaker 1: disease has only been observed to exist in the past
Speaker 1: few decades. It does not seem like a very good
Speaker 1: explanation either. But then there is one explanation that is
Speaker 1: head slapping lee simple and while it doesn't necessarily explain
Speaker 1: all of the supposed observations people have claimed, if you
Speaker 1: assume they're telling the truth about what they saw, it
Speaker 1: does seem to explain a lot. It probably explains a lot.
Speaker 1: And this is from Mammals of the Eastern Unite did
Speaker 1: States by John O. Whittaker, William John, and William John
Speaker 1: Hamilton's from Cornell University Press in this is their much
Speaker 1: more mundane explanation quote. Many people think that red squirrels,
Speaker 1: even though smaller, dominate gray squirrels and drive them out
Speaker 1: of their territories, and even that they castrate them. The
Speaker 1: latter story probably arose from someone's observing how often red
Speaker 1: squirrels chase gray squirrels. This goes along with what shed
Speaker 1: was saying about their territoriality, but picking up with the
Speaker 1: quote then linking that observation with the apparent lack of
Speaker 1: test ees in gray squirrels, which are abdominal in the
Speaker 1: non breeding season, so testicular attraction. This is very smart
Speaker 1: strategy for plenty of animals in the time when you
Speaker 1: don't need them on the outside, they come up on
Speaker 1: the inside. This would also make sense given the the
Speaker 1: The idea that we've seen presented here is that the
Speaker 1: testicles have not been freshly chewed off. No, they must
Speaker 1: have been chewed off earlier and the animal has healed,
Speaker 1: And so this does not seem to explain the direct
Speaker 1: observation of wounds that a few of the authors here
Speaker 1: have claimed to witness. If again, if we assume those
Speaker 1: accounts are true, but this does seem like a really
Speaker 1: good explanation for why hunters who don't necessarily know better
Speaker 1: would find male squirrels without testicles. Uh, they only descend
Speaker 1: into a temporary scrotum during the breeding season anyway, So
Speaker 1: during the non breeding season, the organs were tracked up
Speaker 1: into the abdomen. Hunter maybe shoots one, picks it up,
Speaker 1: doesn't see anything, and it's like, WHOA, something weird happened
Speaker 1: to the squirrel must be related to that gruesome rumor
Speaker 1: I heard years ago. It's sort of like saying, what
Speaker 1: is chewing the landing gear off of these airplanes? It
Speaker 1: must be gremlins, because I don't see them at all,
Speaker 1: So I think I don't know. I think that's a
Speaker 1: pretty good explanation. I am fairly convinced by that one
Speaker 1: that that probably explains most of what people have seen.
Speaker 1: So maybe some combination of seeing squirrels with just naturally
Speaker 1: occurring injuries, seeing squirrels with some kind of botful by
Speaker 1: growth in the growing area, and then just lots of
Speaker 1: hunters finding squirrels in the non breeding season without external
Speaker 1: test ees. It seems like you put all those together
Speaker 1: and you add in a little bit of whiskey in
Speaker 1: the woods, and this turns into hunters telling a story
Speaker 1: about gruesome castration rituals which do not exist. And it's
Speaker 1: ultimately a story that that makes more sense in light
Speaker 1: of what we know about little squirrel behavior, but just
Speaker 1: also the general behavior of territorial animals. Now, as for
Speaker 1: those first hand accounts in jama where they say, no,
Speaker 1: I saw this happening firsthand, I saw them do it,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe some of these wounds could be
Speaker 1: explained by random fighting having a weird kind of outcome,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. As we said earlier, some of
Speaker 1: those doctors writing in just sounded a little bit off,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if you should believe their stories.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we really need to bother with E. H.
Speaker 1: Smith and his his ferret and red squirrel in the
Speaker 1: box experiment. I'm gonna I'm just gonna hope that he
Speaker 1: made that up and it didn't really happen. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna assume that as well, Joe, that that it was
Speaker 1: just just a fanciful story that he made. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so if you had your vision of squirrels marred by
Speaker 1: the discovery that they will sometimes eat carry in or
Speaker 1: sometimes hunt prey. In the last episode, maybe you should
Speaker 1: rest a little bit easier now if you'd previously heard
Speaker 1: the castration myth and thinking it's probably not true. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take one more break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we have two more tidbits about the squirrel, neither of
Speaker 1: which is violent. So stay tuned, thank you, thank you. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back now, I said, neither of the examples we're
Speaker 1: gonna look at here violence. I guess one is by
Speaker 1: some definition self violence. But we'll see, we'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1: So I do want to talk briefly about hibernation and
Speaker 1: ground squirrel neuroplasticity. That sounds interesting now. In our recent episode, uh,
Speaker 1: in our two thousand one of Space Odyssey episode, we
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about this. Yeah, we were talking
Speaker 1: about space hibernation and how this isn't really a post
Speaker 1: ability for humans yet. We haven't discovered any kind of
Speaker 1: technology that will allow us to hibernate for long space journeys.
Speaker 1: But you talked about the idea of hot sleep and
Speaker 1: how that relates to squirrel hot sleep. That being h
Speaker 1: a some terminology from the science fiction of Worsen Scott
Speaker 1: card the idea that you have the individuals in the
Speaker 1: sci fi world and they're they're put into an artificial
Speaker 1: UH slumber for long trips, but it's not pleasant. It's
Speaker 1: it's like the sweating ordeal. And what we're gonna discuss
Speaker 1: here actually reminds me a lot of that. So Arctic
Speaker 1: ground squirrels have long been of interest to science for
Speaker 1: their hibernation abilities, and we've mentioned them on the show before.
Speaker 1: Back in Zoo physiologist Brian Barne of the University of Alaska,
Speaker 1: he commented on how the hibernation of the Arctic ground
Speaker 1: school is more like a months long bout of insomnia.
Speaker 1: That sounds horrible. Yeah, it sounds like hot sleep to
Speaker 1: make Yeah. He pointed out that they lowered their body
Speaker 1: temperature below freezing, but they but they don't stay that way.
Speaker 1: They undergo cyclical rewarmings once or twice a month. And
Speaker 1: the rewarming must be important because it uses roughly eight
Speaker 1: of the fat stores UH in order to do it,
Speaker 1: So a lot of energy is expended to come out
Speaker 1: of of of the freeze and then go back down
Speaker 1: into it again. So we're not just talking about rewarming
Speaker 1: at the end of hibernation. So Barnes theory at the
Speaker 1: time was that they had to warm up to actually sleep,
Speaker 1: that cold brains can't sleep, that the torper might stave
Speaker 1: off sleep for days or weeks, but they'd eventually be
Speaker 1: forced to warm up in order to get that vital slumber. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's worked with the Institute of Artic Biology ever since
Speaker 1: and has devoted a great deal of research to mammalian hibernation. Uh.
Speaker 1: If if you look up like squirrel hibernation um on
Speaker 1: the Internet and you look for for peer of your papers,
Speaker 1: you will run across his work. He's taken the creature's temperatures,
Speaker 1: he's measured their activity along their neural pathways as well,
Speaker 1: and he's found that the creature's brain is quite resilient,
Speaker 1: as you might expect from such a cheater of death
Speaker 1: as the as the Arctic ground squirrel. During hibernation, the
Speaker 1: neuron shrink and connection shrivel, but the creature's brain makes
Speaker 1: up for this by undergoing growth spurts that multiplied neural
Speaker 1: links back to previous levels and even beyond it. Oh weird.
Speaker 1: So this is a very strange alternate version of the
Speaker 1: neuro plasticity. Model. Yeah, yeah, that this is this is
Speaker 1: kind of a wonder species for people who are researching
Speaker 1: neuroplasticity in ways to potential potentially boost it in humans.
Speaker 1: Now we know, like in humans, the neuroplasticity model you
Speaker 1: often have is that children tend to make a whole
Speaker 1: lot of connections in the brain, and then over time
Speaker 1: those connections are sort of pruned back, limiting potential as
Speaker 1: as time goes on and maturity develops in the body
Speaker 1: and the child eventually becomes more neuro stable. But here
Speaker 1: you're seeing a renewal of a type of infantile neuroplasticity
Speaker 1: in the adult ground squirrel as hibernates. Yeah, I mean basically,
Speaker 1: it boost neural plasticity in order to repair everything that
Speaker 1: it loses during this hibernation process. So, no matter what
Speaker 1: you think of other squirrels and your distrust of other squirrels,
Speaker 1: the art at ground squirrel is is a very attractive
Speaker 1: species to scientists for a number of reasons. Cracking the
Speaker 1: inner workings of its hibernation adaptations could allow us to
Speaker 1: engineer neuroplasticity treatments, to improve organ transplantation, and devise ways
Speaker 1: to place human space travelers into some form of of
Speaker 1: hot sleep for a prolonged space mission. Oh good, that
Speaker 1: sounds great. Thanks, thanks squirrels. All right, we'll have one
Speaker 1: more bit of squirrel data to share with everyone. Is
Speaker 1: it going to be something shocking? I hope it's Lit's not.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think there's anything left that can
Speaker 1: truly shock us at this point in our squirrel exploration.
Speaker 1: This one's more humorous. So cape ground squirrels have a
Speaker 1: scrowed them that takes up of their body length, with
Speaker 1: a penis twice as long as that in other it's
Speaker 1: so it's another product of the the evolutionary mating arms race.
Speaker 1: The males have been observed to engage in auto filatio
Speaker 1: and consume the ejected reproductive murial material, which of course
Speaker 1: only makes sense. We've discussed animal cannibalism in the same light.
Speaker 1: It's energy. What what what do you? What do you? What?
Speaker 1: What should do with it? Why just waste it? You
Speaker 1: got to like put it back into the business. Right,
Speaker 1: So that makes sense. But but ultimately people asked, well
Speaker 1: why do they do that? Indeed, why does any species
Speaker 1: engage in in masturbation? Well, there's the sexual outlet hypothesis
Speaker 1: that arousal must be dismissed. Uh, and that makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: You've just got this arowse squirrel. It's got to do
Speaker 1: something with all this uh this, you know, this energy
Speaker 1: that it has now and it might as well release
Speaker 1: it so it can get on with nut collecting and
Speaker 1: what have you. But then there's another idea that it
Speaker 1: might be because they has to flush out the old
Speaker 1: sperm so that the creature has fresher sperm that it
Speaker 1: can utilize for mating. Is there an expiry date on that?
Speaker 1: Essentially it would be like an innate knowledge of the
Speaker 1: exploration data, I guess. But then uh. Biologist Jane Waterman
Speaker 1: weighed in on the matter uh and uh, at least
Speaker 1: as it concerns cape ground squirrels, and pointed out that
Speaker 1: dominant males actually do this the most, the ones who
Speaker 1: shouldn't have to masturbate if the sexual outlet view is correct.
Speaker 1: They also did it more after sex than before, seemingly
Speaker 1: a blow against the sperm quality hypothesis. She also dismissed
Speaker 1: the ideas that it's done as as a as a
Speaker 1: signal to potential mates or to competitors, because the pattern
Speaker 1: wasn't there, so you just don't see them doing it
Speaker 1: at the times where it would make sense if it
Speaker 1: was about communicating to other squirrels. Well, so what is
Speaker 1: Waterman's explanation. Her explanation or her her hypothesis here is
Speaker 1: that they masturbate and in doing so reduce the odds
Speaker 1: of catching an std. She points out that the human
Speaker 1: males may urinate after sex sort of clean things out,
Speaker 1: and that cape ground squirrels rarely urinate due to their
Speaker 1: desert environment. So what's what's a squirrel to do if
Speaker 1: it doesn't urinate frequently, what can it possibly do to
Speaker 1: clean out that tract? Masturbation provides an answer that seems
Speaker 1: like a reasonable explanation, though I truly did not know
Speaker 1: we would end up in this place. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a a happy ending for these
Speaker 1: two episodes that we should end not with visions of
Speaker 1: meat eating squirrels or scrowed them chewing squirrels, squirrels engaging
Speaker 1: in mortal Kombat with snakes, but instead simply a masturbating
Speaker 1: squirrel in the desert trying to stay healthy. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: staying healthy sounds good to me. Now we do hope
Speaker 1: these episodes have helped you look at squirrels in a
Speaker 1: different way, to see them not just as you know
Speaker 1: tree rats running around in your yard, but something that
Speaker 1: is in its own right and evolutionary marvel, something that's
Speaker 1: engaged in a struggle for survive of all and and
Speaker 1: faces that struggle with a lot of alarming and surprising tools.
Speaker 1: But we certainly do not hope that you will go
Speaker 1: away from this with any kind of animus towards squirrels
Speaker 1: or any desire to harm them. We don't want to
Speaker 1: encourage that squirrels are part of the natural world too,
Speaker 1: and they don't deserve any kind of vilification, even though
Speaker 1: it might be kind of shocking to learn the truth
Speaker 1: about them since we see them so often but usually
Speaker 1: don't suspect these things, right, Yeah, don't go hurt any
Speaker 1: squirrels on our account. But of course, if you were
Speaker 1: already killing and eating squirrels, uh, let us know how
Speaker 1: that goes for you. If what's your experience with squirrel
Speaker 1: hunting and warbles and uh in in various bits of
Speaker 1: you know, urban or rural legend about squirrels biting each other,
Speaker 1: did you hear the squirrel castration urban legend. Where did
Speaker 1: you hear it? And what variant on it? What sort
Speaker 1: of explanation was presented to you. We would love to
Speaker 1: hear about any of that. In the meantime, head on
Speaker 1: over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's
Speaker 1: where we'll find all the episodes of the pod casks,
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Speaker 1: can follow us and keep up with what we're doing,
Speaker 1: including Facebook where we have that fabulous Facebook group. The
Speaker 1: discussion module that is a really great place if you
Speaker 1: want to, uh, you know, get into conversations with other
Speaker 1: listeners about the topics we've covered, about topics we could
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Speaker 1: Go check it out. That's the Stuff Table your Mind
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Speaker 1: you as always to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams
Speaker 1: and Tarry Harrison. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us directly to let us know feedback on
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