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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a classic episode

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Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This episode originally aired

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Speaker 1: August and it is part two of our exploration of squirrels.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Yes, these were a real joy to put

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Speaker 1: together and they were very popular. Everyone seemed to love them,

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Speaker 1: so we thought, well, it's time to bring them out

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Speaker 1: of the vault again, and so indeed, I look forward

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Speaker 1: to the renewed um onslaught of squirrel related listener mail.

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Speaker 1: Bring it on. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind

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Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back for part two

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Speaker 1: of our two part exploration of the world of scugs.

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Speaker 1: That's right, squirrels, squirrels. If you did not listen to

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Speaker 1: our last episode, our most recent episode about squirrels, go

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Speaker 1: back and listen to it because it will. It will

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Speaker 1: provide some necessary, horrific revelations about the squirrel that you

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Speaker 1: really need going into this episode, and we should warn

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Speaker 1: at the beginning that, uh, if you didn't listen to

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Speaker 1: the last episode you want to listen to this one anyway,

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Speaker 1: you should be forewarned. This is going to be one

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Speaker 1: of the most gruesome things we've ever explored on the show.

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Speaker 1: I think how squirrels, I would say that the last episode,

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Speaker 1: which largely dealt with the fact that squirrels eat meat

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Speaker 1: and do actually stalk prey like, that's an episode I

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Speaker 1: would listen to with my six year old son, and

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't have any problem with it. I've talked about

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Speaker 1: the topics on that episode with him. This episode I

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Speaker 1: would probably not listen to a nice year old son. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I didn't think it would roll out this way. But

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Speaker 1: but our exploration of squirrels is one of the most

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Speaker 1: inappropriate for children of all things we ever we've ever

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Speaker 1: explored here. Yes, but we're walking in deep truth tonight, children,

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Speaker 1: so so stick with us as we explore more horrific

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Speaker 1: facts about squirrel behavior. So again, last episode, we talked

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Speaker 1: about squirrels eating meat, squirrels stalking to pray, squirrels messing

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Speaker 1: around with snakes. Uh, squirrels and their relationship with the

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Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin this time. Now. In the last episode, we

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Speaker 1: talked about certain myths about Benjamin Franklin and the reality

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Speaker 1: of Benjamin Franklin having a pet squirrel named Mungo who

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Speaker 1: he wrote analogy for when it was killed by a dog. UM.

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Speaker 1: This time, I want to start off with another possible myth,

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Speaker 1: possible fact that that dwells in that hazy middle world

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Speaker 1: of rumor. I want to know, Robert, if you've ever

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Speaker 1: heard the same rumor I have. It's a horrifying rumor.

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Speaker 1: It's one I've heard for years, and it's about the

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Speaker 1: competition between squirrels. And the rumor goes something like this,

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Speaker 1: When two adult male squirrels come into conflict over food,

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Speaker 1: over territory, over mating, or whatever. The two squirrels fight

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Speaker 1: with a horrible aim, and that aim is to castrate

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Speaker 1: the other by biting off its squirrel testicles. I had

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Speaker 1: never heard of this before. I would say the closest

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Speaker 1: thing i'd heard was, you know some details about a

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Speaker 1: competition between chimpanzees, Yeah, biting biting off Well, I just

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Speaker 1: know that genital attacks um have have have been reported

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Speaker 1: among chimpanzees. Uh, but I don't know with what degree

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Speaker 1: of frequency. But it's the kind of thing where I

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Speaker 1: heard about it in relation to chimpanzees and now makes

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Speaker 1: me look at chimpanzee is a little uh, well, there's

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Speaker 1: a lot with chimpanzees to be you know, a little

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Speaker 1: concerned about. But but I've never heard about this with squirrels. Well,

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Speaker 1: I I've heard about this for years. I don't remember

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Speaker 1: where I heard at first. It might have been from

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Speaker 1: some old, some good old Tennessee woodsman somewhere who spoke

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Speaker 1: wisdom of the forests into my ears. But this is

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Speaker 1: important for us to remind all of our listeners, is

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Speaker 1: that Joe and I both grew up with with with

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Speaker 1: with access to the Tennessee woodlands. Yes, so there is

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Speaker 1: a lot of I'm rather surprised that I didn't hear

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Speaker 1: this story from from from people who wandered out of

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Speaker 1: the out of the Tennessee of forests with tales of

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Speaker 1: the skug. Well, if you want to hear about the

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Speaker 1: horrors of skug castration from the lips of the true speakers,

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Speaker 1: you should go to YouTube, because there will be many

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Speaker 1: a video of some bearded hunter standing there and Camo

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Speaker 1: talking into his phone in the middle of the forest, saying,

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Speaker 1: here's what happens when these here squirrels buy it off

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Speaker 1: each other's nuts. But it turns out there are many

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Speaker 1: variations on this base rumor. So one is that you've

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Speaker 1: got one squirrel species that supplants another in an area

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Speaker 1: by castrating all the males of the other squirrel species.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes this version goes, you've got gray squirrels doing it

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Speaker 1: to red squirrels. Sometimes they say it's red squirrels doing

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Speaker 1: it to gray squirrels. Sometimes the fox squirrel is thrown

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Speaker 1: in there somewhere. And so what we want to look

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Speaker 1: at is is there in each truth to this? Is

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Speaker 1: it true? Or is this just a horrible woodsman myth?

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Speaker 1: My uh guess, of course, would be that it is

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Speaker 1: a myth, because it just doesn't sound like behavior one

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Speaker 1: finds in animals, especially against another species. You know, it

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Speaker 1: is a certainly strange targeted behavior, one thing that I

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Speaker 1: wanted because because you don't have to castrate another species

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Speaker 1: to drive it off. We see plenty of examples of

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Speaker 1: one one species driving off another from resources, competing for

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Speaker 1: the same resources, or of course, uh, two members of

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Speaker 1: the same species competing for resources or mates. But you

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Speaker 1: can drive. They will drive each other off through through fighting,

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Speaker 1: through displays, much more conventional means. Yeah, usually genital mutilation

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Speaker 1: doesn't come up. Yeah, it doesn't seem like a necessary step.

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Speaker 1: But then again, we'll we'll come back to this, will

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Speaker 1: weigh the pros and cons later on. So one of

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Speaker 1: the best things about this myth is that it doesn't

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Speaker 1: just come from the woodsman and Camo talking into his

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Speaker 1: phone by a forest stream. There's a rather crazy back

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Speaker 1: and forth about this in several volumes of the Journal

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Speaker 1: of the American Medical Association in JAMMA for more than

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Speaker 1: a century ago. So in the year eight, for some reason,

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Speaker 1: JAMMA got a little bit obsessed with rampant squirrel castration.

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Speaker 1: So it started when the American surgeon Edmund Andrews wrote

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Speaker 1: an article for the journal in eight about unux and

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Speaker 1: about the physiological effects of castration. And in this article

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Speaker 1: Andrews Puts together sort of a round up of what

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Speaker 1: he knew about the natural effects of castration and many

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Speaker 1: different animals, and one of those animals was the squirrel.

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Speaker 1: And he writes quote naturalist state that the black or

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Speaker 1: gray male squirrels in fighting seek to castrate each other

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Speaker 1: with their teeth, so that many of those taken by

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Speaker 1: hunters are thus mutilated, as they do it only an

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Speaker 1: adult life, it does not materially change their general development,

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Speaker 1: because he was talking about this in the context of, well,

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Speaker 1: what happens if a young animal is castrated? How does

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Speaker 1: that change the way it develops into an adult? Okay,

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Speaker 1: so the the the idea here is that it is

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Speaker 1: it's reached material. Yeah. Unfortunately Andrews does not say who

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Speaker 1: these naturalists are and makes me wonder, especially given the time,

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Speaker 1: is this is this real empirical data or is he

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Speaker 1: just repeating the eight version of an urban legend or

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Speaker 1: maybe a rural legend, just against somebody wandering out of

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Speaker 1: the woods saying, yep, squirrels in there. They're buying each

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Speaker 1: other's nuts, and they're they're they're buying the next year.

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Speaker 1: That's good that you call to mind. In the last episode,

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Speaker 1: we talked about some rumors about squirrel attacks that seemed

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Speaker 1: very unlikely to be true about like in Borneo Hunters

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Speaker 1: talking about squirrels taking down deer and killing them seems

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Speaker 1: hard to believe. But so this first mention is just

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Speaker 1: this one off in in Andrew's article about Eunix in general.

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Speaker 1: And Andrews comes back to this in another volum of

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Speaker 1: Jamma with an article called do adult squirrels cast rate

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Speaker 1: each other? So Andrews writes, in this article, remember we

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Speaker 1: asked who that naturalist was or the natural square that

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Speaker 1: he got his information from. He says he got the

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Speaker 1: information about squirrels from quote a distinguished naturalist, but he

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Speaker 1: still doesn't say who it is. Good good lessons, cite

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Speaker 1: your sources with possible folks. Apparently he got a contradictory

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Speaker 1: response to this claim from a doctor named Dr. A. S.

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Speaker 1: Allen of Mercy Hospital, Chicago. And Alan claims, first of all,

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Speaker 1: about a third of wild squirrels captured by hunters are

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Speaker 1: found to be castrated. I assume he means one third

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Speaker 1: of male squirrels, but it doesn't say. I hate to

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Speaker 1: be the slow brow, but I'm I'm wondering if mistaking

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Speaker 1: dead female squirrels for dead male squirrels could be causing

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Speaker 1: some confusion among some hunters here. Perhaps perhaps Alan says

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Speaker 1: he thinks that this castration is not done in fighting

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Speaker 1: between adult males, as Andrews did in his original article.

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Speaker 1: Here it's quote He says that a number of gray

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Speaker 1: squirrels lived protected in these trees above his former residence.

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Speaker 1: A female raised a litter of young in a tree

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Speaker 1: close to the house. One day, when the young were

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Speaker 1: about one quarter grown, he observed the male trying repeatedly

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Speaker 1: to enter the nest, but the female, which in that

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Speaker 1: species is the largest of the two, fought him off

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Speaker 1: and drove him away. This repeated several times, and the

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Speaker 1: male finally desisted. Sometime later, the female went away, apparently

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Speaker 1: to gather food. Before she returned, the male reappeared, entered

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Speaker 1: the nest and created a great disturbance there, so that

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Speaker 1: the doctor climbed the tree and examined the young. He

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Speaker 1: found four young quarter grown males and one or two females.

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Speaker 1: Three of the young males had been freshly castrated, the

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Speaker 1: old male squirrel having bitten their squartum and testes cleanly

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Speaker 1: and smoothly off with his sharp incisors. That's terrifying, that

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Speaker 1: is gruesome. So Alan claims that he's had a career

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Speaker 1: of squirrel hunting, and he has found castrated a adult males,

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Speaker 1: but never freshly castrated adult males, and so Andrews considers

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Speaker 1: that it would be difficult for an adult male squirrel

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Speaker 1: to hold another adult male still enough to bite off

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Speaker 1: his testicles, but this might be easier if the victim

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Speaker 1: is a juvenile. Thus, he seems to think that Dr.

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Speaker 1: Allen's story is probably a better explanation for why hunters

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Speaker 1: report finding so many castrated squirrels. On the other hand,

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Speaker 1: he thinks this is very weird in light of natural selection,

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Speaker 1: since it quote would hardly tend to benefit or perpetuate

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Speaker 1: the species. Not to be condescending, but this indicates to

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Speaker 1: me a kind of poor understanding of the level at

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Speaker 1: which natural selection acts. Like members of a species are

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Speaker 1: constantly doing things that do not benefit other members of

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Speaker 1: that same species. Right there is that there is a

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Speaker 1: great deal of selfishness. Again, we talk about males that

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Speaker 1: are competing with each other for mates, or just members

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Speaker 1: of the species in general that are competing with other

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Speaker 1: members of the species for resources. Right, But that is

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Speaker 1: not at all I think a good argument that this

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Speaker 1: is really going on. I'm not sure exactly how to

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Speaker 1: explain what Alan claims he observed in this nest of

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Speaker 1: assuming the story is true, but there are a few

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Speaker 1: other reports so uh. In Spratling's follow up, again in

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Speaker 1: the Journal of the American Medical Association, quote how squirrels

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Speaker 1: become unux This is another volume of jama and there

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Speaker 1: is just a flurry of letters about squirrel castration. The

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Speaker 1: this really seemed to get the turn of the century

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Speaker 1: physician engines revving like they were like, oh, I've got

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Speaker 1: a squirrel castration story, and they wrote in. One is

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Speaker 1: from Dr William Spratling of New York, and Spratling writes

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Speaker 1: that he spent a lot of years squirrel hunting in

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Speaker 1: eastern Alabama with an experienced squirrel hunter in his sixties,

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Speaker 1: and one day he shot a young male squirrel to

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Speaker 1: discover it had a fresh castration wound. His companion said

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Speaker 1: it must have been done by an older male, and

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Speaker 1: that he had often found young male squirrels like that

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Speaker 1: sometimes still in the nest. Spratling asked him why the

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Speaker 1: older males did it. His companion replied that Spratling should

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Speaker 1: ask the squirrels. Okay, you have to kind of wonder

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Speaker 1: if he just shot the squirrel. Perhaps it could have

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Speaker 1: been injured in the shooting, but who knows, And of

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Speaker 1: course there are a number of different ways of squirrel

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Speaker 1: could be injured, you know, let's let's not limit the

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Speaker 1: ways that a squirrel can could lose its scrowed them

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Speaker 1: too near you know, you know, hunting practices, or the

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Speaker 1: the teeth of a rival male. Sure, here's another one.

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Speaker 1: This one's a really choice. So this is from Dr. E. H.

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Speaker 1: Smith of Santa Clara, California. First, I should know this guy.

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Speaker 1: His whole writing style and everything. He sounds a little off.

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Speaker 1: So Smith writes that he observed plenty of squirrels in

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Speaker 1: southwestern Michigan, and he claims that the adult males do

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Speaker 1: indeed fight in order to castrate, looking for opportunities to

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Speaker 1: dive beneath one another and bite off the rival squrowed um.

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Speaker 1: He says this is primarily the red squirrels that do this,

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Speaker 1: and they do it to other kinds of squirrels for heat.

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Speaker 1: For the red squirrel quote is the hardest fighter of

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Speaker 1: them all. And Smith says he tested this out by

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Speaker 1: putting a red squirrel and a ferret in a box

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Speaker 1: with each other, quote, expecting, of course, that the ferret

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Speaker 1: would make short work of the squirrel. Instead, he said

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Speaker 1: that the squirrel went right for the ferrets testicles, and

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Speaker 1: it was only by Smith intervening to protect the ferret

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Speaker 1: with a stick that he avoided the doom chomp of

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Speaker 1: the red squirrel. And I just wonder, like, what is

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Speaker 1: worse if the guy made this up or if he's

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Speaker 1: telling the truth. Yeah, and I do not really like

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Speaker 1: this experiment that he claims to have performed. That is

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Speaker 1: not a good experiment, That is not rigorous, and it

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Speaker 1: is it's also not nice. I'm more comforted by the

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Speaker 1: fact that this guy that maybe this was just some

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Speaker 1: fourteen year old writing Dajamma making up a fake identity

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Speaker 1: in a story. One last letter from a doctor Samuel J.

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Speaker 1: Ford of Elliott City, Maryland, and Fort writes that he'd

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Speaker 1: been hunting squirrels for years and has never noticed any

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Speaker 1: castrated squirrels, though he admits he hasn't been on the

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Speaker 1: lookout for this in particular, and he doubts that the

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Speaker 1: biting off procedure could really be done leanly in a

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Speaker 1: way that the victim usually survives, given the shape of

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Speaker 1: squirrel incisors, Like if you think about picturing them, they're

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Speaker 1: more like, you know, they are kind of chompy, but

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Speaker 1: they're narrow. Yeah, the survivability of the wound is something

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Speaker 1: that I in my mind keeps turning to because we're

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Speaker 1: talking about a pretty grievous injury, but one for for

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Speaker 1: enough males to survive, and then, you know, so that

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Speaker 1: hunters could comment on them, they would need to not

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Speaker 1: die of either blood loss or or secondary infection. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's a very good point. And also think about this again.

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Speaker 1: We we mentioned this earlier, but why would there actually

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Speaker 1: be any incentive for an older male to do this?

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Speaker 1: Why not just kill the rivals, Like if you're actually

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Speaker 1: fighting and there's some kind of serious competition, why not

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Speaker 1: just injury or kill? Why this very specific, targeted type

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Speaker 1: of injury that's so sillacious and the kind of thing

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Speaker 1: that a hunter might repeat in rumor to another. But

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Speaker 1: Ford gives a couple of rival explanations for the discovery

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Speaker 1: of neutered male squirrels. He says, quote, could it not

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Speaker 1: be congenital ab sense of the organs or failure of

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Speaker 1: the organs to descend into the scrotum? I think forts

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Speaker 1: maybe onto something there, and we can come back to

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Speaker 1: that later on when we discuss possible explanations for these stories.

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Speaker 1: But he also says, quote the theory has been advanced

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Speaker 1: by many hunters I have met that during the absence

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Speaker 1: of the mother squirrel, the young utilize the male appendages

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Speaker 1: as teats and in their in their kind effort to

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Speaker 1: produce something that is not there, causing time and atrophy

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Speaker 1: of the organs. Oh, I don't know. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if he is he making a joke there, I can't

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Speaker 1: maybe I'm not reading through the writing style, or he

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Speaker 1: has been uh or if he's been a victim of

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Speaker 1: a hoax on this one or somebody else's joke. I mean,

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Speaker 1: one thing that that I keep thinking too with each

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Speaker 1: of these doctors is that, yes, these appear to be

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Speaker 1: medical doctors, assuming their real assuming they're real, But then

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Speaker 1: also just because their medical doctors do not mean that

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Speaker 1: they are really They're not biologists with any expertise in

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Speaker 1: observing uh squirrel behavior. This scene is very or it

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Speaker 1: snacks very much of amateur biology. Yes, they're even from

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Speaker 1: someone who who should, by all rights, you know, be

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Speaker 1: familiar with the scientific method to to a significant extent.

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Speaker 1: These are people who practice human medicine and human medicine

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Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties. These are not not squirrel experts,

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Speaker 1: They're not zoologists. They're not animal behaviorists. Um yeah, I

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Speaker 1: don't know so though. On the other hand, we do

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Speaker 1: have to deal with Okay, well, at least people are

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Speaker 1: making these reports. What do these reports mean? That they

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Speaker 1: could certainly be mistaken, But we've got plenty of reports

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Speaker 1: of people who claim to have one heard stories about

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Speaker 1: squirrel castration from people who deal with a lot of squirrels,

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Speaker 1: seen lots of examples of castrated squirrels, both young and old,

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Speaker 1: and a few kinds of dubious seeming claims of witnessing

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Speaker 1: castration from adult squirrel fights. So despite the claims of

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Speaker 1: people to have witnessed it themselves, that this really does

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Speaker 1: have all the hallmarks of an urban legend. To me,

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Speaker 1: I believe people will have found squirrels missing their genitals,

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Speaker 1: but I'm not sure I buy the causes people have proposed.

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Speaker 1: And I keep coming back to this idea, why this

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Speaker 1: one particular gruesome kind of attack, Why not just a

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Speaker 1: general fighting attack, an attempt to injure or kill the

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Speaker 1: other squirrel? All right, Well, on that note, we're going

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Speaker 1: to take a quick break, and when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we will look for more answers concerning this myth. Alright,

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Speaker 1: we're back okay, So I found a book by a

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Speaker 1: former National Wildlife Federation executive Warner Shed called Owls Aren't

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Speaker 1: Wise and Bats Aren't Blind and Naturalists Debunks our Favorite

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Speaker 1: fallacies about wildlife, which addresses a version of this claim

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Speaker 1: about squirrel castration. So, first of all, Shed is writing

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Speaker 1: about this in the context of a chapter on squirrel myths,

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Speaker 1: specifically the myth that red squirrels drive out gray squirrels

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Speaker 1: from any area they inhabit, and Shed writes that while

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Speaker 1: it isn't necessarily true that red squirrels will drive gray

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Speaker 1: squirrels out of a forest, it is true the red

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Speaker 1: squirrels tend to be very territorial, and if any animal

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Speaker 1: like a gray squirrel, gets too close to the red

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Speaker 1: squirrels hidden cash of nuts, the red squirrel will sometimes

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Speaker 1: get aggressive and try to chase the gray squirrel off.

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Speaker 1: And Shed says that this territorial chasing tendency might be

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Speaker 1: somehow linked to the version of the castration claim that

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Speaker 1: says red squirrels castrate gray squirrels, which he claims is

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Speaker 1: simply the result of quote an overheated imagination or quote

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Speaker 1: a deliberate tall tale, and he argues that it makes

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Speaker 1: no sense for a squirrel to bite another squirrels testicles off.

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Speaker 1: Merely consider the facts the gray squirrel generally weighs from

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Speaker 1: two to three times as much as the little red.

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Speaker 1: Even what are normally the most peaceable of animals will

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Speaker 1: fight savagely if necessary to protect themselves. Nor could a

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Speaker 1: red squirrel, with its little teeth neatly snip off the

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Speaker 1: testicles of the gray with one or two bites. The

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Speaker 1: notion that the much bigger gray would allow its testicles

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Speaker 1: to be gnawed off by this little relative is preposterous.

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Speaker 1: Long for where that happened, the gray would make squirrel

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Speaker 1: hash out of the offending red. And that has an

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Speaker 1: exclamation point on it, by the way, that is like,

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Speaker 1: so he's really he's really driving it home. He also

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Speaker 1: adds that if in general Red's had a successful strategy

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Speaker 1: of sterilizing grays, grays would tend to disappear in areas

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Speaker 1: where reds existed, And he says this is not the case,

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Speaker 1: So it's Shed's judgment. That that's his judgment. But if

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Speaker 1: he's correct, and squirrels do not castrade each other, what

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Speaker 1: should we make of all these reports in Jamma and elsewhere?

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Speaker 1: Of people finding squirrels with castration wounds all over the place. Now,

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Speaker 1: of course it's possible some of these could be lies

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Speaker 1: or hoaxes, and I think with some of them, even

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Speaker 1: a couple of those letters into Jamma, you have kind

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Speaker 1: of have to wonder. I mean, these these supposedly are

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Speaker 1: doctors writing in but I don't know that's smith guy. Well,

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Speaker 1: we've discussed time and time again that even very educated

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Speaker 1: individuals can either be the perpetrators of hoax hoaxes or

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Speaker 1: the victims of hoaxes. And then also there's that interesting

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Speaker 1: relationship between the the the the what, the hoaxer and

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Speaker 1: the hoax e um. Karl Sagan talks about this in

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Speaker 1: the demon Haunted World and points whether it's like a

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Speaker 1: magic trick. A magic trick, is it is something that

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Speaker 1: exists because of a silent pact between the magician and

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Speaker 1: the audience. Yeah, people don't want to admit they've been tricked.

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Speaker 1: If they've been tricked, even momentarily, they kind of don't

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Speaker 1: want to admit that they fell for it, and will

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Speaker 1: fight to defend the reality of the illusion. But then again,

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Speaker 1: I don't think I would explain all of these cases

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Speaker 1: in terms of hoaxes, deliberate hoaxes or tricks. I think

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Speaker 1: in a lot of cases you're probably going to be

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Speaker 1: dealing with people who were mistaken about what they saw

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Speaker 1: or who were interpreting misinterpreting something. So that brings us

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Speaker 1: to the question of what else could cause a squirrel

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Speaker 1: to appear incorrectly to have suffered this type of injury

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Speaker 1: or attack. Now there's one hypothesis that's pretty far out there.

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Speaker 1: It's not exactly a perfect fit, but it is kind

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Speaker 1: of worth a look. And this is an explanation put

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Speaker 1: forward by Ernest Thompson Seton, who was an early influence

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Speaker 1: on the formation and mythology of the Boy Scouts of America.

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Speaker 1: Uh Seton noted that there is a species of parasitic

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Speaker 1: bot fly that is an obligate of tree squirrels and

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Speaker 1: tends to lay eggs in the squirrels groin, and these

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Speaker 1: eggs hatch and the larva erupt from the skin, and

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Speaker 1: it's gross, but the squirrel can usually survive it. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't really benefit the bot fly to kill its host.

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Speaker 1: And if this larva eruption were to happen in the groin,

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Speaker 1: as it apparently sometimes does, hunters seeing wounds of this

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Speaker 1: kind might think that the squirrels had had their groins

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Speaker 1: violently attacked. And this bot fly does exist. It's called

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Speaker 1: coutarebra emasculator, or the tree squirrel bot fly and bot

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Speaker 1: flies on their own are fascinating subject. We we could

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Speaker 1: return to them endlessly. Oh yes. The bot fly, also

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Speaker 1: known as the he'll fly, the gad fly, or my

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Speaker 1: favorite and especially as it relates to squirrels, is the

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Speaker 1: warble fly. Now why is that your favorite as it

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Speaker 1: relates to squirrels, Because you will sometimes see what is

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Speaker 1: often described as a lumpy squirrel. If you spend as

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Speaker 1: much time looking at squirrels as we have, and certainly

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Speaker 1: any kind of like rural southern environment, then I bet

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Speaker 1: you've either seen or heard of a warble squarble squirrel,

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Speaker 1: a lumpy squirrel. It I remember seeing one when I

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Speaker 1: was young and find it found it rather grotesque. Why

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00:22:34,119 --> 00:22:37,120
Speaker 1: is that squirrel lumpy? What is going on with that squirrel?

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Speaker 1: And you're saying a warble fly is a good explanation?

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Speaker 1: Y Oh yeah, I mean it is. It's it's the explanation.

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Speaker 1: So but again, there are a lot of bot flies.

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Speaker 1: They're like something like a hundred fifty species worldwide, and

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Speaker 1: most of their larva are obligant parasites of mammals. Their

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Speaker 1: maggots grow in the flesh, usually the skin of the animals,

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Speaker 1: sometimes in the gut. South America's human bot flew i

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Speaker 1: or Dermatobia home menace is the only species that routinely

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Speaker 1: grows it's young and human flesh. And if you're a

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Speaker 1: big time podcast listener, like a lot of you are,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard accounts of these infections, particularly on

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Speaker 1: w n y c's Radio Lab. In particular, evolutionary biogists

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Speaker 1: Jerry Coin observed the growth of a bottfly larva in

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Speaker 1: his own scalp and uh and he remarked on how

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00:23:24,520 --> 00:23:27,399
Speaker 1: it was not just growing inside of him, but out

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Speaker 1: of him. The resulting creature was, in a strange way,

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Speaker 1: part of him. It was like like his offspring. I

425
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:37,320
Speaker 1: actually read about this in a fantastic book in one

426
00:23:37,359 --> 00:23:39,640
Speaker 1: of my high school biology classes. It was a book

427
00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:43,399
Speaker 1: called Tropical Nature by Adrian Forsyth and Kin Miata, and

428
00:23:43,440 --> 00:23:46,760
Speaker 1: they had a chapter on this incident called Jerry's Maggot.

429
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:49,640
Speaker 1: That's all about Jerry having the bot fly growing out

430
00:23:49,640 --> 00:23:50,800
Speaker 1: of it. I think it was. It was out of

431
00:23:50,800 --> 00:23:55,000
Speaker 1: his head, right, yeah, his scalp um. I remember that.

432
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:57,359
Speaker 1: That was an eye opening read when I was like

433
00:23:57,720 --> 00:24:00,680
Speaker 1: fourteen or whatever. But that's the human body fly. We

434
00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:03,680
Speaker 1: should get back to this specific squirrel a bot fly

435
00:24:03,800 --> 00:24:07,200
Speaker 1: that we're talking about here, right, kuderebra emasculadder, the tree

436
00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:09,720
Speaker 1: squirrel bot fly. So it's a parasite of tree squirrels

437
00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:12,720
Speaker 1: and chipmunks. It's found throughout eastern North America. There are

438
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:16,560
Speaker 1: multiple species of kudaebrabot fly which infect different hosts and

439
00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:19,719
Speaker 1: emasculator as you can kind of hear something going on

440
00:24:19,800 --> 00:24:22,480
Speaker 1: in the name there. It was named by the entomologist

441
00:24:22,560 --> 00:24:26,320
Speaker 1: Asa Fitch based on his mistaken belief that the larvae

442
00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 1: of the species ate the testicles of hosts squirrels, and

443
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:33,719
Speaker 1: the hypothesis about this being the explanation for apparent squirrel

444
00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:36,800
Speaker 1: castration is not as strong as it once was. Maybe

445
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:40,000
Speaker 1: isn't as strong now as when um Seaton proposed it,

446
00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:43,199
Speaker 1: since scientists actually no longer believe that the grubs of

447
00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:45,840
Speaker 1: the bot fly eat the squirrels gonads. I was reading

448
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:47,920
Speaker 1: more recent stuff about the spot fly, and it looks

449
00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:52,240
Speaker 1: like there's not any particular tendency or attention of the

450
00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: spot fly to concentrate in the groin or the genitals

451
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:57,400
Speaker 1: or anything. But then again, it need not actually eat

452
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 1: the gonads to be interpreted as such. I UM like

453
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 1: about an average like hunter or even a medical doctor

454
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 1: who just picks up a squirrel or sees one trotting

455
00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 1: around on the defense, right, right, so maybe say, oh,

456
00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:13,360
Speaker 1: that's a kind of a bloody scrotum. I wonder what's

457
00:25:13,359 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 1: going on there? The explanation must be, uh, this weird

458
00:25:17,480 --> 00:25:21,800
Speaker 1: squirrel scrotum attacking explanation, Right, So maybe they just see

459
00:25:22,119 --> 00:25:24,919
Speaker 1: about fly some kind of weird growth or protruberance that

460
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:27,400
Speaker 1: looks a nasty somewhere on the underside of a squirrel,

461
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:31,239
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, what happened there? But I don't know.

462
00:25:31,280 --> 00:25:34,840
Speaker 1: So it's possible this could explain some occasional observations of

463
00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 1: genital injuries and squirrels, But I would say this doesn't

464
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:41,199
Speaker 1: really seem like a good general explanation for all of

465
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:44,959
Speaker 1: the observations. Now, Joe, I do have to return to

466
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:49,639
Speaker 1: the Tennessee and aspects of this story for a second. Um.

467
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:52,200
Speaker 1: I worked for a small Tennessee newspaper back in two

468
00:25:52,200 --> 00:25:56,600
Speaker 1: thousand four, and I definitely remember information pieces that we

469
00:25:56,680 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 1: published covering this vital question, is it safe to skin

470
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,679
Speaker 1: and eat a lumpy squirrel? That's some service journalism. It

471
00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:06,440
Speaker 1: is given the You've given the people what they need

472
00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:09,000
Speaker 1: and what they need to know. Um which I remember

473
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:11,400
Speaker 1: being horrified by this because I'd seen a warrib old

474
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:14,600
Speaker 1: squirrel and my first thought was, I wonder if I

475
00:26:14,600 --> 00:26:17,040
Speaker 1: can eat that. I would think I'm going to pass

476
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:18,919
Speaker 1: on the war bold squirrel and maybe go with one

477
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 1: of these non warb old squirrel specimens. Squirrel fritters are

478
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:25,560
Speaker 1: on the menu tonight, and I'm I've got a hurt

479
00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:29,280
Speaker 1: and for some squirrel meat. Will this do in a pinch? Yeah? Well,

480
00:26:29,320 --> 00:26:31,240
Speaker 1: so I looked into it a little bit to see

481
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:33,280
Speaker 1: if I could find some more recent examples of this

482
00:26:33,560 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 1: same kind of of journalism, and I did run across

483
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:41,200
Speaker 1: the one from two thousand seven in the Chattanoogan Chattanooga, Tennessee.

484
00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:44,960
Speaker 1: And there's a quote in it in the peace from

485
00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 1: wildlife biologist Alex Kohley, Department of Natural Resources, Wildlife Resources Division,

486
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:53,720
Speaker 1: and he says, quote, the good news is that the

487
00:26:53,800 --> 00:26:56,600
Speaker 1: lumps many hunters are observing are not tumors. In fact,

488
00:26:56,680 --> 00:26:59,359
Speaker 1: they are caused by warbles, which are bought fly larva

489
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 1: growing just under the squirrel skin. Robert, why are you

490
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:04,600
Speaker 1: making me wait to find out if I can eat

491
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:06,600
Speaker 1: it or not? All right, well, hold on, Joe. The

492
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:11,480
Speaker 1: Wildlife Resources Division or w r D here advises squirrel

493
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:16,000
Speaker 1: hunters across the state. The consumption of affected squirrels is safe.

494
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:19,439
Speaker 1: Once the squirrel is skinned. The parasites come off with

495
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:22,840
Speaker 1: the hide. Because the larvae are strictly on the skin

496
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:26,280
Speaker 1: of the squirrel. The squirrel meat remains unaffected unless there

497
00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:29,399
Speaker 1: is a secondary infection. But do you trust yourself to

498
00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:33,159
Speaker 1: know if there's a secondary infection? I guess not, But

499
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: you know, I think that the other Another take come here,

500
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:40,600
Speaker 1: is that eating bot flies isn't actually that crazy. There's

501
00:27:40,640 --> 00:27:44,200
Speaker 1: actually evidence from Paleolithic art that indicates that early humans

502
00:27:44,240 --> 00:27:47,919
Speaker 1: may have eaten reindeer bot flies rather routinely, and the

503
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:51,840
Speaker 1: practice seems to have survived among Inuit people. I was

504
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:56,120
Speaker 1: reading a book titled The Nature of Paleolithic Art by

505
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:59,800
Speaker 1: our Dale Guthrie, and Guthrie writes there are thousands of

506
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:02,320
Speaker 1: images that can give us a more rounded view of

507
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:06,240
Speaker 1: Paleolithic people in their times images that are not customarily

508
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:10,200
Speaker 1: shown in coffee table volumes. Take, for example, these little

509
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:14,440
Speaker 1: worm like creatures from Paleolithic art Eskimo from northern Alaska.

510
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:17,560
Speaker 1: To light in eating the large spring maggots or larvae

511
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 1: of the reindeer warble fly, I suspect your Asian people

512
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:23,720
Speaker 1: did the same in the Paleolithic. This is one of

513
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 1: the few insects eaten by the Northern people. When the

514
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: reindeer are killed, the highe is skin back and the

515
00:28:29,800 --> 00:28:33,560
Speaker 1: warbles are exposed on the underside. They are fat and salty,

516
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:37,080
Speaker 1: a spring treat. I have tried them several times during

517
00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: this time of year. Many people in the village have

518
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:42,880
Speaker 1: sore throats from the raspers of the maggot sides. I'm

519
00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 1: struggling here because I make a strong effort not to

520
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 1: stigmatize what other people eat, but the image of the

521
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 1: raspers scraping the inside of the throat is disturbing me.

522
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:55,160
Speaker 1: It is it's a little it's a little much to

523
00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: take um, but I mean, I do not have any

524
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:01,440
Speaker 1: issue with with eating insect because I think eating insects

525
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 1: has been a practice by human beings for a very

526
00:29:05,120 --> 00:29:08,560
Speaker 1: long time and very sustainable, very sustainable. It will, I think,

527
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 1: invariably become part of increasingly a part of our diet

528
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: as as we continue to figure out how to survive

529
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 1: in this world of of exhaustible resources. Uh So it's

530
00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:22,440
Speaker 1: a very good and clever thing to do. I think

531
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:25,560
Speaker 1: I have an irrational bias against it. Yes, but it's

532
00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:28,720
Speaker 1: the raspers, yeah, and the throat that that is a

533
00:29:28,720 --> 00:29:30,840
Speaker 1: little a little bit much to take. So yeah, we

534
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:33,920
Speaker 1: kind of this has been kind of a detour from

535
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:39,560
Speaker 1: the basic squirrel castration um discussion, but I think we

536
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:41,720
Speaker 1: needed a detour, even though this one was a little

537
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:44,080
Speaker 1: bit gruesome in its own. Yeah, we needed to depart

538
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:47,240
Speaker 1: from the nastiness of squirrels and discuss something refreshing like

539
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: bot fly consumption. So let's solve this mystery. What is it? Okay,

540
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 1: So we think that the the bot fly on the

541
00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 1: squirrels growing might explain some sightings, but probably not all

542
00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: of them. Another thing that that occurred to me as

543
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: a possibility is you've got this thing called squirrel parapox

544
00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 1: virus or squirrel pox, which can cause swelling or the

545
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 1: appearance of tumors or lesions around parts of the squirrel's body,

546
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 1: including the genital area, but this disease has only been

547
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:17,760
Speaker 1: observed to exist in the past few decades. It does

548
00:30:17,800 --> 00:30:21,080
Speaker 1: not seem like a very good explanation either. But then

549
00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:24,719
Speaker 1: there is one explanation that is heads slapping lee simple,

550
00:30:25,120 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 1: and while it doesn't necessarily explain all of the supposed

551
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:30,520
Speaker 1: observations people have claimed, if you assume they're telling the

552
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 1: truth about what they saw, it does seem to explain

553
00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:36,960
Speaker 1: a lot. It probably explains a lot. This is from

554
00:30:37,240 --> 00:30:40,320
Speaker 1: Mammals of the Eastern United States by John O. Whittaker,

555
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 1: William John and William John Hamilton's from Cornell University Press.

556
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 1: In this is there much more mundane explanation quote. Many

557
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:53,400
Speaker 1: people think that red squirrels, even though smaller, dominate gray

558
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 1: squirrels and drive them out of their territories, and even

559
00:30:56,560 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 1: that they castrate them. The latter story probably a rows

560
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:04,840
Speaker 1: from someone's observing how often red squirrels chase gray squirrels.

561
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:07,640
Speaker 1: This goes along with what shed was saying about their territoriality,

562
00:31:08,400 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 1: but picking up in the quote then linking that observation

563
00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 1: with the apparent lack of test ees in gray squirrels

564
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 1: which are abdominal in the non breeding season, so testicular attraction.

565
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 1: This is very smart strategy for plenty of animals in

566
00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 1: the time when you don't need them on the outside,

567
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:28,080
Speaker 1: they come up on the inside. This would also make

568
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:30,720
Speaker 1: sense given the the The idea that we've seen presented

569
00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:34,800
Speaker 1: here is that the testicles have not been freshly chewed off. No,

570
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:36,959
Speaker 1: they must have been chewed off earlier and the animal

571
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 1: has healed. Yeah, and so this does not seem to

572
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 1: explain the direct observation of wounds that a few of

573
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 1: the authors here have claimed to witness. If again, if

574
00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:48,560
Speaker 1: we assume those accounts are true, But this does seem

575
00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:51,440
Speaker 1: like a really good explanation for why hunters who don't

576
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:55,920
Speaker 1: necessarily know better would find male squirrels without testicles. Uh,

577
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:59,640
Speaker 1: they only descend into a temporary scrotum during the breeding

578
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 1: season anyway, So during the non breeding season, the organs

579
00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:05,760
Speaker 1: were tracked up into the abdomen. Hunter maybe shoots one,

580
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:08,760
Speaker 1: picks it up, doesn't see anything, and it's like, WHOA,

581
00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:11,800
Speaker 1: something weird happened to the squirrel. Must be related to

582
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:14,440
Speaker 1: that gruesome rumor I heard years ago. It's sort of

583
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 1: like saying, what is chewing the landing gear off of

584
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:21,240
Speaker 1: these airplanes? It must be grimlins because I don't see

585
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:23,480
Speaker 1: them at all, So I think, I don't know. I

586
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 1: think that's a pretty good explanation. I am fairly convinced

587
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:29,720
Speaker 1: by that one that that probably explains most of what

588
00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 1: people have seen. So maybe some combination of seeing squirrels

589
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:37,960
Speaker 1: with just naturally occurring injuries, seeing squirrels with some kind

590
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 1: of bot fly growth in the growing area, and then

591
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:44,880
Speaker 1: just lots of hunters finding squirrels in the non breeding

592
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 1: season without external test ees. It seems like you put

593
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: all those together, and you add in a little bit

594
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:54,840
Speaker 1: of whiskey in the woods, and this turns into hunters

595
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 1: telling a story about gruesome castration rituals which do not exist.

596
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:03,560
Speaker 1: And it's ultimately a story that that makes more sense

597
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: in light of what we know about little squirrel behavior,

598
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: but just also the general behavior of territorial animals. Now,

599
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:14,360
Speaker 1: as for those first hand accounts in jama where they say, no,

600
00:33:14,520 --> 00:33:17,320
Speaker 1: I saw this happening firsthand, I saw them do it.

601
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:19,720
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe some of these wounds could be

602
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:22,720
Speaker 1: explained by random fighting having a weird kind of outcome,

603
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:24,920
Speaker 1: but I don't know. As we said earlier, some of

604
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 1: those doctors writing in just sounded a little bit off, like,

605
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:31,080
Speaker 1: I don't know if you should believe their stories. I

606
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 1: don't know if we really need to bother with E. H.

607
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 1: Smith and his his ferret and red squirrel in the

608
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:39,800
Speaker 1: box experiment. I'm gonna I'm just gonna hope that he

609
00:33:39,880 --> 00:33:42,240
Speaker 1: made that up and it didn't really happen. I'm just

610
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 1: gonna assume that as well, Joe, that it was just

611
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 1: just a fanciful story that he made. But anyway, so

612
00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: if you had your vision of squirrels marred by the

613
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:54,320
Speaker 1: discovery that they will sometimes eat carry in or sometimes

614
00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:57,480
Speaker 1: hunt prey in the last episode, maybe you should rest

615
00:33:57,480 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: a little bit easier now if you'd previously heard the

616
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:03,360
Speaker 1: Castre san myth and thinking it's probably not true. All right,

617
00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:05,440
Speaker 1: we're gonna take one more break, and when we come back,

618
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:08,719
Speaker 1: we have two more tidbits about the squirrel, neither of

619
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:14,960
Speaker 1: which is violent. So stay tuned. Alright, we're back now,

620
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:16,759
Speaker 1: I said, Neither of the examples we're gonna look at

621
00:34:16,760 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 1: here violence. I guess one is by some definition self violence.

622
00:34:19,719 --> 00:34:23,000
Speaker 1: But well we'll see, we'll see we'll see. So I

623
00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:28,240
Speaker 1: do want to talk briefly about hibernation and ground squirrel neuroplasticity.

624
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:31,920
Speaker 1: That sounds interesting now. In our recent episode, uh, in

625
00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:34,520
Speaker 1: our two thousand one Space Odyssey episode, we talked a

626
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 1: little bit about that. Yeah, we were talking about space

627
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:39,640
Speaker 1: hibernation and how this isn't really a possibility for humans yet.

628
00:34:39,680 --> 00:34:42,440
Speaker 1: We haven't discovered any kind of technology that will allow

629
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 1: us to hibernate for long space journeys. But you talked

630
00:34:45,120 --> 00:34:47,320
Speaker 1: about the idea of hot sleep and how that relates

631
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:51,399
Speaker 1: to squirrel hot sleep, that being a some terminology from

632
00:34:52,120 --> 00:34:55,400
Speaker 1: the science fiction of Orson Scott Card, the idea that

633
00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:58,279
Speaker 1: you have the individuals in the sci fi world and

634
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:01,759
Speaker 1: they're they're put into an artifici wal uh slumber for

635
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:05,520
Speaker 1: long trips, but it's not pleasant. It's it's like the

636
00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 1: sweating ordeal. And what we're gonna discuss here actually reminds

637
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:12,319
Speaker 1: me a lot of that. So Arctic ground squirrels have

638
00:35:12,400 --> 00:35:15,319
Speaker 1: long been of interest to science for their hibernation abilities,

639
00:35:15,880 --> 00:35:19,960
Speaker 1: and we've mentioned them on the show before. Back in Zoo,

640
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:24,240
Speaker 1: physiologist Brian Barne of the University of Alaska, he commented

641
00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:26,640
Speaker 1: on how the hibernation of the Arctic ground school is

642
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:30,919
Speaker 1: more like a month's long bout of insomnia. That sounds horrible. Yeah,

643
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:33,960
Speaker 1: it sounds like hot sleep to make He pointed out

644
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:37,200
Speaker 1: that they lowered their body temperature below freezing but they

645
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:41,360
Speaker 1: but they don't stay that way. They undergo cyclical rewarmings

646
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:45,200
Speaker 1: once or twice a month. And the rewarming must be

647
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:49,720
Speaker 1: important because it uses roughly eight of the fat stores

648
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:53,480
Speaker 1: uh in order to do it. So a lot of

649
00:35:53,600 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 1: energy is expended to come out of of of the

650
00:35:57,600 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 1: freeze and then go back down into it again. So

651
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:03,440
Speaker 1: we're not just talking about rewarming at the end of hibernation.

652
00:36:04,280 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 1: So barnes theory at the time was that they had

653
00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 1: to warm up to actually sleep, that cold brains can't sleep,

654
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:16,280
Speaker 1: that the torper might stave off sleep for days or weeks,

655
00:36:16,440 --> 00:36:19,000
Speaker 1: but they'd eventually be forced to warm up in order

656
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:22,160
Speaker 1: to get that vital slumber. Uh. He's worked with the

657
00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:24,880
Speaker 1: Institute of Artic Biology ever since and has devoted a

658
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:28,239
Speaker 1: great deal of research to mammalian hibernation. Uh. If if

659
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:32,040
Speaker 1: you look up like squirrel hibernation um on the Internet

660
00:36:32,080 --> 00:36:34,120
Speaker 1: and you look for for peri of your papers, you

661
00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:38,120
Speaker 1: will run across his work, he's taken the creature's temperatures,

662
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:41,560
Speaker 1: he's measured their activity along their neural pathways as well,

663
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:44,239
Speaker 1: and he's found that the creature's brain is quite resilient,

664
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:46,880
Speaker 1: as you might expect from such a cheater of death

665
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 1: as the as the Arctic ground squirrel. During hibernation, the

666
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:55,399
Speaker 1: neuron shrink and connection shrivel, but the creature's brain makes

667
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:59,280
Speaker 1: up for this by undergoing growth spurts that multiplied neural

668
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:03,480
Speaker 1: links back to previous levels and even beyond it. Oh weird.

669
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:06,000
Speaker 1: So this is a very strange alternate version of the

670
00:37:06,040 --> 00:37:09,920
Speaker 1: neuroplasticity model. Yeah, yeah, this is This is kind of

671
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 1: a wonder species for people who are researching neuroplasticity in

672
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:18,400
Speaker 1: ways to potential potentially boost it in humans. Now we know,

673
00:37:18,600 --> 00:37:21,719
Speaker 1: like in humans, the neuroplasticity model you often you have

674
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:24,080
Speaker 1: is that children tend to make a whole lot of

675
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 1: connections in the brain, and then over time those connections

676
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:30,919
Speaker 1: are sort of pruned back, limiting potential as as time

677
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:33,880
Speaker 1: goes on and maturity develops in the body and the

678
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:37,360
Speaker 1: child eventually becomes more neurostable. But here you're seeing a

679
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:41,240
Speaker 1: renewal of a type of infantile neuroplasticity in the adult

680
00:37:41,239 --> 00:37:44,200
Speaker 1: ground squirrel as it hibernates. Yeah, I mean basically, it

681
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:48,400
Speaker 1: boost neuroplasticity in order to repair everything that it loses

682
00:37:49,080 --> 00:37:52,920
Speaker 1: during this hibernation process. So, no matter what you think

683
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: of other squirrels and your distrust of other squirrels, the

684
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:59,120
Speaker 1: artic ground squirrel is is a very attractive species to

685
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 1: scientists where a number of reasons. Cracking the inner workings

686
00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:06,320
Speaker 1: of its hibernation adaptations could allow us to engineer neuroplasticity

687
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 1: treatments to improve organ transplantation, and devise ways to place

688
00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:14,400
Speaker 1: human space travelers into some form of of hot sleep

689
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:19,640
Speaker 1: for a prolonged space mission. Oh good, that sounds great. Thanks,

690
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 1: thanks squirrels. All right, we'll have one more bit of

691
00:38:23,680 --> 00:38:25,719
Speaker 1: squirrel data to share with everyone. Is it going to

692
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:28,719
Speaker 1: be something shocking? I hope it's Lit's not. I mean,

693
00:38:28,760 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anything left that can truly shock

694
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 1: us at this point in our squirrel exploration. This one's

695
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:37,440
Speaker 1: more humorous. So cape ground squirrels have a scrowed them

696
00:38:37,719 --> 00:38:42,680
Speaker 1: that takes up their body length with a penis twice

697
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:45,560
Speaker 1: as long as that You know, so it's another product

698
00:38:45,560 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 1: of the the evolutionary mating arms race. The males have

699
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:53,840
Speaker 1: been observed to engage in auto fallacio and consume the

700
00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 1: ejected reproductive murial material, which of course only makes sense.

701
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:01,360
Speaker 1: We've discussed animal cannibalism in the same light. It's energy.

702
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:03,800
Speaker 1: What what what do you? What do you what you

703
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:05,960
Speaker 1: do with it? Why just waste it? You got to

704
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:10,239
Speaker 1: like put it back into the business. Right, So that

705
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 1: makes sense. But but ultimately people ask well why do

706
00:39:12,640 --> 00:39:17,319
Speaker 1: they do that? Indeed, why does any species engage in masturbation? Well,

707
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:22,520
Speaker 1: there's the sexual outlet hypothesis that arousal must be dismissed. Uh,

708
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:25,240
Speaker 1: And that makes sense, right, You've just got this arowse squirrel.

709
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:27,359
Speaker 1: It's got to do something with all this uh this,

710
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:29,640
Speaker 1: you know, this energy that it has now, and it

711
00:39:29,719 --> 00:39:31,279
Speaker 1: might as well release it so it can get on

712
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 1: with nut collecting and what have you. But then there's

713
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 1: another idea that it might be because they has to

714
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:40,279
Speaker 1: flush out the old sperm so that the creature has

715
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:42,880
Speaker 1: fresher sperm that it can utilize for mating. Is there

716
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:45,719
Speaker 1: an expiry date on that? Essentially, it would be like

717
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:49,960
Speaker 1: an innate knowledge of the expiration data, I guess. But

718
00:39:50,040 --> 00:39:53,840
Speaker 1: then uh. Biologist Jane Waterman weighed in on the matter,

719
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:57,960
Speaker 1: uh and uh, at least as it concerns cape ground squirrels,

720
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 1: and pointed out the dominant male actually do this the most,

721
00:40:01,640 --> 00:40:04,040
Speaker 1: the ones who shouldn't have to masturbate if the sexual

722
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:06,960
Speaker 1: outlet view is correct. They also did it more after

723
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:12,200
Speaker 1: sex than before, seemingly a blow against the sperm quality hypothesis.

724
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:15,120
Speaker 1: She also dismissed the ideas that it's done as as

725
00:40:15,160 --> 00:40:18,680
Speaker 1: a as a signal to potential mates or to competitors,

726
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:21,520
Speaker 1: because the pattern wasn't there, so you just don't see

727
00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:24,279
Speaker 1: them doing it at the times where it would makes

728
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:27,399
Speaker 1: sense if it was about communicating to other squirrels. Well, so,

729
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:32,120
Speaker 1: what is Waterman's explanation, Her explanation or her by hypothesis

730
00:40:32,239 --> 00:40:36,320
Speaker 1: here is that they masturbate and in doing so reduce

731
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:39,759
Speaker 1: the odds of catching an std. She points out that

732
00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:43,120
Speaker 1: the human males may urinate after sex sort of clean

733
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 1: things out, and that cape ground squirrels rarely urinate due

734
00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:52,279
Speaker 1: to their desert environment. So what's what's a squirrel to

735
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:55,320
Speaker 1: do If it doesn't urinate frequently, what can it possibly

736
00:40:55,360 --> 00:40:59,760
Speaker 1: do to clean out that tract. Masturbation provides an answer.

737
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:02,640
Speaker 1: It seems like a reasonable explanation, though I truly did

738
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:04,879
Speaker 1: not know we would end up in this place. Yes,

739
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: I think it's it's kind of a happy ending for

740
00:41:07,719 --> 00:41:10,920
Speaker 1: these two episodes that we should end not with visions

741
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: of meat eating squirrels or scrowed them chewing squirrels, squirrels

742
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: engaging in mortal Kombat with snakes, but instead simply a

743
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 1: masturbating squirrel in the desert, trying to stay healthy. Yeah,

744
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:25,640
Speaker 1: just staying healthy sounds good to me. Now, we do

745
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:27,920
Speaker 1: hope these episodes have helped you look at squirrels in

746
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:30,319
Speaker 1: a different way, to see them not just as you

747
00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:33,720
Speaker 1: know tree rats running around in your yard, but something

748
00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:36,560
Speaker 1: that is in its own right and evolutionary marvel, something

749
00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:39,840
Speaker 1: that's engaged in a struggle for survival and and faces

750
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 1: that struggle with a lot of alarming and surprising tools.

751
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:45,440
Speaker 1: But we certainly do not hope that you will go

752
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:48,320
Speaker 1: away from this with any kind of animus towards squirrels

753
00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:50,440
Speaker 1: or any desire to harm them. We don't want to

754
00:41:50,520 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 1: encourage that squirrels are part of the natural world too,

755
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,040
Speaker 1: and that they don't deserve any kind of vilification, even

756
00:41:56,040 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 1: though it might be kind of shocking to learn the

757
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:00,160
Speaker 1: truth about them since we see them so off fen

758
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:03,239
Speaker 1: but usually don't suspect these things, right, Yeah, don't go

759
00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:06,239
Speaker 1: hurt any squirrels on our account. But of course, if

760
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 1: you were already killing and eating squirrels, uh, let us

761
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:12,719
Speaker 1: know how that goes for you. If what's your experience

762
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: with squirrel hunting and warbles and uh in in various

763
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:21,919
Speaker 1: bits of you know, urban or rural legend about squirrels

764
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 1: biting each other? Did you hear the squirrel castration urban legend?

765
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:28,759
Speaker 1: Where did you hear it? And what variant on and

766
00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:32,000
Speaker 1: what sort of explanation was presented to you? We would

767
00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:34,360
Speaker 1: love to hear about any of that. In the meantime,

768
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:36,160
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

769
00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:38,839
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find all the episodes of the podcast,

770
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:41,319
Speaker 1: going all the way back to the beginning. You'll find

771
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:43,560
Speaker 1: links out to our various social media accounts where you

772
00:42:43,560 --> 00:42:45,160
Speaker 1: can follow us and keep up with what we're doing,

773
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:47,880
Speaker 1: including Facebook, where we have that fabulous Facebook group, the

774
00:42:47,920 --> 00:42:50,560
Speaker 1: discussion module that is a really great place if you

775
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 1: want to uh, you know, get into conversations with other

776
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:56,319
Speaker 1: listeners about the topics we've covered, about topics we could

777
00:42:56,360 --> 00:43:01,000
Speaker 1: cover about unrelated things. Ask ask ask ask us questions.

778
00:43:01,680 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 1: Go check it out. That's the stuff to Blew your

779
00:43:03,960 --> 00:43:06,840
Speaker 1: Mind discussion module. And hey, while you're at our website,

780
00:43:07,040 --> 00:43:09,200
Speaker 1: click on that store button at the top of the

781
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 1: website because that's where you'll find all these cool T

782
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Speaker 1: shirts and stickers and coffee MUDs, any just about anything

783
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 1: you could put our new logo on. It is available

784
00:43:19,520 --> 00:43:22,680
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, merch up, get yourself a Sphere Catastrophe

785
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:25,960
Speaker 1: T shirt. Yeah, that one's really really rad. I recommend

786
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 1: it big. Thank you as always to our wonderful audio

787
00:43:28,760 --> 00:43:31,759
Speaker 1: producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would like

788
00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:33,600
Speaker 1: to get in touch with this directly to let us

789
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:35,719
Speaker 1: know feedback on this episode or any other, to let

790
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:39,040
Speaker 1: us know if you've ever heard any squirrel castration, urban

791
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:41,799
Speaker 1: legends or anything like that, to suggest a topic for

792
00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 1: a future episode, or just to say hi, you can

793
00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:46,640
Speaker 1: email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works

794
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

795
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff Works out um Yo far f