Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a classic episode
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This episode originally aired
Speaker 1: August and it is part two of our exploration of squirrels.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yes, these were a real joy to put
Speaker 1: together and they were very popular. Everyone seemed to love them,
Speaker 1: so we thought, well, it's time to bring them out
Speaker 1: of the vault again, and so indeed, I look forward
Speaker 1: to the renewed um onslaught of squirrel related listener mail.
Speaker 1: Bring it on. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back for part two
Speaker 1: of our two part exploration of the world of scugs.
Speaker 1: That's right, squirrels, squirrels. If you did not listen to
Speaker 1: our last episode, our most recent episode about squirrels, go
Speaker 1: back and listen to it because it will. It will
Speaker 1: provide some necessary, horrific revelations about the squirrel that you
Speaker 1: really need going into this episode, and we should warn
Speaker 1: at the beginning that, uh, if you didn't listen to
Speaker 1: the last episode you want to listen to this one anyway,
Speaker 1: you should be forewarned. This is going to be one
Speaker 1: of the most gruesome things we've ever explored on the show.
Speaker 1: I think how squirrels, I would say that the last episode,
Speaker 1: which largely dealt with the fact that squirrels eat meat
Speaker 1: and do actually stalk prey like, that's an episode I
Speaker 1: would listen to with my six year old son, and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have any problem with it. I've talked about
Speaker 1: the topics on that episode with him. This episode I
Speaker 1: would probably not listen to a 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 ever we've ever
Speaker 1: explored here. Yes, but we're walking in deep truth tonight, children,
Speaker 1: so so stick with us as we explore more horrific
Speaker 1: facts about squirrel behavior. So again, last episode, we talked
Speaker 1: about squirrels eating meat, squirrels stalking to pray, squirrels messing
Speaker 1: around with snakes. Uh, squirrels and their relationship with the
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin this time. Now. In the last episode, we
Speaker 1: talked about certain myths about Benjamin Franklin and the reality
Speaker 1: of Benjamin Franklin having a pet squirrel named Mungo who
Speaker 1: he wrote analogy for when it was killed by a dog. UM.
Speaker 1: This time, I want to start off with another possible myth,
Speaker 1: possible fact that that dwells in that hazy middle world
Speaker 1: of rumor. I want to know, Robert, if you've ever
Speaker 1: heard the same rumor I have. It's a horrifying rumor.
Speaker 1: It's one I've heard for years, and it's about the
Speaker 1: competition between squirrels. And the rumor goes something like this,
Speaker 1: When two adult male squirrels come into conflict over food,
Speaker 1: over territory, over mating, or whatever. The two squirrels fight
Speaker 1: with a horrible aim, and that aim is to castrate
Speaker 1: the other by biting off its squirrel testicles. I had
Speaker 1: never heard of this before. I would say the closest
Speaker 1: thing i'd heard was, you know some details about a
Speaker 1: competition between chimpanzees, Yeah, biting biting off Well, I just
Speaker 1: know that genital attacks um have have have been reported
Speaker 1: among chimpanzees. Uh, but I don't know with what degree
Speaker 1: of frequency. But it's the kind of thing where I
Speaker 1: heard about it in relation to chimpanzees and now makes
Speaker 1: me look at chimpanzee is a little uh, well, there's
Speaker 1: a lot with chimpanzees to be you know, a little
Speaker 1: concerned about. But but I've never heard about this with squirrels. Well,
Speaker 1: I I've heard about this for years. I don't remember
Speaker 1: where I heard at first. It might have been from
Speaker 1: some old, some good old Tennessee woodsman somewhere who spoke
Speaker 1: wisdom of the forests into my ears. But this is
Speaker 1: important for us to remind all of our listeners, is
Speaker 1: that Joe and I both grew up with with with
Speaker 1: with access to the Tennessee woodlands. Yes, so there is
Speaker 1: a lot of I'm rather surprised that I didn't hear
Speaker 1: this story from from from people who wandered out of
Speaker 1: the out of the Tennessee of forests with tales of
Speaker 1: the skug. Well, if you want to hear about the
Speaker 1: horrors of skug castration from the lips of the true speakers,
Speaker 1: you should go to YouTube, because there will be many
Speaker 1: a video of some bearded hunter standing there and Camo
Speaker 1: talking into his phone in the middle of the forest, saying,
Speaker 1: here's what happens when these here squirrels buy it off
Speaker 1: each other's nuts. But it turns out there are many
Speaker 1: variations on this base rumor. So one is that you've
Speaker 1: got one squirrel species that supplants another in an area
Speaker 1: by castrating all the males of the other squirrel species.
Speaker 1: Sometimes this version goes, you've got gray squirrels doing it
Speaker 1: to red squirrels. Sometimes they say it's red squirrels doing
Speaker 1: it to gray squirrels. Sometimes the fox squirrel is thrown
Speaker 1: in there somewhere. And so what we want to look
Speaker 1: at is is there in each truth to this? Is
Speaker 1: it true? Or is this just a horrible woodsman myth?
Speaker 1: My uh guess, of course, would be that it is
Speaker 1: a myth, because it just doesn't sound like behavior one
Speaker 1: finds in animals, especially against another species. You know, it
Speaker 1: is a certainly strange targeted behavior, one thing that I
Speaker 1: wanted because because you don't have to castrate another species
Speaker 1: to drive it off. We see plenty of examples of
Speaker 1: one one species driving off another from resources, competing for
Speaker 1: the same resources, or of course, uh, two members of
Speaker 1: the same species competing for resources or mates. But you
Speaker 1: can drive. They will drive each other off through through fighting,
Speaker 1: through displays, much more conventional means. Yeah, usually genital mutilation
Speaker 1: doesn't come up. Yeah, it doesn't seem like a necessary step.
Speaker 1: But then again, we'll we'll come back to this, will
Speaker 1: weigh the pros and cons later on. So one of
Speaker 1: the best things about this myth is that it doesn't
Speaker 1: just come from the woodsman and Camo talking into his
Speaker 1: phone by a forest stream. There's a rather crazy back
Speaker 1: and forth about this in several volumes of the Journal
Speaker 1: of the American Medical Association in JAMMA for more than
Speaker 1: a century ago. So in the year eight, for some reason,
Speaker 1: JAMMA got a little bit obsessed with rampant squirrel castration.
Speaker 1: So it started when the American surgeon Edmund Andrews wrote
Speaker 1: an article for the journal in eight about unux and
Speaker 1: about the physiological effects of castration. And in this article
Speaker 1: Andrews Puts together sort of a round up of what
Speaker 1: he knew about the natural effects of castration and many
Speaker 1: different animals, and one of those animals was the squirrel.
Speaker 1: And he writes quote naturalist state that the black or
Speaker 1: gray male squirrels in fighting seek to castrate each other
Speaker 1: with their teeth, so that many of those taken by
Speaker 1: hunters are thus mutilated, as they do it only an
Speaker 1: adult life, it does not materially change their general development,
Speaker 1: because he was talking about this in the context of, well,
Speaker 1: what happens if a young animal is castrated? How does
Speaker 1: that change the way it develops into an adult? Okay,
Speaker 1: so the the the idea here is that it is
Speaker 1: it's reached material. Yeah. Unfortunately Andrews does not say who
Speaker 1: these naturalists are and makes me wonder, especially given the time,
Speaker 1: is this is this real empirical data or is he
Speaker 1: just repeating the eight version of an urban legend or
Speaker 1: maybe a rural legend, just against somebody wandering out of
Speaker 1: the woods saying, yep, squirrels in there. They're buying each
Speaker 1: other's nuts, and they're they're they're buying the next year.
Speaker 1: That's good that you call to mind. In the last episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about some rumors about squirrel attacks that seemed
Speaker 1: very unlikely to be true about like in Borneo Hunters
Speaker 1: talking about squirrels taking down deer and killing them seems
Speaker 1: hard to believe. But so this first mention is just
Speaker 1: this one off in in Andrew's article about Eunix in general.
Speaker 1: And Andrews comes back to this in another volum of
Speaker 1: Jamma with an article called do adult squirrels cast rate
Speaker 1: each other? So Andrews writes, in this article, remember we
Speaker 1: asked who that naturalist was or the natural square that
Speaker 1: he got his information from. He says he got the
Speaker 1: information about squirrels from quote a distinguished naturalist, but he
Speaker 1: still doesn't say who it is. Good good lessons, cite
Speaker 1: your sources with possible folks. Apparently he got a contradictory
Speaker 1: response to this claim from a doctor named Dr. A. S.
Speaker 1: Allen of Mercy Hospital, Chicago. And Alan claims, first of all,
Speaker 1: about a third of wild squirrels captured by hunters are
Speaker 1: found to be castrated. I assume he means one third
Speaker 1: of male squirrels, but it doesn't say. I hate to
Speaker 1: be the slow brow, but I'm I'm wondering if mistaking
Speaker 1: dead female squirrels for dead male squirrels could be causing
Speaker 1: some confusion among some hunters here. Perhaps perhaps Alan says
Speaker 1: he thinks that this castration is not done in fighting
Speaker 1: between adult males, as Andrews did in his original article.
Speaker 1: Here it's quote He says that a number of gray
Speaker 1: squirrels lived protected in these trees above his former residence.
Speaker 1: A female raised a litter of young in a tree
Speaker 1: close to the house. One day, when the young were
Speaker 1: about one quarter grown, he observed the male trying repeatedly
Speaker 1: to enter the nest, but the female, which in that
Speaker 1: species is the largest of the two, fought him off
Speaker 1: and drove him away. This repeated several times, and the
Speaker 1: male finally desisted. Sometime later, the female went away, apparently
Speaker 1: to gather food. Before she returned, the male reappeared, entered
Speaker 1: the nest and created a great disturbance there, so that
Speaker 1: the doctor climbed the tree and examined the young. He
Speaker 1: found 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 squartum and testes 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 a 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 males that
Speaker 1: are competing with each other for mates, or just members
Speaker 1: of the species in general that are competing with other
Speaker 1: members of the species for resources. Right, But that is
Speaker 1: not at all I think a good argument that this
Speaker 1: is really going on. I'm not sure exactly how to
Speaker 1: explain what Alan claims he observed in this nest of
Speaker 1: assuming the story is true, but there are a few
Speaker 1: other reports so uh. In Spratling's follow up, again in
Speaker 1: the Journal of the American Medical Association, quote how squirrels
Speaker 1: become unux This is another volume of jama and there
Speaker 1: is just a flurry of letters about squirrel castration. The
Speaker 1: this really seemed to get the turn of the century
Speaker 1: physician engines revving like they were like, oh, I've got
Speaker 1: a squirrel castration story, and they wrote in. One is
Speaker 1: from Dr William Spratling of New York, and Spratling writes
Speaker 1: that he spent a lot of years squirrel hunting in
Speaker 1: 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: too near 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 squrowed um.
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 that maybe this was just some
Speaker 1: fourteen year old writing Dajamma making up a fake identity
Speaker 1: in a 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, though 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 leanly 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 rumor to another. But
Speaker 1: Ford gives a couple of rival explanations for the discovery
Speaker 1: of neutered male squirrels. He says, quote, could it not
Speaker 1: be congenital ab sense of the organs or failure of
Speaker 1: the organs to descend into the scrotum? I think forts
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, causing time and atrophy
Speaker 1: of the organs. Oh, I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he is he making a joke there, I can't
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not reading through the writing style, or he
Speaker 1: has been uh or if he's been a victim of
Speaker 1: a hoax on this one or somebody else's joke. I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing that that I keep thinking too with each
Speaker 1: of these doctors is that, yes, these appear to be
Speaker 1: medical doctors, assuming their real assuming they're real, But then
Speaker 1: also just because their medical doctors do not mean that
Speaker 1: they are really They're not biologists with any expertise in
Speaker 1: observing uh squirrel behavior. This scene is very or it
Speaker 1: snacks very much of amateur biology. Yes, they're even from
Speaker 1: someone who who should, by all rights, you know, be
Speaker 1: familiar with the scientific method to to a significant extent.
Speaker 1: These are people who practice human medicine and human medicine
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties. These are not not squirrel experts,
Speaker 1: They're not zoologists. They're not animal behaviorists. Um yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know so though. On the other hand, we do
Speaker 1: have to deal with Okay, well, at least people are
Speaker 1: making these reports. What do these reports mean? That they
Speaker 1: could certainly be mistaken, But we've got plenty of reports
Speaker 1: of people who claim to have one heard stories about
Speaker 1: squirrel castration from people who deal with a lot of squirrels,
Speaker 1: seen lots of examples of castrated squirrels, both young and old,
Speaker 1: and a few kinds of dubious seeming claims of witnessing
Speaker 1: castration from adult squirrel fights. So despite the claims of
Speaker 1: people to have witnessed it themselves, that this really does
Speaker 1: have all the hallmarks of an urban legend. To me,
Speaker 1: I believe people will 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. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back okay, So I found a book by a
Speaker 1: former National Wildlife Federation executive Warner Shed called Owls Aren't
Speaker 1: Wise and Bats Aren't Blind and Naturalists Debunks our Favorite
Speaker 1: fallacies about wildlife, which addresses a version of this claim
Speaker 1: about squirrel castration. So, first of all, Shed is writing
Speaker 1: about this in the context of a chapter on squirrel myths,
Speaker 1: specifically the myth that red squirrels drive out gray squirrels
Speaker 1: from any area they inhabit, and Shed writes that while
Speaker 1: it isn't necessarily true that red squirrels will drive gray
Speaker 1: squirrels out of a forest, it is true the red
Speaker 1: squirrels tend to be very territorial, and if any animal
Speaker 1: like a gray squirrel, gets too close to the red
Speaker 1: squirrels hidden cash of nuts, the red squirrel will sometimes
Speaker 1: get aggressive and try to chase the gray squirrel off.
Speaker 1: And Shed says that this territorial chasing tendency might be
Speaker 1: somehow linked to the version of the castration claim that
Speaker 1: says red squirrels castrate gray squirrels, which he claims is
Speaker 1: simply the result of quote an overheated imagination or quote
Speaker 1: a deliberate tall tale, and he argues that it makes
Speaker 1: no sense for a squirrel to bite another squirrels testicles off.
Speaker 1: Merely consider the facts the gray squirrel generally weighs from
Speaker 1: two to three times as much as the little red.
Speaker 1: Even what are normally the most peaceable of animals will
Speaker 1: fight savagely if necessary to protect themselves. Nor could a
Speaker 1: red squirrel, with its little teeth neatly snip off the
Speaker 1: testicles of the gray with one or two bites. The
Speaker 1: notion that the much bigger gray would allow its testicles
Speaker 1: to be gnawed off by this little relative is preposterous.
Speaker 1: Long for where that happened, the gray would make squirrel
Speaker 1: hash out of the offending red. And that has an
Speaker 1: exclamation point on it, by the way, that is like,
Speaker 1: so he's really he's really driving it home. He also
Speaker 1: adds that if in general Red's had a successful strategy
Speaker 1: of sterilizing grays, grays would tend to disappear in areas
Speaker 1: where reds existed, And he says this is not the case,
Speaker 1: So it's Shed's judgment. That that's his judgment. But if
Speaker 1: he's correct, and squirrels do not castrade each other, what
Speaker 1: should we make of all these reports in Jamma and elsewhere?
Speaker 1: Of people finding squirrels with castration wounds all over the place. Now,
Speaker 1: of course it's possible some of these could be lies
Speaker 1: or hoaxes, and I think with some of them, even
Speaker 1: a couple of those letters into Jamma, you have kind
Speaker 1: of have to wonder. I mean, these these supposedly are
Speaker 1: doctors writing in but I don't know that's smith guy. Well,
Speaker 1: we've discussed time and time again that even very educated
Speaker 1: individuals can either be the perpetrators of hoax hoaxes or
Speaker 1: the victims of hoaxes. And then also there's that interesting
Speaker 1: relationship between the the the the what, the hoaxer and
Speaker 1: the hoax e um. Karl Sagan talks about this in
Speaker 1: the demon Haunted World and points whether it's like a
Speaker 1: magic trick. A magic trick, is it is something that
Speaker 1: exists because of a silent pact between the magician and
Speaker 1: the audience. Yeah, people don't want to admit they've been tricked.
Speaker 1: If they've been tricked, even momentarily, they kind of don't
Speaker 1: want to admit that they fell for it, and will
Speaker 1: fight to defend the reality of the illusion. But then again,
Speaker 1: I don't think I would explain all of these cases
Speaker 1: in terms of hoaxes, deliberate hoaxes or tricks. I think
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases you're probably going to be
Speaker 1: dealing with people who were mistaken about what they saw
Speaker 1: or who were interpreting misinterpreting something. So that brings us
Speaker 1: to the question of what else could cause a squirrel
Speaker 1: to appear incorrectly to have suffered this type of injury
Speaker 1: or attack. Now there's one hypothesis that's pretty far out there.
Speaker 1: It's not exactly a perfect fit, but it is kind
Speaker 1: of worth a look. And this is an explanation put
Speaker 1: forward by Ernest Thompson Seton, who was an early influence
Speaker 1: on the formation and mythology of the Boy Scouts of America.
Speaker 1: Uh Seton noted that there is a species of parasitic
Speaker 1: bot fly that is an obligate of tree squirrels and
Speaker 1: tends to lay eggs in the squirrels groin, and these
Speaker 1: eggs hatch and the larva erupt from the skin, and
Speaker 1: it's gross, but the squirrel can usually survive it. It
Speaker 1: doesn't really benefit the bot fly to kill its host.
Speaker 1: And if this larva eruption were to happen in the groin,
Speaker 1: as it apparently sometimes does, hunters seeing wounds of this
Speaker 1: kind might think that the squirrels had had their groins
Speaker 1: violently attacked. And this bot fly does exist. It's called
Speaker 1: coutarebra emasculator, or the tree squirrel bot fly and bot
Speaker 1: flies on their own are fascinating subject. We we could
Speaker 1: return to them endlessly. Oh yes. The bot fly, also
Speaker 1: known as the he'll fly, the gad fly, or my
Speaker 1: favorite and especially as it relates to squirrels, is the
Speaker 1: warble fly. Now why is that your favorite as it
Speaker 1: relates to squirrels, Because you will sometimes see what is
Speaker 1: often described as a lumpy squirrel. If you spend as
Speaker 1: much time looking at squirrels as we have, and certainly
Speaker 1: any kind of like rural southern environment, then I bet
Speaker 1: you've either seen or heard of a warble squarble squirrel,
Speaker 1: a lumpy squirrel. It I remember seeing one when I
Speaker 1: was young and find it found it rather grotesque. Why
Speaker 1: is that squirrel lumpy? What is going on with that squirrel?
Speaker 1: And you're saying a warble fly is a good explanation?
Speaker 1: Y Oh yeah, I mean it is. It's it's the explanation.
Speaker 1: So but again, there are a lot of bot flies.
Speaker 1: They're like something like a hundred fifty species worldwide, and
Speaker 1: most of their larva are obligant parasites of mammals. Their
Speaker 1: maggots grow in the flesh, usually the skin of the animals,
Speaker 1: sometimes in the gut. South America's human bot flew i
Speaker 1: or Dermatobia home menace is the only species that routinely
Speaker 1: grows it's young and human flesh. And if you're a
Speaker 1: big time podcast listener, like a lot of you are,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard accounts of these infections, particularly on
Speaker 1: w n y c's Radio Lab. In particular, evolutionary biogists
Speaker 1: Jerry Coin observed the growth of a bottfly larva in
Speaker 1: his own scalp and uh and he remarked on how
Speaker 1: it was not just growing inside of him, but out
Speaker 1: of him. The resulting creature was, in a strange way,
Speaker 1: part of him. It was like like his offspring. I
Speaker 1: actually read about this in a fantastic book in one
Speaker 1: of my high school biology classes. It was a book
Speaker 1: called Tropical Nature by Adrian Forsyth and Kin Miata, and
Speaker 1: they had a chapter on this incident called Jerry's Maggot.
Speaker 1: That's all about Jerry having the bot fly growing out
Speaker 1: of it. I think it was. It was out of
Speaker 1: his head, right, yeah, his scalp um. I remember that.
Speaker 1: That was an eye opening read when I was like
Speaker 1: fourteen or whatever. But that's the human body fly. We
Speaker 1: should get back to this specific squirrel a bot fly
Speaker 1: that we're talking about here, right, kuderebra emasculadder, the tree
Speaker 1: squirrel bot fly. So it's a parasite of tree squirrels
Speaker 1: and chipmunks. It's found throughout eastern North America. There are
Speaker 1: multiple species of kudaebrabot fly which infect different hosts and
Speaker 1: emasculator as you can kind of hear something going on
Speaker 1: in the name there. It was named by the entomologist
Speaker 1: Asa Fitch based on his mistaken belief that the larvae
Speaker 1: of the species ate the testicles of hosts squirrels, and
Speaker 1: the hypothesis about this being the explanation for apparent squirrel
Speaker 1: castration is not as strong as it once was. Maybe
Speaker 1: isn't as strong now as when um Seaton proposed it,
Speaker 1: since scientists actually no longer believe that the grubs of
Speaker 1: the bot fly eat the squirrels gonads. I was reading
Speaker 1: more recent stuff about the spot fly, and it looks
Speaker 1: like there's not any particular tendency or attention of the
Speaker 1: spot fly to concentrate in the groin or the genitals
Speaker 1: or anything. But then again, it need not actually eat
Speaker 1: the gonads to be interpreted as such. I UM like
Speaker 1: about an average like hunter or even a medical doctor
Speaker 1: who just picks up a squirrel or sees one trotting
Speaker 1: around on the defense, right, right, so maybe say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a kind of a bloody scrotum. I wonder what's
Speaker 1: going on there? The explanation must be, uh, this weird
Speaker 1: squirrel scrotum attacking explanation, Right, So maybe they just see
Speaker 1: about fly some kind of weird growth or protruberance that
Speaker 1: looks a nasty somewhere on the underside of a squirrel,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, what happened there? But I don't know.
Speaker 1: So it's possible this could explain some occasional observations of
Speaker 1: genital injuries and squirrels, But I would say this doesn't
Speaker 1: really seem like a good general explanation for all of
Speaker 1: the observations. Now, Joe, I do have to return to
Speaker 1: the Tennessee and aspects of this story for a second. Um.
Speaker 1: I worked for a small Tennessee newspaper back in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, and I definitely remember information pieces that we
Speaker 1: published covering this vital question, is it safe to skin
Speaker 1: and eat a lumpy squirrel? That's some service journalism. It
Speaker 1: is given the You've given the people what they need
Speaker 1: and what they need to know. Um which I remember
Speaker 1: being horrified by this because I'd seen a warrib old
Speaker 1: squirrel and my first thought was, I wonder if I
Speaker 1: can eat that. I would think I'm going to pass
Speaker 1: on the war bold squirrel and maybe go with one
Speaker 1: of these non warb old squirrel specimens. Squirrel fritters are
Speaker 1: on the menu tonight, and I'm I've got a hurt
Speaker 1: and for some squirrel meat. Will this do in a pinch? Yeah? 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 Kohley, 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 larvae 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 here,
Speaker 1: is that eating bot flies isn't actually that crazy. There's
Speaker 1: actually evidence from Paleolithic art that indicates that early humans
Speaker 1: may have eaten reindeer bot flies rather routinely, and the
Speaker 1: practice seems to have survived among Inuit people. I was
Speaker 1: reading a book titled The Nature of Paleolithic Art by
Speaker 1: our Dale Guthrie, and Guthrie writes there are thousands of
Speaker 1: images that can give us a more rounded view of
Speaker 1: Paleolithic people in their times images that are not customarily
Speaker 1: shown in coffee table volumes. Take, for example, these little
Speaker 1: worm like creatures from Paleolithic art Eskimo from northern Alaska.
Speaker 1: To light in eating the large spring maggots or larvae
Speaker 1: of the reindeer warble fly, I suspect your Asian people
Speaker 1: did the same in the Paleolithic. This is one of
Speaker 1: the few insects eaten by the Northern people. When the
Speaker 1: reindeer are killed, the highe is skin back and the
Speaker 1: warbles are exposed on the underside. They are fat and salty,
Speaker 1: a spring treat. I have tried them several times during
Speaker 1: this time of year. Many people in the village have
Speaker 1: sore throats from the raspers of the maggot sides. I'm
Speaker 1: struggling here because I make a strong effort not to
Speaker 1: stigmatize what other people eat, but the image of the
Speaker 1: raspers scraping the inside of the throat is disturbing me.
Speaker 1: It is it's a little it's a little much to
Speaker 1: take um, but I mean, I do not have any
Speaker 1: issue with with eating insect because I think eating insects
Speaker 1: has been a practice by human beings for a very
Speaker 1: long time and very sustainable, very sustainable. It will, I think,
Speaker 1: invariably become part of increasingly a part of our diet
Speaker 1: as as we continue to figure out how to survive
Speaker 1: in this world of of exhaustible resources. Uh So it's
Speaker 1: a very good and clever thing to do. I think
Speaker 1: I have an irrational bias against it. Yes, but it's
Speaker 1: the raspers, yeah, and the throat that that is a
Speaker 1: little a little bit much to take. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: kind of this has been kind of a detour from
Speaker 1: the basic squirrel castration um discussion, but I think we
Speaker 1: needed a detour, even though this one was a little
Speaker 1: bit gruesome in its own. Yeah, we needed to depart
Speaker 1: from the nastiness of squirrels and discuss something refreshing like
Speaker 1: bot fly consumption. So let's solve this mystery. What is it? Okay,
Speaker 1: So we think that the the bot fly on the
Speaker 1: squirrels growing might explain some sightings, but probably not all
Speaker 1: of them. Another thing that that occurred to me as
Speaker 1: a possibility is you've got this thing called squirrel parapox
Speaker 1: virus or squirrel pox, which can cause swelling or the
Speaker 1: appearance of tumors or lesions around parts of the squirrel's body,
Speaker 1: including the genital area, but this disease has only been
Speaker 1: observed to exist in the past few decades. It does
Speaker 1: not seem like a very good explanation either. But then
Speaker 1: there is one explanation that is heads slapping lee simple,
Speaker 1: and while it doesn't necessarily explain all of the supposed
Speaker 1: observations people have claimed, if you assume they're telling the
Speaker 1: truth about what they saw, it does seem to explain
Speaker 1: a lot. It probably explains a lot. This is from
Speaker 1: Mammals of the Eastern United States by John O. Whittaker,
Speaker 1: William John and William John Hamilton's from Cornell University Press.
Speaker 1: In this is there much more mundane explanation quote. Many
Speaker 1: people think that red squirrels, even though smaller, dominate gray
Speaker 1: squirrels and drive them out of their territories, and even
Speaker 1: that they castrate them. The latter story probably a rows
Speaker 1: from someone's observing how often red squirrels chase gray squirrels.
Speaker 1: This goes along with what shed was saying about their territoriality,
Speaker 1: but picking up in the quote then linking that observation
Speaker 1: with the apparent lack of test ees in gray squirrels
Speaker 1: which are abdominal in the non breeding season, so testicular attraction.
Speaker 1: This is very smart strategy for plenty of animals in
Speaker 1: the time when you don't need them on the outside,
Speaker 1: they come up on the inside. This would also make
Speaker 1: sense given the the The idea that we've seen presented
Speaker 1: here is that the testicles have not been freshly chewed off. No,
Speaker 1: they must have been chewed off earlier and the animal
Speaker 1: has healed. Yeah, and so this does not seem to
Speaker 1: explain the direct observation of wounds that a few of
Speaker 1: the authors here have claimed to witness. If again, if
Speaker 1: we assume those accounts are true, But this does seem
Speaker 1: like a really good explanation for why hunters who don't
Speaker 1: necessarily know better would find male squirrels without testicles. Uh,
Speaker 1: they only descend into a temporary scrotum during the breeding
Speaker 1: season anyway, So during the non breeding season, the organs
Speaker 1: were tracked up into the abdomen. Hunter maybe shoots one,
Speaker 1: picks it up, doesn't see anything, and it's like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: something weird happened to the squirrel. Must be related to
Speaker 1: that gruesome rumor I heard years ago. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like saying, what is chewing the landing gear off of
Speaker 1: these airplanes? It must be grimlins because I don't see
Speaker 1: them at all, So I think, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think that's a pretty good explanation. I am fairly convinced
Speaker 1: by that one that that probably explains most of what
Speaker 1: people have seen. So maybe some combination of seeing squirrels
Speaker 1: with just naturally occurring injuries, seeing squirrels with some kind
Speaker 1: of bot fly growth in the growing area, and then
Speaker 1: just lots of hunters finding squirrels in the non breeding
Speaker 1: season without external test ees. It seems like you put
Speaker 1: all those together, and you add in a little bit
Speaker 1: of whiskey in the woods, and this turns into hunters
Speaker 1: telling a story about gruesome castration rituals which do not exist.
Speaker 1: And it's ultimately a story that that makes more sense
Speaker 1: in light of what we know about little squirrel behavior,
Speaker 1: but just also the general behavior of territorial animals. Now,
Speaker 1: as for 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, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you should believe their stories. I
Speaker 1: 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 it was just
Speaker 1: just a fanciful story that he made. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: if you had your vision of squirrels marred by the
Speaker 1: discovery that they will sometimes eat carry in or sometimes
Speaker 1: hunt prey in the last episode, maybe you should rest
Speaker 1: a little bit easier now if you'd previously heard the
Speaker 1: Castre san 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. Alright, we're back now,
Speaker 1: I said, Neither of the examples we're gonna look at
Speaker 1: here violence. I guess one is by some definition self violence.
Speaker 1: But well we'll see, we'll see we'll see. So I
Speaker 1: do want to talk briefly about hibernation and ground squirrel neuroplasticity.
Speaker 1: That sounds interesting now. In our recent episode, uh, in
Speaker 1: our two thousand one Space Odyssey episode, we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about that. Yeah, we were talking about space
Speaker 1: hibernation and how this isn't really a possibility for humans yet.
Speaker 1: We haven't discovered any kind of technology that will allow
Speaker 1: us to hibernate for long space journeys. But you talked
Speaker 1: about the idea of hot sleep and how that relates
Speaker 1: to squirrel hot sleep, that being a some terminology from
Speaker 1: the science fiction of Orson Scott Card, the idea that
Speaker 1: you have the individuals in the sci fi world and
Speaker 1: they're they're put into an artifici wal uh slumber for
Speaker 1: long trips, but it's not pleasant. It's it's like the
Speaker 1: sweating ordeal. And what we're gonna discuss here actually reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot of that. So Arctic ground squirrels have
Speaker 1: long been of interest to science for their hibernation abilities,
Speaker 1: and we've mentioned them on the show before. Back in Zoo,
Speaker 1: physiologist Brian Barne of the University of Alaska, he commented
Speaker 1: on how the hibernation of the Arctic ground school is
Speaker 1: more like a month's long bout of insomnia. That sounds horrible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like hot sleep to make He pointed out
Speaker 1: that they lowered their body temperature below freezing but they
Speaker 1: but they don't stay that way. They undergo cyclical rewarmings
Speaker 1: once or twice a month. And the rewarming must be
Speaker 1: important because it uses roughly eight of the fat stores
Speaker 1: uh in order to do it. So a lot of
Speaker 1: energy is expended to come out of of of the
Speaker 1: freeze and then go back down into it again. So
Speaker 1: we're not just talking about rewarming at the end of hibernation.
Speaker 1: So barnes theory at the time was that they had
Speaker 1: to warm up to actually sleep, that cold brains can't sleep,
Speaker 1: that the torper might stave off sleep for days or weeks,
Speaker 1: but they'd eventually be forced to warm up in order
Speaker 1: to get that vital slumber. Uh. He's worked with the
Speaker 1: Institute of Artic Biology ever since and has devoted a
Speaker 1: great deal of research to mammalian hibernation. Uh. If if
Speaker 1: you look up like squirrel hibernation um on the Internet
Speaker 1: and you look for for peri of your papers, you
Speaker 1: 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: neuroplasticity model. Yeah, yeah, this is This is kind of
Speaker 1: a wonder species for people who are researching neuroplasticity in
Speaker 1: ways to potential potentially boost it in humans. Now we know,
Speaker 1: like in humans, the neuroplasticity model you often you have
Speaker 1: is that children tend to make a whole lot of
Speaker 1: connections in the brain, and then over time those connections
Speaker 1: are sort of pruned back, limiting potential as as time
Speaker 1: goes on and maturity develops in the body and the
Speaker 1: child eventually becomes more neurostable. But here you're seeing a
Speaker 1: renewal of a type of infantile neuroplasticity in the adult
Speaker 1: ground squirrel as it hibernates. Yeah, I mean basically, it
Speaker 1: boost neuroplasticity in order to repair everything that it loses
Speaker 1: during this hibernation process. So, no matter what you think
Speaker 1: of other squirrels and your distrust of other squirrels, the
Speaker 1: artic ground squirrel is is a very attractive species to
Speaker 1: scientists where a number of reasons. Cracking the inner workings
Speaker 1: of its hibernation adaptations could allow us to engineer neuroplasticity
Speaker 1: treatments to improve organ transplantation, and devise ways to place
Speaker 1: human space travelers into some form of of hot sleep
Speaker 1: for a prolonged space mission. Oh good, that sounds great. Thanks,
Speaker 1: thanks squirrels. All right, we'll have one more bit of
Speaker 1: squirrel data to share with everyone. Is it going to
Speaker 1: be something shocking? I hope it's Lit's not. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anything left that can truly shock
Speaker 1: us at this point in our squirrel exploration. This one's
Speaker 1: more humorous. So cape ground squirrels have a scrowed them
Speaker 1: that takes up their body length with a penis twice
Speaker 1: as long as that You know, so it's another product
Speaker 1: of the the evolutionary mating arms race. The males have
Speaker 1: been observed to engage in auto fallacio and consume the
Speaker 1: ejected reproductive murial material, which of course only makes sense.
Speaker 1: We've discussed animal cannibalism in the same light. It's energy.
Speaker 1: What what what do you? What do you what you
Speaker 1: do with it? Why just waste it? You got to
Speaker 1: like put it back into the business. Right, So that
Speaker 1: makes sense. But but ultimately people ask well why do
Speaker 1: they do that? Indeed, why does any species engage in masturbation? Well,
Speaker 1: there's the sexual outlet hypothesis that arousal must be dismissed. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that makes sense, right, You've just got this arowse squirrel.
Speaker 1: It's got to do something with all this uh this,
Speaker 1: you know, this energy that it has now, and it
Speaker 1: might as well release it so it can get on
Speaker 1: with nut collecting and what have you. But then there's
Speaker 1: another idea that it might be because they has to
Speaker 1: flush out the old sperm so that the creature has
Speaker 1: fresher sperm that it can utilize for mating. Is there
Speaker 1: an expiry date on that? Essentially, it would be like
Speaker 1: an innate knowledge of the expiration data, I guess. But
Speaker 1: then uh. Biologist Jane Waterman weighed in on the matter,
Speaker 1: uh and uh, at least as it concerns cape ground squirrels,
Speaker 1: and pointed out the dominant male actually do this the most,
Speaker 1: the ones who shouldn't have to masturbate if the sexual
Speaker 1: outlet view is correct. They also did it more after
Speaker 1: sex than before, seemingly a blow against the sperm quality hypothesis.
Speaker 1: She also dismissed the ideas that it's done as as
Speaker 1: a as a signal to potential mates or to competitors,
Speaker 1: because the pattern wasn't there, so you just don't see
Speaker 1: them doing it at the times where it would makes
Speaker 1: sense if it was about communicating to other squirrels. Well, so,
Speaker 1: what is Waterman's explanation, Her explanation or her by hypothesis
Speaker 1: here is that they masturbate and in doing so reduce
Speaker 1: the odds of catching an std. She points out that
Speaker 1: the human males may urinate after sex sort of clean
Speaker 1: things out, and that cape ground squirrels rarely urinate due
Speaker 1: to their desert environment. So what's what's a squirrel to
Speaker 1: do If it doesn't urinate frequently, what can it possibly
Speaker 1: do to clean out that tract. Masturbation provides an answer.
Speaker 1: It seems like a reasonable explanation, though I truly did
Speaker 1: not know we would end up in this place. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's kind of a happy ending for
Speaker 1: these two episodes that we should end not with visions
Speaker 1: of meat eating squirrels or scrowed them chewing squirrels, squirrels
Speaker 1: engaging in mortal Kombat with snakes, but instead simply a
Speaker 1: masturbating squirrel in the desert, trying to stay healthy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just staying healthy sounds good to me. Now, we do
Speaker 1: hope these episodes have helped you look at squirrels in
Speaker 1: a different way, to see them not just as you
Speaker 1: know tree rats running around in your yard, but something
Speaker 1: that is in its own right and evolutionary marvel, something
Speaker 1: that's engaged in a struggle for survival and and faces
Speaker 1: 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 that they don't deserve any kind of vilification, even
Speaker 1: though it might be kind of shocking to learn the
Speaker 1: truth about them since we see them so off fen
Speaker 1: but usually don't suspect these things, right, Yeah, don't go
Speaker 1: hurt any squirrels on our account. But of course, if
Speaker 1: you were already killing and eating squirrels, uh, let us
Speaker 1: know how that goes for you. If what's your experience
Speaker 1: with squirrel hunting and warbles and uh in in various
Speaker 1: bits of you know, urban or rural legend about squirrels
Speaker 1: biting each other? Did you hear the squirrel castration urban legend?
Speaker 1: Where did you hear it? And what variant on and
Speaker 1: what sort of explanation was presented to you? We would
Speaker 1: love to hear about any of that. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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Speaker 1: including Facebook, where we have that fabulous Facebook group, the
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