WEBVTT - From the Vault: Squirrels, Part 2 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.640 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:11.320 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:13.360 Time to go into the vault for a classic episode 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:15.880 of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This episode originally aired 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:21.080 August and it is part two of our exploration of squirrels. 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:23.640 That's right. Yes, these were a real joy to put 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:26.720 together and they were very popular. Everyone seemed to love them, 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:28.760 so we thought, well, it's time to bring them out 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:31.800 of the vault again, and so indeed, I look forward 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:37.360 to the renewed um onslaught of squirrel related listener mail. 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:43.560 Bring it on. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:52.240 from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:54.280 Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:57.120 and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back for part two 0:00:57.400 --> 0:00:59.920 of our two part exploration of the world of scugs. 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.800 That's right, squirrels, squirrels. If you did not listen to 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.800 our last episode, our most recent episode about squirrels, go 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:10.720 back and listen to it because it will. It will 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:15.360 provide some necessary, horrific revelations about the squirrel that you 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.400 really need going into this episode, and we should warn 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:22.000 at the beginning that, uh, if you didn't listen to 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:24.880 the last episode you want to listen to this one anyway, 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:27.400 you should be forewarned. This is going to be one 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:31.000 of the most gruesome things we've ever explored on the show. 0:01:31.040 --> 0:01:34.600 I think how squirrels, I would say that the last episode, 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:37.280 which largely dealt with the fact that squirrels eat meat 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:41.320 and do actually stalk prey like, that's an episode I 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:43.440 would listen to with my six year old son, and 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:45.959 I wouldn't have any problem with it. I've talked about 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.880 the topics on that episode with him. This episode I 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:53.080 would probably not listen to a nice year old son. Yeah, 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:55.120 I didn't think it would roll out this way. But 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:57.480 but our exploration of squirrels is one of the most 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:01.000 inappropriate for children of all things we ever we've ever 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.520 explored here. Yes, but we're walking in deep truth tonight, children, 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.560 so so stick with us as we explore more horrific 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:12.640 facts about squirrel behavior. So again, last episode, we talked 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:17.000 about squirrels eating meat, squirrels stalking to pray, squirrels messing 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:20.560 around with snakes. Uh, squirrels and their relationship with the 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:24.600 Benjamin Franklin this time. Now. In the last episode, we 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:28.160 talked about certain myths about Benjamin Franklin and the reality 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:31.000 of Benjamin Franklin having a pet squirrel named Mungo who 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:34.760 he wrote analogy for when it was killed by a dog. UM. 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:38.440 This time, I want to start off with another possible myth, 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:42.560 possible fact that that dwells in that hazy middle world 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:45.440 of rumor. I want to know, Robert, if you've ever 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:48.160 heard the same rumor I have. It's a horrifying rumor. 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:49.960 It's one I've heard for years, and it's about the 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:53.880 competition between squirrels. And the rumor goes something like this, 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:58.680 When two adult male squirrels come into conflict over food, 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:03.360 over territory, over mating, or whatever. The two squirrels fight 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.839 with a horrible aim, and that aim is to castrate 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:10.320 the other by biting off its squirrel testicles. I had 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:12.320 never heard of this before. I would say the closest 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.600 thing i'd heard was, you know some details about a 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:20.480 competition between chimpanzees, Yeah, biting biting off Well, I just 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:24.640 know that genital attacks um have have have been reported 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:28.200 among chimpanzees. Uh, but I don't know with what degree 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:30.600 of frequency. But it's the kind of thing where I 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:33.079 heard about it in relation to chimpanzees and now makes 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:36.000 me look at chimpanzee is a little uh, well, there's 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:37.840 a lot with chimpanzees to be you know, a little 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.640 concerned about. But but I've never heard about this with squirrels. Well, 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:44.000 I I've heard about this for years. I don't remember 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:45.920 where I heard at first. It might have been from 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:49.800 some old, some good old Tennessee woodsman somewhere who spoke 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:52.520 wisdom of the forests into my ears. But this is 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:55.000 important for us to remind all of our listeners, is 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:59.160 that Joe and I both grew up with with with 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.200 with access to the Tennessee woodlands. Yes, so there is 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:04.680 a lot of I'm rather surprised that I didn't hear 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:09.000 this story from from from people who wandered out of 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:12.000 the out of the Tennessee of forests with tales of 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:14.240 the skug. Well, if you want to hear about the 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.880 horrors of skug castration from the lips of the true speakers, 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:21.720 you should go to YouTube, because there will be many 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:25.200 a video of some bearded hunter standing there and Camo 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.520 talking into his phone in the middle of the forest, saying, 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.520 here's what happens when these here squirrels buy it off 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.800 each other's nuts. But it turns out there are many 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:39.320 variations on this base rumor. So one is that you've 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:43.360 got one squirrel species that supplants another in an area 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:46.560 by castrating all the males of the other squirrel species. 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:50.080 Sometimes this version goes, you've got gray squirrels doing it 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.159 to red squirrels. Sometimes they say it's red squirrels doing 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:56.200 it to gray squirrels. Sometimes the fox squirrel is thrown 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:58.440 in there somewhere. And so what we want to look 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:00.839 at is is there in each truth to this? Is 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.000 it true? Or is this just a horrible woodsman myth? 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:09.800 My uh guess, of course, would be that it is 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:13.920 a myth, because it just doesn't sound like behavior one 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:19.000 finds in animals, especially against another species. You know, it 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:24.560 is a certainly strange targeted behavior, one thing that I 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.560 wanted because because you don't have to castrate another species 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:29.400 to drive it off. We see plenty of examples of 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:33.800 one one species driving off another from resources, competing for 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:36.800 the same resources, or of course, uh, two members of 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:40.880 the same species competing for resources or mates. But you 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:44.719 can drive. They will drive each other off through through fighting, 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:50.440 through displays, much more conventional means. Yeah, usually genital mutilation 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:53.440 doesn't come up. Yeah, it doesn't seem like a necessary step. 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:56.480 But then again, we'll we'll come back to this, will 0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:59.320 weigh the pros and cons later on. So one of 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:02.080 the best things about this myth is that it doesn't 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:05.400 just come from the woodsman and Camo talking into his 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:09.560 phone by a forest stream. There's a rather crazy back 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:12.520 and forth about this in several volumes of the Journal 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:16.400 of the American Medical Association in JAMMA for more than 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.279 a century ago. So in the year eight, for some reason, 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.840 JAMMA got a little bit obsessed with rampant squirrel castration. 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:28.559 So it started when the American surgeon Edmund Andrews wrote 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:32.080 an article for the journal in eight about unux and 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:36.400 about the physiological effects of castration. And in this article 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:39.640 Andrews Puts together sort of a round up of what 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:42.760 he knew about the natural effects of castration and many 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:46.360 different animals, and one of those animals was the squirrel. 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:49.880 And he writes quote naturalist state that the black or 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:53.760 gray male squirrels in fighting seek to castrate each other 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:56.600 with their teeth, so that many of those taken by 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:00.200 hunters are thus mutilated, as they do it only an 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:04.040 adult life, it does not materially change their general development, 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:06.159 because he was talking about this in the context of, well, 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.160 what happens if a young animal is castrated? How does 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:12.000 that change the way it develops into an adult? Okay, 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:14.040 so the the the idea here is that it is 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:19.080 it's reached material. Yeah. Unfortunately Andrews does not say who 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:22.560 these naturalists are and makes me wonder, especially given the time, 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:25.400 is this is this real empirical data or is he 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:28.960 just repeating the eight version of an urban legend or 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:31.480 maybe a rural legend, just against somebody wandering out of 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:34.160 the woods saying, yep, squirrels in there. They're buying each 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:37.560 other's nuts, and they're they're they're buying the next year. 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:40.080 That's good that you call to mind. In the last episode, 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:42.880 we talked about some rumors about squirrel attacks that seemed 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:46.760 very unlikely to be true about like in Borneo Hunters 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:50.960 talking about squirrels taking down deer and killing them seems 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:53.800 hard to believe. But so this first mention is just 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:57.120 this one off in in Andrew's article about Eunix in general. 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:00.720 And Andrews comes back to this in another volum of 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:04.800 Jamma with an article called do adult squirrels cast rate 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:08.440 each other? So Andrews writes, in this article, remember we 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:11.080 asked who that naturalist was or the natural square that 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:13.560 he got his information from. He says he got the 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:17.000 information about squirrels from quote a distinguished naturalist, but he 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.720 still doesn't say who it is. Good good lessons, cite 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:24.400 your sources with possible folks. Apparently he got a contradictory 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:27.880 response to this claim from a doctor named Dr. A. S. 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:31.640 Allen of Mercy Hospital, Chicago. And Alan claims, first of all, 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.000 about a third of wild squirrels captured by hunters are 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:38.160 found to be castrated. I assume he means one third 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:40.679 of male squirrels, but it doesn't say. I hate to 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:43.560 be the slow brow, but I'm I'm wondering if mistaking 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:47.559 dead female squirrels for dead male squirrels could be causing 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:52.600 some confusion among some hunters here. Perhaps perhaps Alan says 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:55.600 he thinks that this castration is not done in fighting 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:59.320 between adult males, as Andrews did in his original article. 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:02.440 Here it's quote He says that a number of gray 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:05.920 squirrels lived protected in these trees above his former residence. 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:08.600 A female raised a litter of young in a tree 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:11.040 close to the house. One day, when the young were 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:14.480 about one quarter grown, he observed the male trying repeatedly 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:17.079 to enter the nest, but the female, which in that 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:20.080 species is the largest of the two, fought him off 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:23.280 and drove him away. This repeated several times, and the 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:28.040 male finally desisted. Sometime later, the female went away, apparently 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:32.040 to gather food. Before she returned, the male reappeared, entered 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:35.040 the nest and created a great disturbance there, so that 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:38.160 the doctor climbed the tree and examined the young. He 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.720 found four young quarter grown males and one or two females. 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:45.280 Three of the young males had been freshly castrated, the 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:49.040 old male squirrel having bitten their squartum and testes cleanly 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:53.280 and smoothly off with his sharp incisors. That's terrifying, that 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:57.520 is gruesome. So Alan claims that he's had a career 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:00.600 of squirrel hunting, and he has found castrated a adult males, 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:05.280 but never freshly castrated adult males, and so Andrews considers 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:07.640 that it would be difficult for an adult male squirrel 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:11.400 to hold another adult male still enough to bite off 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:14.360 his testicles, but this might be easier if the victim 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:16.920 is a juvenile. Thus, he seems to think that Dr. 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:20.040 Allen's story is probably a better explanation for why hunters 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:23.320 report finding so many castrated squirrels. On the other hand, 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:26.000 he thinks this is very weird in light of natural selection, 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:29.439 since it quote would hardly tend to benefit or perpetuate 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:33.120 the species. Not to be condescending, but this indicates to 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:35.200 me a kind of poor understanding of the level at 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:38.480 which natural selection acts. Like members of a species are 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:41.720 constantly doing things that do not benefit other members of 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.440 that same species. Right there is that there is a 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:47.880 great deal of selfishness. Again, we talk about males that 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:51.199 are competing with each other for mates, or just members 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:53.120 of the species in general that are competing with other 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:56.280 members of the species for resources. Right, But that is 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.560 not at all I think a good argument that this 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:01.719 is really going on. I'm not sure exactly how to 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:04.480 explain what Alan claims he observed in this nest of 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:07.120 assuming the story is true, but there are a few 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:11.760 other reports so uh. In Spratling's follow up, again in 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.239 the Journal of the American Medical Association, quote how squirrels 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:18.520 become unux This is another volume of jama and there 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:21.800 is just a flurry of letters about squirrel castration. The 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:25.200 this really seemed to get the turn of the century 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:27.920 physician engines revving like they were like, oh, I've got 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:31.439 a squirrel castration story, and they wrote in. One is 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:34.839 from Dr William Spratling of New York, and Spratling writes 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:37.120 that he spent a lot of years squirrel hunting in 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:40.320 eastern Alabama with an experienced squirrel hunter in his sixties, 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:42.520 and one day he shot a young male squirrel to 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:46.839 discover it had a fresh castration wound. His companion said 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:49.160 it must have been done by an older male, and 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:51.839 that he had often found young male squirrels like that 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:55.000 sometimes still in the nest. Spratling asked him why the 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:58.520 older males did it. His companion replied that Spratling should 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.800 ask the squirrels. Okay, you have to kind of wonder 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:04.400 if he just shot the squirrel. Perhaps it could have 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:07.440 been injured in the shooting, but who knows, And of 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:09.480 course there are a number of different ways of squirrel 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:13.160 could be injured, you know, let's let's not limit the 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:15.880 ways that a squirrel can could lose its scrowed them 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.559 too near you know, you know, hunting practices, or the 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:24.000 the teeth of a rival male. Sure, here's another one. 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:26.320 This one's a really choice. So this is from Dr. E. H. 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:29.800 Smith of Santa Clara, California. First, I should know this guy. 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:32.920 His whole writing style and everything. He sounds a little off. 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:37.080 So Smith writes that he observed plenty of squirrels in 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.440 southwestern Michigan, and he claims that the adult males do 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:44.200 indeed fight in order to castrate, looking for opportunities to 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:47.560 dive beneath one another and bite off the rival squrowed um. 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:51.360 He says this is primarily the red squirrels that do this, 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:54.200 and they do it to other kinds of squirrels for heat. 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:57.040 For the red squirrel quote is the hardest fighter of 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:01.920 them all. And Smith says he tested this out by 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:04.840 putting a red squirrel and a ferret in a box 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:07.960 with each other, quote, expecting, of course, that the ferret 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.240 would make short work of the squirrel. Instead, he said 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:14.080 that the squirrel went right for the ferrets testicles, and 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:17.040 it was only by Smith intervening to protect the ferret 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:19.800 with a stick that he avoided the doom chomp of 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.280 the red squirrel. And I just wonder, like, what is 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:25.760 worse if the guy made this up or if he's 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.440 telling the truth. Yeah, and I do not really like 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:31.280 this experiment that he claims to have performed. That is 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:33.880 not a good experiment, That is not rigorous, and it 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:37.160 is it's also not nice. I'm more comforted by the 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:39.520 fact that this guy that maybe this was just some 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:42.760 fourteen year old writing Dajamma making up a fake identity 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:45.800 in a story. One last letter from a doctor Samuel J. 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.840 Ford of Elliott City, Maryland, and Fort writes that he'd 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:51.920 been hunting squirrels for years and has never noticed any 0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:54.679 castrated squirrels, though he admits he hasn't been on the 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:57.680 lookout for this in particular, and he doubts that the 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:00.600 biting off procedure could really be done leanly in a 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:03.240 way that the victim usually survives, given the shape of 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:06.640 squirrel incisors, Like if you think about picturing them, they're 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:08.640 more like, you know, they are kind of chompy, but 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:12.440 they're narrow. Yeah, the survivability of the wound is something 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:14.439 that I in my mind keeps turning to because we're 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:18.120 talking about a pretty grievous injury, but one for for 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:20.880 enough males to survive, and then, you know, so that 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:23.320 hunters could comment on them, they would need to not 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:28.120 die of either blood loss or or secondary infection. And yeah, 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.160 that's a very good point. And also think about this again. 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:34.440 We we mentioned this earlier, but why would there actually 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:37.080 be any incentive for an older male to do this? 0:14:37.160 --> 0:14:39.960 Why not just kill the rivals, Like if you're actually 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:43.400 fighting and there's some kind of serious competition, why not 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:46.880 just injury or kill? Why this very specific, targeted type 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:49.680 of injury that's so sillacious and the kind of thing 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:52.640 that a hunter might repeat in rumor to another. But 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:56.040 Ford gives a couple of rival explanations for the discovery 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:58.680 of neutered male squirrels. He says, quote, could it not 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:02.040 be congenital ab sense of the organs or failure of 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:05.160 the organs to descend into the scrotum? I think forts 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:07.160 maybe onto something there, and we can come back to 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:10.880 that later on when we discuss possible explanations for these stories. 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:13.840 But he also says, quote the theory has been advanced 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:16.440 by many hunters I have met that during the absence 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:20.200 of the mother squirrel, the young utilize the male appendages 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:24.040 as teats and in their in their kind effort to 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:27.920 produce something that is not there, causing time and atrophy 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:30.560 of the organs. Oh, I don't know. I don't know 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:32.720 if he is he making a joke there, I can't 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:35.360 maybe I'm not reading through the writing style, or he 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:37.600 has been uh or if he's been a victim of 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:40.840 a hoax on this one or somebody else's joke. I mean, 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.200 one thing that that I keep thinking too with each 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:45.680 of these doctors is that, yes, these appear to be 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.400 medical doctors, assuming their real assuming they're real, But then 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:52.400 also just because their medical doctors do not mean that 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:56.840 they are really They're not biologists with any expertise in 0:15:56.920 --> 0:16:00.960 observing uh squirrel behavior. This scene is very or it 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:06.440 snacks very much of amateur biology. Yes, they're even from 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:10.320 someone who who should, by all rights, you know, be 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:14.320 familiar with the scientific method to to a significant extent. 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:17.320 These are people who practice human medicine and human medicine 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:20.680 in the eighteen nineties. These are not not squirrel experts, 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:25.200 They're not zoologists. They're not animal behaviorists. Um yeah, I 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:27.600 don't know so though. On the other hand, we do 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.000 have to deal with Okay, well, at least people are 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:32.640 making these reports. What do these reports mean? That they 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.840 could certainly be mistaken, But we've got plenty of reports 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:38.200 of people who claim to have one heard stories about 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.200 squirrel castration from people who deal with a lot of squirrels, 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:45.600 seen lots of examples of castrated squirrels, both young and old, 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:49.479 and a few kinds of dubious seeming claims of witnessing 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.760 castration from adult squirrel fights. So despite the claims of 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:56.720 people to have witnessed it themselves, that this really does 0:16:56.760 --> 0:16:58.960 have all the hallmarks of an urban legend. To me, 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:02.960 I believe people will have found squirrels missing their genitals, 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:06.560 but I'm not sure I buy the causes people have proposed. 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:09.199 And I keep coming back to this idea, why this 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:12.280 one particular gruesome kind of attack, Why not just a 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.159 general fighting attack, an attempt to injure or kill the 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:17.080 other squirrel? All right, Well, on that note, we're going 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:19.320 to take a quick break, and when we come back, 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:24.920 we will look for more answers concerning this myth. Alright, 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:28.080 we're back okay, So I found a book by a 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:33.600 former National Wildlife Federation executive Warner Shed called Owls Aren't 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:37.080 Wise and Bats Aren't Blind and Naturalists Debunks our Favorite 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:40.840 fallacies about wildlife, which addresses a version of this claim 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:44.200 about squirrel castration. So, first of all, Shed is writing 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:47.160 about this in the context of a chapter on squirrel myths, 0:17:47.200 --> 0:17:51.520 specifically the myth that red squirrels drive out gray squirrels 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:54.560 from any area they inhabit, and Shed writes that while 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:57.800 it isn't necessarily true that red squirrels will drive gray 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:00.280 squirrels out of a forest, it is true the red 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:03.480 squirrels tend to be very territorial, and if any animal 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:05.920 like a gray squirrel, gets too close to the red 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:09.040 squirrels hidden cash of nuts, the red squirrel will sometimes 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:11.920 get aggressive and try to chase the gray squirrel off. 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:16.040 And Shed says that this territorial chasing tendency might be 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:19.080 somehow linked to the version of the castration claim that 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:22.560 says red squirrels castrate gray squirrels, which he claims is 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:26.359 simply the result of quote an overheated imagination or quote 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:29.680 a deliberate tall tale, and he argues that it makes 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:33.320 no sense for a squirrel to bite another squirrels testicles off. 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:36.840 Merely consider the facts the gray squirrel generally weighs from 0:18:36.920 --> 0:18:39.240 two to three times as much as the little red. 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:42.560 Even what are normally the most peaceable of animals will 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:46.760 fight savagely if necessary to protect themselves. Nor could a 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.000 red squirrel, with its little teeth neatly snip off the 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:52.760 testicles of the gray with one or two bites. The 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.959 notion that the much bigger gray would allow its testicles 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:59.199 to be gnawed off by this little relative is preposterous. 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:02.080 Long for where that happened, the gray would make squirrel 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:04.439 hash out of the offending red. And that has an 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:06.600 exclamation point on it, by the way, that is like, 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:12.399 so he's really he's really driving it home. He also 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:15.760 adds that if in general Red's had a successful strategy 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:19.280 of sterilizing grays, grays would tend to disappear in areas 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:21.800 where reds existed, And he says this is not the case, 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:26.160 So it's Shed's judgment. That that's his judgment. But if 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:29.280 he's correct, and squirrels do not castrade each other, what 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:32.240 should we make of all these reports in Jamma and elsewhere? 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:36.400 Of people finding squirrels with castration wounds all over the place. Now, 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:38.480 of course it's possible some of these could be lies 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:40.600 or hoaxes, and I think with some of them, even 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:43.280 a couple of those letters into Jamma, you have kind 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:45.919 of have to wonder. I mean, these these supposedly are 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:50.600 doctors writing in but I don't know that's smith guy. Well, 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.480 we've discussed time and time again that even very educated 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:57.679 individuals can either be the perpetrators of hoax hoaxes or 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:01.359 the victims of hoaxes. And then also there's that interesting 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:06.760 relationship between the the the the what, the hoaxer and 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:10.159 the hoax e um. Karl Sagan talks about this in 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:12.359 the demon Haunted World and points whether it's like a 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:16.439 magic trick. A magic trick, is it is something that 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:20.439 exists because of a silent pact between the magician and 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.399 the audience. Yeah, people don't want to admit they've been tricked. 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:27.000 If they've been tricked, even momentarily, they kind of don't 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:28.960 want to admit that they fell for it, and will 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:32.240 fight to defend the reality of the illusion. But then again, 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:34.920 I don't think I would explain all of these cases 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:38.640 in terms of hoaxes, deliberate hoaxes or tricks. I think 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:40.480 in a lot of cases you're probably going to be 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:43.399 dealing with people who were mistaken about what they saw 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:49.800 or who were interpreting misinterpreting something. So that brings us 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:52.520 to the question of what else could cause a squirrel 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:57.040 to appear incorrectly to have suffered this type of injury 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:00.920 or attack. Now there's one hypothesis that's pretty far out there. 0:21:00.960 --> 0:21:03.399 It's not exactly a perfect fit, but it is kind 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:06.200 of worth a look. And this is an explanation put 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:09.720 forward by Ernest Thompson Seton, who was an early influence 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:12.560 on the formation and mythology of the Boy Scouts of America. 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:16.959 Uh Seton noted that there is a species of parasitic 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:20.679 bot fly that is an obligate of tree squirrels and 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:24.359 tends to lay eggs in the squirrels groin, and these 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:27.800 eggs hatch and the larva erupt from the skin, and 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.679 it's gross, but the squirrel can usually survive it. It 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:33.280 doesn't really benefit the bot fly to kill its host. 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:36.919 And if this larva eruption were to happen in the groin, 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:40.679 as it apparently sometimes does, hunters seeing wounds of this 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:43.720 kind might think that the squirrels had had their groins 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:47.080 violently attacked. And this bot fly does exist. It's called 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:52.200 coutarebra emasculator, or the tree squirrel bot fly and bot 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:55.720 flies on their own are fascinating subject. We we could 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:59.000 return to them endlessly. Oh yes. The bot fly, also 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:02.200 known as the he'll fly, the gad fly, or my 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:05.600 favorite and especially as it relates to squirrels, is the 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:08.159 warble fly. Now why is that your favorite as it 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:12.399 relates to squirrels, Because you will sometimes see what is 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:15.159