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. This time a creature
Speaker 1: of deadly renowned dwells within. Uh. We we're revisiting our
Speaker 1: exploration of the skug. That's that's that's right. This is
Speaker 1: part one of our look at squirrels. This was These
Speaker 1: were delightful episodes, very popular episodes. We still on our
Speaker 1: our Facebook group stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module.
Speaker 1: We still hear from people like like on a weekly,
Speaker 1: almost daily basis, anytime there's anything squirrel related. Um, you
Speaker 1: know that that's what people post. And it's still delightful
Speaker 1: and I still enjoy squirrels. I'm I'm still writing the
Speaker 1: squirrel high from having you know, helped research and record
Speaker 1: these episodes totally. Uh. This episode originally aired August and
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoy it. Welcome to to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind from how Stuffworks 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 Robert, I got a question
Speaker 1: for you. Give me with it. What wild animal do
Speaker 1: you most associate with American founding icon Benjamin Franklin's Gonna
Speaker 1: Be the Turkey, had that whole song about it, right
Speaker 1: in seventeen seventy six. Oh yeah, were you in seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy six? Did you play Ben Franklin? I played Thomas Jefferson. Okay,
Speaker 1: community theater performance of it. Yes, that's that's who I was.
Speaker 1: But you got to be the boring guy without a
Speaker 1: sense of humor, yes, but with with bright red hair.
Speaker 1: That was the main appeal. And U. Ben Franklin was
Speaker 1: played by a local attorney named Ray Frele Ray Freely,
Speaker 1: Ray f He did wonderful job. So I'm glad I
Speaker 1: had the part I had. I was more suited for
Speaker 1: just red haired and kind of boring. Uh. You know
Speaker 1: Jimmy Jefferson, Timmy Timmy. Yeah, he is kind of a
Speaker 1: Timmy and that isn't he? He like he? There are
Speaker 1: scenes where he plays the violin. Right did you play
Speaker 1: the violin? Oh gosh, I don't remember. I remember scenes
Speaker 1: where I had pretending to write in what paper? Okay, Uh, sorry,
Speaker 1: we got sidetracked here, But there is a song in
Speaker 1: there where Benjamin Franklin he suggests that the u S
Speaker 1: National birds should not be the should not be the eagle,
Speaker 1: and should not be the dove, but should be the
Speaker 1: turkey because it is a most majestic bird. And I've
Speaker 1: found no evidence that Franklin actually suggested that the national
Speaker 1: birds should be the turkey. But Franklin was all about
Speaker 1: some turkeys. Especially it was all about killing turkeys, and
Speaker 1: especially it was all about killing turkeys with his favorite
Speaker 1: technological toys, the Layden jar. Uh. We we've talked before
Speaker 1: in our episodes about the early days of electricity about
Speaker 1: that that barbecue Franklin hosted where he wanted to kill
Speaker 1: turkeys with with electrical shocks and then roast them with
Speaker 1: an electrical jack and then uh and and I guess
Speaker 1: I don't know, char their skin with electrical fire from
Speaker 1: a bottle. It was a rousing affair, I'm sure because
Speaker 1: Franklin actually ended up electrocuting or not electrocuting, but he
Speaker 1: shocked himself very badly. See why isn't this our Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: tradition should be a big turkey electrocution every year? Wait,
Speaker 1: a lot of people use electric stoves. I guess that's
Speaker 1: kind of closed, but it's not quite as a shocking right,
Speaker 1: you should be getting the jumper cables and going out
Speaker 1: to the yard with a gobbler. Yeah, no, pardon for you,
Speaker 1: all right. So if the if the turkey wasn't his
Speaker 1: favorite animal, what pray tell? Was it? Well? Who knows
Speaker 1: if it was actually his favorite animal. But the animal
Speaker 1: I now most associate with Ben Franklin is the squirrel,
Speaker 1: because Robert, did you know that Benjamin Franklin carried a
Speaker 1: squirrel across the ocean to Europe? No? I did not
Speaker 1: know about this. He had a pet squirrel named Mungo.
Speaker 1: And yes, this is all true. Benjamin Franklin had a
Speaker 1: pet squirrel named Mungo that he kept in a cage.
Speaker 1: They got killed by a dog named Ranger there. And
Speaker 1: he wrote a letter to Georgiana Shipley in seventeen seventy
Speaker 1: two where where he said, I lament with you most
Speaker 1: sincerely the unfortunate end of poor Mungo. Few squirrels were
Speaker 1: better accomplished, for he had had a good education, had
Speaker 1: traveled far and seen much of the world. In other words,
Speaker 1: I I put it, put him in a cage and
Speaker 1: carried him. I don't know an oceanic journey. There's some
Speaker 1: ironies in this story that we can tease out in
Speaker 1: the second. In fact, Benjamin Franklin wrote a poem of
Speaker 1: lament is like an elegy for poor Mango. I wonder
Speaker 1: if we should do a reading of this poem for Mango.
Speaker 1: What do you think? Why don't really have a good
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin voice? Neither do I, But I can give
Speaker 1: it a shot. Alas poor Mungo, happy wort, Thou hatst
Speaker 1: thou known thy own felicity. Remote from the fierce, bald
Speaker 1: eagle tyrant of thy native woods, Thou hadst not to
Speaker 1: fear from his piercing talents, nor from the murdering gun
Speaker 1: of the thoughtless sportsman. Safe in his wired castle. Grim
Speaker 1: all can never could annoy the grim. Balkan, of course,
Speaker 1: is the which is familiar the cat from Macbeth. I
Speaker 1: think it is also just a word for a cat.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so continues daily worth. Thou fed with choicest
Speaker 1: viands by the fair hand of an indulgent mistress, but
Speaker 1: discontented Thou wouldst have more freedom too soon, alas didst
Speaker 1: thou obtain it, and wandering fell by the merciless fangs
Speaker 1: of wanton cruel ranger learned hints ye who blindly wish
Speaker 1: for more liberty, whether subjects, sons, squirrels, or daughters, that
Speaker 1: apparent restraint maybe real protection, yielding peace plenty and security.
Speaker 1: You see how much more decent and proper this broken style,
Speaker 1: interrupted as it were, with size, is for the occasion
Speaker 1: than if one were to say, by way of epitaph,
Speaker 1: here scug lie snug as a bug in a rug.
Speaker 1: Scug is an antiquated word for squirrel. I bet you
Speaker 1: didn't know that one either. I didn't. By you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people by by the
Speaker 1: time we're done with the special two part exploration of
Speaker 1: the squirrel, I think some people are going to adopt
Speaker 1: skug as an appropriate a bit of terminology for these
Speaker 1: strange furry creatures that for many obviously fill our backyards
Speaker 1: in our lives. Robert, I am so excited to talk
Speaker 1: about squirrels for two whole episodes because I would never
Speaker 1: have imagined there were two episodes worth of startling squirrel knowledge,
Speaker 1: and oh boy, is there? Yeah, there is. But before
Speaker 1: anybody and it thinks I'll skip the squirrels, No, no no, no, no,
Speaker 1: stick with the squirrels, because some of this information is shocking.
Speaker 1: It will change the way you see the squirrel. The
Speaker 1: squirrels are not what they seem. You're right about that,
Speaker 1: they are not. Yeah, this is not just gonna be
Speaker 1: like two episodes of squirrel minutia. This is gonna be
Speaker 1: episodes that redefine what these animals are and what they
Speaker 1: are up to in your immediate and ironment. They may
Speaker 1: shake your faith in the goodness of the world around you, right,
Speaker 1: you know. Well, one thing that that I've I've noticed
Speaker 1: about the squirrel is it, of course, for many of us,
Speaker 1: the squirrels everywhere, Like like, how often do you see squirrels, Joe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you see them more than any non human animal who
Speaker 1: is not your pet, probably, I mean, depending on where
Speaker 1: you live. But at least we we do. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: with us, they're constantly scaring around our yard and on
Speaker 1: our fence. We have a number of bird feeders that
Speaker 1: we that that my family we like to we're having
Speaker 1: breakfast or dinner together, we like to watch the birds
Speaker 1: out there, and of course the squirrels come. You can't
Speaker 1: keep squirrels away from a bird feeder in the same
Speaker 1: way you can't keep squirrels out of out of a
Speaker 1: garden you can try, but they are tenacious. They have
Speaker 1: an insatiable mammalian quality, a mammalian vitality that the birds
Speaker 1: just do not have. Even though we we love birds
Speaker 1: and we've explored you know, when when you put a
Speaker 1: bird feeder out, you wonder why the squirrels always seem
Speaker 1: to take it over, And it does seem to have
Speaker 1: something to do with their mammalian craftiness. And that's despite
Speaker 1: the fact that birds are often craftier than we expect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is. I I root for the birds,
Speaker 1: though when the birds drive the squirrels away, but then
Speaker 1: the squirrels are just going to get in there and
Speaker 1: also have their their meal as well. Um. Another thing
Speaker 1: that I always noticed about the squirrels is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: for for many of us, we we barely noticed that
Speaker 1: notice them anymore, and we're certainly not really we don't
Speaker 1: get hung up over their cuteness. Though they do have
Speaker 1: like large kind of cute eyes, yes, and they have
Speaker 1: big fluffy tails. They're not a chipmunk. A chipmunk is
Speaker 1: I think, objectively cute, whereas the squirrel is a little
Speaker 1: larger and a little more grotesque and a little more
Speaker 1: like a tree rat. There's a reason the rescue rangers
Speaker 1: are not squirrels, and they just be less cute that way.
Speaker 1: But but one thing I noticed is that when you
Speaker 1: have people who are not accustomed to squirrel suddenly encountering them,
Speaker 1: tourists from Afar, they'll they're just totally won over by
Speaker 1: these scurring creatures and they're pointing at them, and then
Speaker 1: of course they they may give in to the temptation
Speaker 1: to feed them. Which means if you go to a
Speaker 1: place like the Grand Canyon, where you know you have
Speaker 1: you have tourist from around the world coming to to
Speaker 1: see this natural um landscape that's just truly inspiring uh
Speaker 1: scene to behold. People are also gonna encounter the squirrels.
Speaker 1: They're gonna end up beating the squirrels, even though everyone
Speaker 1: tells them not to. And then you have situations like
Speaker 1: the one my wife and I encountered on a hike
Speaker 1: into the Grand Canyon where we set down for a second,
Speaker 1: we're gonna share some some snack mix, and then the
Speaker 1: squirrel comes and the squirrel starts climbing on us on
Speaker 1: our bodies to get to the snack mix. Because it's
Speaker 1: become so accustomed to eating food given to it by humans. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was just absolutely terrifying, especially when you watch like
Speaker 1: the fleet jump off of its nose. It's only a
Speaker 1: matter of time until they can pull a switchblade on you, exactly.
Speaker 1: They're like, they're they are tenacious and you should and
Speaker 1: you feed them at your apparel, especially if they're there.
Speaker 1: There are lots of drop offs that you could plummet from.
Speaker 1: And that's not even getting into disease issues. I apologize
Speaker 1: it was ranting a little bit. Oh no, no, please
Speaker 1: rant on. I've been ranting about them a bit as
Speaker 1: my family watches the bird feeder as well, to the
Speaker 1: point that my my son told me recently. He's he's
Speaker 1: six years old, and he he said, actually, Dad, uh,
Speaker 1: the squirrel is the king of the rats, which, um, well,
Speaker 1: I disagree with. I think the rats are truly the
Speaker 1: king of the rats. They've earned that that reputation, and
Speaker 1: they've earned that crown. Yet at the same time, yes,
Speaker 1: squirrels are incredibly good rats in many respects. Well, there
Speaker 1: are many respects throughout especially mythology, but in human history,
Speaker 1: where there is some correlation between level of authority and
Speaker 1: physical altitude and so If the squirrels are in the
Speaker 1: trees above the rats, that would seem to signal that
Speaker 1: they are the lords of the rat world, and the
Speaker 1: rats on the ground below must do their biddings right.
Speaker 1: They have the height advantage. The squirrels are the wizards
Speaker 1: up in their ivory towers, and the rats are the
Speaker 1: peasants that, you know, thank you Lord, kind of guys
Speaker 1: who go out and do what they're told. But yet
Speaker 1: there is an honesty in the rat. We look at
Speaker 1: the rat, and sometimes we judge the rat too harshly,
Speaker 1: It's true, But when you look at a rat and
Speaker 1: you know what the rat does. The squirrel, however, as
Speaker 1: we will explore in these episodes, the squirrel is not
Speaker 1: what it seems. The squirrel has managed to to pull
Speaker 1: one over on us. So by now you may be going, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is the secret squirrel knowledge? I've been I want
Speaker 1: the squirrel noses let me into this religion. So I
Speaker 1: guess we should pave the way to divulge that knowledge.
Speaker 1: So let's enter the kingdom of the skugs. So what
Speaker 1: are what is a good skug? What what is a skug?
Speaker 1: At its most basic nature? Squirrels are a family of rodents. Specifically,
Speaker 1: they comprise the taxonomic family Scura day and that includes
Speaker 1: ground squirrels, tree squirrels, marmots, chipmunks, flying squirrels, and a
Speaker 1: few other varieties. This also includes the so called oriental
Speaker 1: giant squirrels, the black giant squirrel, the Indian giant squirrel,
Speaker 1: the grizzled giant squirrel that's real grizzled yea, and the
Speaker 1: likely extinct cream colored giant squirrel. Many additional varieties roamed
Speaker 1: in prehistoric times. Uh and plus this family also includes
Speaker 1: groundhogs and prairie dogs. But when most people refer to squirrels,
Speaker 1: they're probably gonna be talking about common varieties, most often
Speaker 1: of the tree squirrel and the ground squirrel. And so
Speaker 1: these are the varieties we're gonna be talking about most
Speaker 1: in this episode. And so squirrels are found all over
Speaker 1: the world. Their native to every continent except Antarctica in Australia.
Speaker 1: But of course humans tend to take their rodents with
Speaker 1: them where they go. So humans introduced squirrels to Australia
Speaker 1: and now they're everywhere on Earth accept Antarctica. So I
Speaker 1: think maybe we've been burying the lead. We should not Bury,
Speaker 1: the lead part one of this two part exploration. One
Speaker 1: of the main things you're gonna learn is that you
Speaker 1: have probably been too trusting of squirrels if you were
Speaker 1: like I was. I used to look out at the
Speaker 1: squirrels of my yard and think about them like Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin's Poor Mungo. This this victim, this poor little victim
Speaker 1: creature that could be eaten by a dog and was
Speaker 1: a harmless, sweet little herbivore gathering nuts and hiding them
Speaker 1: and just going about a peaceful life without ever bothering
Speaker 1: anybody else. But the fact that blew my mind is
Speaker 1: that squirrels are not, in fact strictly herbivores. Some not
Speaker 1: very strictly at all. That's right. And uh, and I
Speaker 1: have to say, right before we we actually researched this episode,
Speaker 1: I had this revelate revelation as well through the bird
Speaker 1: feeders that we put out. Because one of the things
Speaker 1: we put out, in addition to you know, a few
Speaker 1: different types of bird seed aimed as particular birds, we
Speaker 1: also put out meal worms, and these dried, dried out
Speaker 1: worms like you would feed chickens, and birds generally love
Speaker 1: them as well. But then we started noticing that the
Speaker 1: squirrels would just eat the ever loving hell out of
Speaker 1: those meal worms. We fill up this little cup, and
Speaker 1: you know, squirrel would come and you know, surreptitiously eat one,
Speaker 1: and you know, grab one, get to a place where
Speaker 1: it could be on the lookout for hawks or whatnot,
Speaker 1: and then go down and get another one, and then
Speaker 1: eventually give up on any pretense of looking out for
Speaker 1: hawks and just just go face down into a this
Speaker 1: cup of meal worms and just eat absolutely all of them.
Speaker 1: And we were a little stounded because we were, like,
Speaker 1: I had we had no idea that that that squirrels
Speaker 1: eat me, But clearly these squirrels really love meal worms.
Speaker 1: Well you know, I might not have predicted that, but
Speaker 1: at least meal worms. I look at that, Okay, I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's a worm. I guess maybe a lot of things
Speaker 1: might eat a worm, right, right, I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: it's like that's like the cracked corn of the animal kingdom, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there, you eat it. It makes sense, all right.
Speaker 1: So maybe they're not strictly herbivores, you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: they're omnivores that will that will eat a worm here
Speaker 1: and there, but subsequent reading has has revealed that that
Speaker 1: it goes far beyond meal worms. Uh, they'll eat insects, reptiles, birds,
Speaker 1: and mammalian flesh if they get a chance. Gray squirrels
Speaker 1: and eastern chipmunks are noted nest raiders. Gray squirrels will
Speaker 1: even eat each other. It seems squirrels are also capable
Speaker 1: of killing adult birds. Uh, even the cute chipmunk. Again,
Speaker 1: the objectively cute chipmunk is a natural born killer, as
Speaker 1: studies have found meat and upwards of chipmunk survey meat
Speaker 1: in them, not just in their bodies like the valley. Now,
Speaker 1: that sounds so crazy. That makes me think, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: are we just dealing with like uh, like urban legend
Speaker 1: kind of observations here. Like I've read stories that I
Speaker 1: don't believe about squirrel attacks, like the idea that squirrels
Speaker 1: will will take down deer and kill them. That's right.
Speaker 1: According to a two thousand fourteen Popular Science article, the
Speaker 1: tufted ground squirrel of Borneo is said to wait on
Speaker 1: a low branch for passing deer and then jump out
Speaker 1: onto them and bite the jugular vein, and once the
Speaker 1: deer is bled to death from this bite, the squirrel
Speaker 1: disembowels the deer and eats the contents of the stomach
Speaker 1: as well as the heart and the liver. And I
Speaker 1: do want to just drive home. This is not this
Speaker 1: is far from any kind of a verified observation. This
Speaker 1: is very much seems to be in the realm of
Speaker 1: love of urban legends. This account was told by local
Speaker 1: hunters who find the remains of the squirrel slaughtered deer
Speaker 1: and then supposed squirrel, supposed alleged squirrel slaughtered deer. And
Speaker 1: then they also attest to the hearts and livers having
Speaker 1: been eaten from domestic chickens. Again, uh, fingers pointed at
Speaker 1: the squirrels. This almost reminds me of like the Coppa legend,
Speaker 1: right reaching up through your anus to pull your liver out. Yeah, there,
Speaker 1: there seems to be a lot of making sense. Are
Speaker 1: trying to make sense of stranger remains, but by making
Speaker 1: several leaps uh in uh in your logic here, as
Speaker 1: opposed to saying, well, it was probably some sort of
Speaker 1: scavenger that came into that. No, it was probably a
Speaker 1: ferocious and strategically vicious squirrel. Now, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: supposedly these squirrels could I mean, if you happen to
Speaker 1: put your finger in their mouths, say, they could do
Speaker 1: some damage. Yeah. In fact, the author of that article,
Speaker 1: Douglas Main, points out that those those squirrels do pack
Speaker 1: quite a fierce bite, and that the giant squirrel Ratufa
Speaker 1: a finnis is known to stalk and prey on birds. Okay,
Speaker 1: but the idea of a squirrel attacking and taking down
Speaker 1: an adult dear, I don't know. I highly skeptical. I
Speaker 1: don't buy it. It sounds like one of those kind
Speaker 1: of hunter legends. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of
Speaker 1: cattle mutilation stories. You know, someone finds again, someone looks
Speaker 1: at the remains of an animal. There's something kind of
Speaker 1: weird look going on, and so you jump to uh,
Speaker 1: totally implausible explanations such as an alien being performed at
Speaker 1: an autopsy in the middle of a cow field, or
Speaker 1: squirrels or hunting impacts. But how much could you really
Speaker 1: learn in the middle of a cow field. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it seems like as guided research. I would think
Speaker 1: they would want to remove to some kind of sterile
Speaker 1: environment where they could control all of the autopsy element
Speaker 1: I don't know. But but but I don't want to
Speaker 1: lose the track of the The important revelation here, uh,
Speaker 1: that we'll get back to, and that is that squirrels
Speaker 1: do seem to hunt some of the time. Well, we
Speaker 1: will definitely look at more evidence of that in a minute,
Speaker 1: but before we do that, we should look at one
Speaker 1: other apparent I don't know, rumor legend, the kind of thing, uh,
Speaker 1: this idea that sometimes squirrels will attack and take down dogs. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was reading a two thousand five BBC article that
Speaker 1: reported that that a local Russian media report had indicated
Speaker 1: that a pack of squirrels bit a stray dog to
Speaker 1: death in the city of Lazo. So again local Russian media.
Speaker 1: But here's here's a gym from the story. Quote A
Speaker 1: pine code shortage may have led the squirrels to seek
Speaker 1: other food sources, although scientists are skeptical. So in. In fact,
Speaker 1: a scientist in the region, one Michael Toof, said that
Speaker 1: while attacking a bird's nest for protein was reasonable behavior,
Speaker 1: for to expect of a squirrel chewing a dog to
Speaker 1: death was quote absurd. Uh. In a quote that reads
Speaker 1: like something from a horror movie poster, he said, quote
Speaker 1: if it really happened, that things must be pretty bad
Speaker 1: in our forest. I can hear that in the Don
Speaker 1: la Fontaine voice. Yes, things must be pretty bad in
Speaker 1: our forest. Wait, that's not Don la Fontaine. Who's that one?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't really know them by name.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I'm sorry to say in a world where
Speaker 1: squirrels chew dogs to death, Russian media is the only
Speaker 1: one brave enough to report. But the thing about these
Speaker 1: stories is that, yes, I'm I'm not convinced that squirrels
Speaker 1: are killing dear. I'm not convinced that they are taking
Speaker 1: down stray dogs. I I also am skeptical of that.
Speaker 1: I'd wonder though, I mean, maybe if the dog is, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, sick and already almost dead, that might
Speaker 1: be a different kind of thing. I find it hard
Speaker 1: to believe that a pack of squirrels would actually attack
Speaker 1: a dog that could move exactly. Yeah. But if you
Speaker 1: but the thing is, you start looking around at different papers,
Speaker 1: particularly Journal of Mammalogy papers, mostly from the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: You'll find a number of different papers that look at
Speaker 1: carnivorous ground squirrels and carnivorous activity among squirrels. Uh with
Speaker 1: titles such as Carnivorous behavior in the Mexican ground squirrel
Speaker 1: or Carnivorous ground squirrels on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, or
Speaker 1: food habits of the Antelope ground squirrel in Southern Nevada.
Speaker 1: Also the Franklin ground squirrel and its relationship to nesting ducks.
Speaker 1: The relationship is not a friendly one. It's complicated. That
Speaker 1: paper Carnivorous ground Squirrels on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska has
Speaker 1: some choice descriptions, and it here commentating on some some
Speaker 1: previous research by other investigators. Quote. During his excavations at
Speaker 1: the old village site of Kakuliak gated a few miles
Speaker 1: at east to the present village of Savunga, he observed
Speaker 1: some adult ground squirrels eating the old partially dried and
Speaker 1: partially frozen lumps of whale and walrus meat, which we
Speaker 1: excavated at an approximate depth of eight feet under the surface.
Speaker 1: What eating whale and walrus meat? So they didn't bring
Speaker 1: down these whales, They didn't bring down these walruses, but
Speaker 1: they were more than happy to feast on their like
Speaker 1: rubbery dried flesh. Also from that paper, there was a
Speaker 1: part where they were mentioning the work of this previous
Speaker 1: researcher who reported having seen a ground squirrel quote eat
Speaker 1: a freshly killed mouse which had been shot by the
Speaker 1: teacher's son from Savunga. So you go shooting mice in Alaska.
Speaker 1: Who knows what's going to happen. All right, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and take a break here, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to get into my favorite carnivorous squirrel paper
Speaker 1: that I ran across in our research. Thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So before we get into squirrels as predators, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to mention another paper I looked at about squirrels
Speaker 1: eating meat, and this was from the Journal of Parasitology
Speaker 1: from nineteen fifty six by Raws and other authors called
Speaker 1: the occurrence of larvae of trick and Ella spiralis in
Speaker 1: Alaska mammals. So this is a paper looking at the
Speaker 1: prevalence of this parasite of trick and Ella spiralis in
Speaker 1: the mammals of Alaska. And trick and Ella spiralis is
Speaker 1: the nematode worm responsible for trickn nosis, which you may
Speaker 1: have heard is the you know, the reason that you
Speaker 1: should not eat pork tartar, though not to demonize a
Speaker 1: lot of pork is much safer these days than it
Speaker 1: used to be. So some of those fears are based
Speaker 1: on older, older ways of doing things and food. But
Speaker 1: you're not getting tricken noses eating peanuts. That's true even
Speaker 1: if you're a squirrel. In fact, so when the researchers
Speaker 1: found one ground squirrel and four red squirrels infected with
Speaker 1: trick and ella, which you can only get from eating
Speaker 1: infected meat, what's going on here? It's clear what's going on.
Speaker 1: So the ound squirrel that with the ground squirrel, they say,
Speaker 1: although primarily herbivorous Sit tell Us undulatus, and that's the
Speaker 1: ground squirrel they were looking at, also consumes mammalian flesh
Speaker 1: when available. We have observed this behavior in northeastern Alaska
Speaker 1: and in the Talkeitna Mountains, where remains of voles were
Speaker 1: found in stomachs and cheek pouches of these squirrels. Such
Speaker 1: animals feeding upon carcasses of dogs or Arctic foxes would
Speaker 1: of course be exposed to infection because the dogs and
Speaker 1: the foxes can get they can get the worm, their
Speaker 1: meat gets infected, and then the squirrels go and eat
Speaker 1: the dead dogs and foxes. That's pretty messed up. The
Speaker 1: other one, though, is the red squirrel. How did the
Speaker 1: red squirrels get them? Quote? We have observed red squirrels
Speaker 1: feeding upon the flesh of the Snowshoe hair, carrion, and
Speaker 1: mammalian bones are often found among the food items stored
Speaker 1: by these animals for winter use. They no doubt eat
Speaker 1: any warm blooded animal they are able to capture and kill.
Speaker 1: I don't know why they keep the bones though. Why
Speaker 1: do they keep the bones? Are they gonna make soup?
Speaker 1: What's gonna happen? They're gonna eat those bones, Joe and
Speaker 1: I know this because because because it's mentioned in in
Speaker 1: this excellent paper that I came across from. It was
Speaker 1: in an addition of the Great Basin Naturalist titled Squirrels
Speaker 1: as Predators by J. R. Callahan. So this is predators now.
Speaker 1: But previously we've been talking definitely about eating carrion. Right,
Speaker 1: they'll find a dead animal, they'll find dead insects, whatever,
Speaker 1: they'll definitely eat that. But he's certainly to eat to say,
Speaker 1: a worm or a snail, a creature the size of
Speaker 1: a squirrel was hardly predation. I mean, if I if
Speaker 1: I ate a snail, I wouldn't call myself a predator, right,
Speaker 1: but this is but here you're talking about seeking live prey,
Speaker 1: killing it, and eating it. That's right. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go through some of the major points of this paper,
Speaker 1: but it's out there. It's it's obtainable if anyone else
Speaker 1: wants to to read it in full. So we pointed
Speaker 1: out that squirrels are opportunistic predators that are not morphologically
Speaker 1: specialized for the role. You can see that they don't
Speaker 1: have like wolf teeth. Yeah, and I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons it's so shocking. Yeah, they don't look
Speaker 1: like predators. They don't. They don't look like a little
Speaker 1: tree dogs or or some sort of a tree cat.
Speaker 1: You know. Uh it is it surprises us to think
Speaker 1: of them chewing on meat. Well, it's interesting how much
Speaker 1: this emphasizes sometimes the flexibility of the animal existence as
Speaker 1: opposed to other types of existence, where an animal might
Speaker 1: not be evolved to specialize as a predator, but given
Speaker 1: pressures on its survival and existence, it can adapt. So
Speaker 1: at the time of this publication, he says that not
Speaker 1: everyone accepted the idea. Frequent squirrel predation though it was
Speaker 1: already universally accepted that they do eat meat, but they
Speaker 1: were they were just not observed praying all that much. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of these reports come down to
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, you know, were they just scavenging meat,
Speaker 1: where they just eating something that was already dead, or
Speaker 1: did they or was it an opportunistic attack, or were
Speaker 1: they in fact stalking something? How did you get those
Speaker 1: foles in your cheek pouches? Exactly? So, he he lists
Speaker 1: the different prey associated with a whole list of squirrel species,
Speaker 1: and the prey include the following, uh if but not
Speaker 1: limited to, birds, frogs, rats, lizards, rabbits, gophers, moles, snakes,
Speaker 1: fish bowls, ducks, wild turkeys bringing it all back home. Yeah, turtles, crabs,
Speaker 1: and salaman This is too good. Yeah, squirrels getting wild turkeys, rabbits, salamanders,
Speaker 1: this is a whole buffet. Yeah. And he said that
Speaker 1: it wasn't entirely sure if tree squirrels were attacking live
Speaker 1: prey for meat per se, or for calcium and or
Speaker 1: phosphorus from the bones, but there were there there were
Speaker 1: also reports of him eating bone and antler or ignoring
Speaker 1: meat in favor of joints. Joints, so like they're trying
Speaker 1: to get like cartilage and ligaments and stuff. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said. He points out to getting back to the
Speaker 1: morphology versus a behavior, says that one of the behaviors
Speaker 1: entree squirrel seems to be insinuation predation, which is largely
Speaker 1: utilized by invertebrates. Yeah, and so insinuation predation would refer
Speaker 1: to a predator lulling a prey animal into a false
Speaker 1: sense of security by appearing harmless and getting itself into
Speaker 1: an attack position or in close proximity without indicating that
Speaker 1: it's any kind of threat. The squirrels are not what
Speaker 1: they say. It's true. There they are little spies in
Speaker 1: filtrating your safe zones just to get into your nest
Speaker 1: and steal your your wild turkey chicks or something. Now
Speaker 1: we'll get to the specifics of this in a second,
Speaker 1: but we're just talking about them eating bone and antler
Speaker 1: or ligaments. Other times they have been observed to focus
Speaker 1: on quote, brains of viscera and the flesh of the head.
Speaker 1: What the squirrels eating brains? Yes, this can't be real.
Speaker 1: It is real. It is very real. Brains. So we
Speaker 1: seem to see far are more squirrel meat eating and
Speaker 1: predation in colder climates, and it's and it's far more
Speaker 1: rare among tropical species. And uh. Callahan lists some possible
Speaker 1: reasons for this. So calcium and other nutrients can be
Speaker 1: obtained from certain tropical tree barks. And then uh, and
Speaker 1: in these cases too, we see these same squirrels turning
Speaker 1: to predation when they are cage when they now have
Speaker 1: access to those tree barks. Oh, I see carnivores and
Speaker 1: the tropics may also suffer more from stomach nematodes while
Speaker 1: colder climates demand more fat. And then there's also this,
Speaker 1: this sort of opportunistic predation might be a learned behavior
Speaker 1: that spreads through local populations of squirrels. Oh no, that's
Speaker 1: interesting now. For example, in our recent episodes about urban evolution,
Speaker 1: we talked about how apparently learned behaviors can spread throughout
Speaker 1: populations of birds that live in an urban environment, say
Speaker 1: like the example of um birds that learned how to
Speaker 1: open milk bottle tops that were being left on people's doorsteps, right, Um,
Speaker 1: And then the spread throughout the populations. And so you
Speaker 1: have to assume if birds can learn in that kind
Speaker 1: of way. Squirrels probably can too, except in this case
Speaker 1: instead of opening milk bottle tops would be what opening
Speaker 1: a vole skull to get the brains. Indeed, now there
Speaker 1: are key reasons though to eat live meat, because ultimately
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about, praying to obtain live meat
Speaker 1: rather than depending on just scavenged and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: meat and the flesh of the dead. So, for one thing,
Speaker 1: reproductive females may need the protein and or certain minerals
Speaker 1: more than the rest, and there are reports of lactating
Speaker 1: female specifically engaging in this sort of predation behavior. They
Speaker 1: might not be able to get the necessary calcium, phosphorus, sodium,
Speaker 1: and nitrogen from seeds alone. Another hypothesis, which is weirdly
Speaker 1: reflected in that story of the Russian dog eating score earls,
Speaker 1: is that they may turn to meet to make up
Speaker 1: for seasonal depletion, such as during summer, or indeed some
Speaker 1: other reason for a lack of seeds. Okay, well, that
Speaker 1: would sort of fit the story, but we're not saying
Speaker 1: that makes it likely that they actually did take down
Speaker 1: an adult. I don't know, yeah, but that is a
Speaker 1: that's a grain of truth there um. But going back
Speaker 1: to that Russian um naturalist, he said, yeah, things would
Speaker 1: have to be pretty bad in the forest for this
Speaker 1: to happen in a world. So, so we've been talking
Speaker 1: about how squirrels definitely will eat things that are dead anyway,
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll eat carrion. Why why go to predation? Why
Speaker 1: must you go beyond just eating the dead that you find.
Speaker 1: Why do you have to do all these risks and
Speaker 1: spend all this energy trying to kill something that's alive.
Speaker 1: That It's a great question one I had in One
Speaker 1: and one Callahan addressed because he points out that, yes,
Speaker 1: carrion certainly packs the nutrients uh, and it's it's also
Speaker 1: not capable of fight or flight. You don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about it fighting back, but cheaper date, right, But
Speaker 1: it also suffers from nutrient content depletion. On top of that,
Speaker 1: other better predators and seasoned scavengers may beat you to
Speaker 1: the best parts of the you know, say that the
Speaker 1: dead you know rat plus those specialized scavengers, well they're
Speaker 1: probably better at dealing with the added bacteria and uh
Speaker 1: and you know what else sucks about carry on? It
Speaker 1: might not be there when you need it. So in
Speaker 1: our you know, sort of our you know, our urban
Speaker 1: forest environments, uh, you know, or even our rural environments. Uh,
Speaker 1: squirrels can sometimes be seen feasting on roadkill, which Callahan
Speaker 1: points out is an artificial situation. It is very much
Speaker 1: a product of human technology. Do we have these dangerous
Speaker 1: roads uh? For animals? Animals get squished on them, and
Speaker 1: then squirrels are able to find meat there. And of
Speaker 1: course a lot of the meat is squirrel meat because
Speaker 1: they run out in front of our vehicles all the time.
Speaker 1: So do they do they cannibalized carrion squirrel carryon? Yes?
Speaker 1: But okay, I'm just thinking about the body of a squirrel.
Speaker 1: I mean, as we were talking about earlier, as a
Speaker 1: squirrel is not has not been shaped by evolution as
Speaker 1: an effective predator, right that its body just is not
Speaker 1: a powerful killing machine. So how how does it get
Speaker 1: this done? Well, you know, some of these these prey
Speaker 1: animals that it goes after essentially quasi prey, like frogs
Speaker 1: for example, those are and those are easy to explain, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a frog, it's not getting away from this larger squirrel.
Speaker 1: The squirrel can eat it. But then they're the animals
Speaker 1: that are going to put up a fight or run
Speaker 1: from the squirrel potentially, and that's where we see the birds,
Speaker 1: the rodents, and the rabbits particular, like these are all
Speaker 1: going to be more challenging prey. So many researchers believe
Speaker 1: that true predation by squirrels must be just a rare occurrence,
Speaker 1: only done in the case of emergency, but growing evidence,
Speaker 1: Scallahan said, supported the idea that predation is a normal
Speaker 1: part of their behavior, though they are still opportunistic not
Speaker 1: fundamental predators. So he's going, so you've got the idea
Speaker 1: that it's very rare, like it only happens on these bizarre,
Speaker 1: freak occasions, and then you've got the idea that they're
Speaker 1: evolved as fundamental predators and that's just part of their
Speaker 1: normal life. And he's going somewhere in between, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, like, yeah, I mean he's saying that, for instance,
Speaker 1: you know, rating a nest when you can get a chance,
Speaker 1: that's one thing. If you kill a competitor and then
Speaker 1: you're like, well I might as well eat part of them,
Speaker 1: get a little energy boost, That's that's another thing. But
Speaker 1: but here we're talking about something far more sinister. And
Speaker 1: I do have to warn everybody out there. If you
Speaker 1: want to retain your previous false sense of security around squirrels,
Speaker 1: uh and there's sort of cartoon innocence, then you should
Speaker 1: probably stop listening right now because you cannot unhear the
Speaker 1: hypothesis that I am about to share with you, laid
Speaker 1: Amy Robert alright, so he points Callahan points out that
Speaker 1: it's a waste of energy to avoid a creature that
Speaker 1: doesn't threaten you. It's not surprising to see birds behave
Speaker 1: defensively towards squirrels. Their hunger is likely seasonal. They're known
Speaker 1: retinest rators. But in other contexts, birds and other potential
Speaker 1: prey just ignore squirrels. And we see this all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, especially if you watch your bird feeder. But
Speaker 1: Callahan presents an interesting view on this and on the
Speaker 1: stalking behavior occasionally observed in tree squirrels. This is not
Speaker 1: uh nest robbing behavior, but is linked to infrequent attempts
Speaker 1: at larger prey attempts, mind you, and often aborted attempts
Speaker 1: mere caricatures of stalking the Callahan finds rather conspicuous. He
Speaker 1: argues that it's possible that the effect of obvious. Repeated
Speaker 1: stalking is to habituate potential prey. In other words, it
Speaker 1: is conditioning prey animals to disregard their attacks. WHOA, so
Speaker 1: this would not be something we're saying that the squirrels
Speaker 1: are doing consciously, but they've somehow instinctually learned to like
Speaker 1: to to sort of feign attacks all the time to
Speaker 1: get it to our potential prey animals. Larger prey animals
Speaker 1: are like, oh, whatever, it's just squirrels being squirrels. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're not. They're not doing in a conscious
Speaker 1: sense the same way that we would do our humans
Speaker 1: would stalk something, but but they're doing it in the
Speaker 1: via their evolved behavior anyway. Callahan writes, if most squirrels
Speaker 1: acting like predators do not follow through, then prey should
Speaker 1: learn not to respond. This behavior is analogous to the
Speaker 1: hoarding of nuts in that the squirrel is hoarding prey confidence. Later,
Speaker 1: when normal food items are in short supply, the squirrel
Speaker 1: can exploit this conditioning In the longer term. Selection for
Speaker 1: such behavior potentially represents an entry point to a new
Speaker 1: feeding niche, particularly in marginal habitats where tree squirrels may
Speaker 1: be more likely to resort to predation. In other words,
Speaker 1: beware the squirrels. I am never going to be able
Speaker 1: to see squirrels the same after this episode. Now, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, we don't like to demonize any type
Speaker 1: of animal here, and of course predation as part of
Speaker 1: an Sure, we don't want to demonize predation. But this
Speaker 1: is shocking. I was not prepared for this. Squirrels, squirrels
Speaker 1: eating dead things, killing things and eating them that I
Speaker 1: don't know, my mind was not ready. Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: have to to say much the same. Again, we do
Speaker 1: we do say, we do warn everyone, do not mistreat squirrels,
Speaker 1: do not do not hurt the squirrels. Let the squirrels be.
Speaker 1: They will let you be. Squirrels are not going to
Speaker 1: actually hunt you. Um, they're not going to attack your dog, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna be fine. Yeah, you're not really in
Speaker 1: danger from the squirrels. But I do have to say
Speaker 1: it made me rethink the meal worm thing, Like I
Speaker 1: feel I feel extra good about those squirrels eating the
Speaker 1: meal worms because I'm thinking I'm probably saving some bird eggs.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm not. Maybe that's just just I'm just convincing
Speaker 1: myself this because I hate the idea of squirrels eating
Speaker 1: eating bird eggs. But if they need meat, then let
Speaker 1: me give them meat in the form of meal worms.
Speaker 1: That's all I'm saying. Well, you could I don't want
Speaker 1: to make you feel bad. You could also be art
Speaker 1: officially inflating local squirrel populations such that if you ever
Speaker 1: stop feeding them, there will be a massacre in the oaks.
Speaker 1: That's right, the trees will rain blood from above. Well,
Speaker 1: let's hope it doesn't come to that. Speaking of that, though,
Speaker 1: has there ever been a squirrel horror movie? I've never
Speaker 1: I've never heard of one. Well, you know, I looked
Speaker 1: around on this question, and there is a two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen horror movie called Squirrels. But it sounds like it
Speaker 1: looks like it might be a little bit in the
Speaker 1: shark Nado territory, where it's a little bit too self
Speaker 1: aware to be my kind of horror film. But the
Speaker 1: better horror movie mascot for this episode would probably be
Speaker 1: uh Tromy the radioactive squirrel from Class of Newcomb High
Speaker 1: to Subhumanoid Meltdown. Uh. He's also in the third film.
Speaker 1: You know, I never made it to the Class of
Speaker 1: Newcomb High. Sequels. How do they hold up? I have
Speaker 1: not seen the sequels either, but I I had to
Speaker 1: look up a clip of this, uh, this radioactive giant
Speaker 1: squirrel rampaging and knocking over cooling tower. Is that it
Speaker 1: is worth checking out. But you'll definitely want to see
Speaker 1: class of Newcomb High one first, you know, for you
Speaker 1: know it's concurity and check continuity of the of the saga. Alright,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take one more break and
Speaker 1: then we'll be right back. Thank Alright, we're back. So
Speaker 1: we've been talking about opportunistic carry and eating and predation
Speaker 1: in squirrels, but I wanted to mention another less dramatical,
Speaker 1: less violent way, but still kind of weird and shocking way,
Speaker 1: that squirrels are opportunistic feeders. So let's let's turn our
Speaker 1: eye to the red squirrel. We mentioned red squirrels earlier.
Speaker 1: In some cases where red squirrels might be eating some
Speaker 1: dead animals, might be eating dead dogs or dead foxes
Speaker 1: or something like that. But the red squirrel tammy Ascius Hudsonicus.
Speaker 1: Like other squirrels, they often tried to survive through winter
Speaker 1: by building up stores of food items that are called
Speaker 1: mast and mast is just all the edible fruits of
Speaker 1: the trees of the forest. It's acorns, pine cones, nuts,
Speaker 1: and so forth. And in the summer and fall, squirrels
Speaker 1: collect mast and store it in these caches to eat
Speaker 1: throughout the winter. And trying to survive by storing food
Speaker 1: for the winter is sometimes a dangerous strategy. You can
Speaker 1: have an unexpectedly warm winter that can cause your food
Speaker 1: stores to spoil, or cases can sometimes be discovered by
Speaker 1: other animals. They're vulnerable to theft and opportunistic scavenging, and
Speaker 1: maybe most importantly, not every warm season offers the same
Speaker 1: kind of harvest. Trees in the forest actually tend to
Speaker 1: produce greater and lesser quantities of massed on multi year cycles.
Speaker 1: So if you're a red squirrel and it's an off
Speaker 1: year where the harvests provided by the forest were very
Speaker 1: low or something else happened, what can you do? What
Speaker 1: happens if your supplies run low while it's still winter
Speaker 1: and you need some calories. Oh, I guess you can
Speaker 1: hope the tourists come by and feed you snack bars.
Speaker 1: But that's probably not a good uh, not something you
Speaker 1: can bank on, right, You can't bank on tourists. You
Speaker 1: can't bank on vole brains. You might not be to
Speaker 1: come come across any of those. So what the red
Speaker 1: squirrel does, it's it's so. The red squirrel is common
Speaker 1: throughout the United States and Canada, and it has this
Speaker 1: cool survival technique. In a book called winter World, The
Speaker 1: Ingenuity of Animal Survival UH, the University of Vermont biologist
Speaker 1: and nature writer Burned Heinrich has written about this strategy
Speaker 1: and what they do is they make tree candy. The
Speaker 1: red squirrel will find a sugar maple tree and it
Speaker 1: will make incisions in the bark of the tree with
Speaker 1: its front teeth, and this allows sap to drain out
Speaker 1: from the inside of the tree. And then after the
Speaker 1: sap runs out, its water content evaporates and it dries
Speaker 1: in the sun. And this leaves a sweet sugary residue
Speaker 1: on the outside of the tree that the squirrel can
Speaker 1: return and lick like a maple syrup lollipop to get
Speaker 1: some sugar in its system. There are lots of videos
Speaker 1: of this happening. Some of the videos seem to show
Speaker 1: squirrels looking trees other than maples. I'm not sure, but
Speaker 1: uh that yeah, they're licking trees and it's pretty sick.
Speaker 1: It looks weird. Well, I don't know. This sounds like
Speaker 1: a refreshing dose of just cute behavior after the the
Speaker 1: brain eating and then the stalking that we just got through,
Speaker 1: So I'm all for them eating maple candy of their
Speaker 1: own construction. I wish I could have seen this without
Speaker 1: having read about it first, so I could just wonder,
Speaker 1: what's going on? Did you see them biting holes in
Speaker 1: trees and then coming back and just licking tree trunks
Speaker 1: to death? But I guess maybe we should get back
Speaker 1: into more violent territories. Okay, So you mentioned earlier you
Speaker 1: gave this list of animals from that paper that squirrels
Speaker 1: will sometimes prey on or get into battle with, And
Speaker 1: one of the animals you mentioned was the snake the serpent.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about one particular squirrel snake
Speaker 1: relationship that is not so rare or infrequent or alleged,
Speaker 1: but instead is a well known evolutionary war spanning millions
Speaker 1: of years that has given birth to some amazing squirrel
Speaker 1: martial arts and battle tactics. So the squirreling question is
Speaker 1: the common California ground squirrel ODO sperma Phyllis b ch a.
Speaker 1: And it's found throughout the western region of North America,
Speaker 1: including California, Oregon, Washington, and the Baja Peninsula of Mexico.
Speaker 1: And this utterly mundane squirrel faces a plenty of natural predators,
Speaker 1: including rattlesnakes like the northern Pacific rattlesnakes Croatalys viridus oreganus.
Speaker 1: By some accounts, the squirrels make up about seventy percent
Speaker 1: of the western rattlesnakes diets. And for years now, scientists,
Speaker 1: especially at the University of California Davis, have been discovering
Speaker 1: more and more of these ingenious, highly adapted anti predation
Speaker 1: techniques that the squirrels used to their advantage in the
Speaker 1: Great War against the serpents of the West. All right, well,
Speaker 1: what are these techniques? Well, some are pretty straightforward. For example,
Speaker 1: research has found that adult ground squirrels inhabiting areas with
Speaker 1: greater rattlesnake populations have evolved a greater natural resistance to
Speaker 1: rattlesnake venom. And you can see this is an evolved
Speaker 1: trade because meanwhile, squirrels in areas with few or no
Speaker 1: rattlesnakes have lost this resistance tends to go away, but
Speaker 1: sometimes California ground squirrels tend to go on offense against rattlesnakes,
Speaker 1: displaying aggressive behavior and harassing the snakes to keep them
Speaker 1: away from their young. Sometimes they'll go by petal and
Speaker 1: they whip their tails back and forth in the air,
Speaker 1: and this display that's known as flagging, and they'll kick
Speaker 1: sand at the snake and so forth. And sometimes this
Speaker 1: aggressive display can discourage or scare off a predatory rattler.
Speaker 1: And sometimes the squirrels even attack the snake and bite it.
Speaker 1: There are videos of this you can look up as well.
Speaker 1: Or it's just like a standoff between a squirrel and
Speaker 1: a snake, and the squirrel is the attacker keeps biting
Speaker 1: the snake on the spine. Oh wow, so not even
Speaker 1: not just going after you know, another omnivore, herbivore, but
Speaker 1: going after a predatory reptile. Here. Yeah, and you might think,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, how could a squirrel win in a
Speaker 1: standoff with a snake. Wouldn't that be suicide? It depends
Speaker 1: on the circumstances of the confrontation. Sometimes yes, but remember
Speaker 1: that the adult ground squirrels in the snake heavy regions
Speaker 1: tend to have this resistance to snake venom. And also
Speaker 1: the adult squirrels are generally not prime prey for the snakes.
Speaker 1: Juvenile squirrels are are the much more vulnerable ones. They're
Speaker 1: the ones the snakes want, and snakes are less likely
Speaker 1: to try to prey on adults because they can put
Speaker 1: up more of a fight. More than that, some snakes
Speaker 1: are simply much more dangerous than others. For example, in
Speaker 1: a paper by Sways, good Row and Owings called anti
Speaker 1: Predator Responses of California ground Squirrels to Rattlesnakes and rattling sounds,
Speaker 1: the roles of sex, reproductive parody, and offspring age and
Speaker 1: Assessment and decision Making Rules from two thousand three. Uh. Specifically,
Speaker 1: they found that quote larger, warmer snakes are more dangerous
Speaker 1: than smaller, colder snakes. Uh. So that might be kind
Speaker 1: of useful, But then again, how do you know what
Speaker 1: kind of snake you're dealing with. You can't look at
Speaker 1: a snake and say, well, that's snake is warmer than
Speaker 1: the other one. Apparently, what the squirrels do is they
Speaker 1: listen to the rattle. So if you rear up on
Speaker 1: two legs, and you dance around aggressively and flag your
Speaker 1: tail and generally harass a rattle snake. It'll probably be
Speaker 1: rattling at you. Right, And if you listen to the
Speaker 1: sonic characteristics of the rattle, you can actually tell the
Speaker 1: difference between the rattle sound produced by big, warm, killer
Speaker 1: snakes and the rattle sound produced by small, cold, less
Speaker 1: threatening snakes. Oh, it's it's It gives you a clue,
Speaker 1: or gives a squirrel a clue as to how how
Speaker 1: fast this snake would be if it starts uh coming
Speaker 1: after them. Yeah, And so they investigated this by they
Speaker 1: had a little study where they would playback rattle sounds
Speaker 1: from different types of snakes, and sure enough, squirrels treated
Speaker 1: rattle sounds from bigger, warmer snakes as a greater threat,
Speaker 1: and we're less likely to approach the playback speaker. It
Speaker 1: almost feels like something out of sun Zoo, right, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like provoke and observe, get your enemy to
Speaker 1: reveal their strength through the sound of their rattle, and
Speaker 1: you judge how to engage, and they can tell from
Speaker 1: that sound how strong their enemy is. It also, this
Speaker 1: also is is very reminiscent of that stalking behavior we
Speaker 1: previously discussed, you know, just sort of be there, be
Speaker 1: a little obnoxious in your presence, and then use that
Speaker 1: intel to your advantage. Yeah, but some of their other
Speaker 1: tactics the same, squirrel It just gets brilliant. So I
Speaker 1: want to talk about rattlesnake baths. Oh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I read about this in Good magazine. This is a
Speaker 1: This is for for for for your skin tone. Right right,
Speaker 1: you melt fifty rattlesnakes and get into the bathtub with
Speaker 1: your special pumice stone. No, no, no, no no, this this
Speaker 1: is for squirrels, not for humans. So rattlesnakes generally have
Speaker 1: poor vision, and one of the key senses they rely
Speaker 1: on for hunting is scent. So snakes can smell with
Speaker 1: their nostrils, but they have a much more keen sense
Speaker 1: of smell not through their nostrils, but through a region
Speaker 1: in the roof of their mouth called the Jacobson's organs.
Speaker 1: This is where the flicking to h and connects with
Speaker 1: the roof of their mouth exactly right. So when you
Speaker 1: see a snake flicking out its forked tongue, that snake
Speaker 1: is sniffing the air. The flicks of the tongue collect
Speaker 1: information which are volatile scent carrying compounds in the air,
Speaker 1: and they bring those compounds back into the mouth to
Speaker 1: mix with oral fluids and then get taken through ducts
Speaker 1: in the roof of the mouth to the Jacobson's organ.
Speaker 1: Side note, there's apparently some amount of controversy about whether
Speaker 1: humans have a functioning Jacobson's organ, Like, it looks like
Speaker 1: we've got some kind of tiny analogous structure, probably nonfunctional,
Speaker 1: and that might be worth a deeper look someday. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Snakes use this smelling apparatus to locate prey
Speaker 1: by smell. So if you're a squirrel that this snake
Speaker 1: would like to eat, what do you do? You can run,
Speaker 1: you can hide, but you can't stop emitting volatile compounds.
Speaker 1: You're always going to be putting up these molecules that
Speaker 1: this relentless predator can tract through the air. So the
Speaker 1: California ground squirrel has this wonderful adapted behavior. It takes
Speaker 1: a snake bath. Snakes periodically have to shed their skin
Speaker 1: in order to allow their bodies to grow and remove
Speaker 1: external parasites. And when one of these squirrels comes across
Speaker 1: a snakeskin discarded in the on the ground, it begins
Speaker 1: to set to work. So first it takes bites out
Speaker 1: of the skin and choose it up into a snakeskin
Speaker 1: mushball in its mouth, and then it spits the mushball
Speaker 1: out on itself and smears the snakeskin poultice around in
Speaker 1: its fur. And then it keeps doing this until it
Speaker 1: smells more of snake than of squirrel. And these animals
Speaker 1: have also been seen smearing snakeskin mush under their young
Speaker 1: to protect them as well. If a snakeskin is not available,
Speaker 1: sometimes they will pick up the snake scent by rubbing
Speaker 1: themselves in the soil from places where rattlesnakes have been resting,
Speaker 1: and apparently the North American rock squirrel has been observed
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. Clever girl. One last crazy anti
Speaker 1: snake adaptation. In addition to their sense of smell, rattlesnakes
Speaker 1: use heat sensing organs right called pit organs in their faces.
Speaker 1: Is to hunt down by detecting body warmth. So the
Speaker 1: snake lives in a world of smell and heat. And
Speaker 1: if the squirrels have a smell based defense, do they
Speaker 1: also have a heat based defense. You bet you that
Speaker 1: this is true. Researchers, including Airin s Runda's, discovered in
Speaker 1: the two thousands that California ground squirrels threatened by rattlesnakes
Speaker 1: turn their tails into this weird kind of beacon of
Speaker 1: heat energy. It's a whipping heat element. So Rundas claimed
Speaker 1: at an animal behavior conference in Mexico in two thousand
Speaker 1: four that the squirrels apparently do this by getting the
Speaker 1: fur on their tails to stand straight up, which allows
Speaker 1: more of the underlying skin to be exposed to the
Speaker 1: air and dilates the blood vessels under the skin, causing
Speaker 1: the skin to broadcast more heat in the form of
Speaker 1: infrared radiation. And further research on these initial observations involved
Speaker 1: creating a robot squirrel. Did you ever think science would
Speaker 1: take us here, Robert robot squirrel? No, I have to
Speaker 1: have to say, it seems like they're you would expect
Speaker 1: robot mice, you would expect robot snake. And I've seen
Speaker 1: both of these, but I've never contemplated the robot squirrel. Well,
Speaker 1: I like the swimming robots. You know that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of good robot animals out there, But I've
Speaker 1: never heard of robot squirrel before this, but sometimes you
Speaker 1: gotta tweak different independent variables. Sometimes you need to make
Speaker 1: a robot squirrel. So that's what they did. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I want to mention one study from Proceedings of the
Speaker 1: National Academy of Sciences in two thousand seven. This is
Speaker 1: rund Us owings Yoshi Chin and Giannini called ground squirrels
Speaker 1: use infrared signal to deter rattle snake predation. So in
Speaker 1: animal trials, Rundus and co authors found that quote, California
Speaker 1: ground squirrels add an infrared component to their snake directed
Speaker 1: tail flagging signals when confronting infrared sensitive rattle snakes, but
Speaker 1: tail but tail flag without augmenting infrared emission when confronting
Speaker 1: infrared insensitive gopher snakes. So this means they can tell
Speaker 1: the difference between different kinds of potential predators. Uh, the
Speaker 1: kind that that since heat got a hot tail and
Speaker 1: the kind that do not sense heat got a cold tail.
Speaker 1: And here's where the robot squirrel comes in. They built
Speaker 1: a robot squirrel that could whip its tail with or
Speaker 1: without tail heating at the same time. And what they
Speaker 1: found was quote, when the infrared component was added to
Speaker 1: the tail flagging display of the Robotics Squirrels. Rattlesnakes exhibited
Speaker 1: a greater shift from predatory to defensive behavior than during
Speaker 1: controlled trials in which tail flagging included no infrared component.
Speaker 1: So when you go at a heat sensitive snake with
Speaker 1: a hot tail wagging around in the air for some reason,
Speaker 1: the snake is more likely to back down. And so
Speaker 1: to answer that question, research with rattlers in with this
Speaker 1: robot which is of course known as the robo squirrel
Speaker 1: that's been ongoing more recently, but there there is video
Speaker 1: of the robot squirrel online. We've referred you to several
Speaker 1: video type searches. You can look up robo squirrel and
Speaker 1: it's worth seeing. It's it's pretty good. It's like on
Speaker 1: a rack, so it'll like rack forward towards the snake
Speaker 1: and then its tail will whip back and forth. And
Speaker 1: if they hate it up, the rattler just kind of
Speaker 1: sits there. But if they don't, when the squirrel tries
Speaker 1: to retreat, the snake will lunge at it. Yes, do
Speaker 1: check out that video if you get a chance. I
Speaker 1: gotta say I am in general quite impressed with the
Speaker 1: California ground squirrel. It's a machine, yes, it the non
Speaker 1: robot version as a machine, it is um and generally
Speaker 1: here at the end of this episode, I I am
Speaker 1: just really impressed by the abilities and the viciousness that
Speaker 1: we find in the Kingdom of the scugs, the these
Speaker 1: these the squirrels, these tree rats that we we've just
Speaker 1: so often taken uh for granted. You know, one thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to return to, if you don't mind, is
Speaker 1: I've been shocked by the behavior of squirrels that we
Speaker 1: learned about in this episode. But I'm also shocked by
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin because his his elegy for for Mungo the
Speaker 1: scug uh is a very anti freedom and prosecurity. Did
Speaker 1: you notice that vein in it? I didn't really pick
Speaker 1: up on that, now, I guess I was just more
Speaker 1: focused on the cage squirrel without really thinking about the
Speaker 1: political implications. Well, he says again, learn hints ye who
Speaker 1: blindly wish more liberty, whether subjects, sons, squirrels, or daughters,
Speaker 1: that apparent restraint maybe real protection, yielding peace plenty and security.
Speaker 1: That seems to really go against that Benjamin Franklin quote
Speaker 1: where he says those who would give up essential liberty
Speaker 1: to purchase a little temporary safety. Deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Speaker 1: That's one of the you know, one of those great
Speaker 1: American pro freedom quotes. But I looked that up to
Speaker 1: see what's the deal with did he really mean that?
Speaker 1: Weirdly enough, unfortunately, that's one of those quotes where the
Speaker 1: warped out of context misunderstanding of the quote is actually
Speaker 1: a lot more profound and good than the original meaning.
Speaker 1: The original meaning of that quote hinges a lot more
Speaker 1: on the idea of quote a little temporary safety. He
Speaker 1: was like writing against people who were putting in place
Speaker 1: sort of temporary inadequate security measures. Yeah. Interesting, I like
Speaker 1: the misunderstood version better. Yeah. Yeah, I think it is
Speaker 1: a more pleasant thought for sure. All right, Well, there
Speaker 1: you have it, uh, first part of our two part
Speaker 1: exploration of just general squirrel weirdness and savagery. We hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed this introduction reintroduction to the world of the scugs,
Speaker 1: and I hope that you will tune in next time
Speaker 1: as we continue. Let us leave you with one more
Speaker 1: thought at the end, though, do not take this as
Speaker 1: license to mistreat squirrels just because they may carry in.
Speaker 1: Just because they may want to vole brain now and then,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make them the bad guys of the animal kingdom.
Speaker 1: We encourage you instead to look on them with all
Speaker 1: and wonder. Yeah. I think actually the squirrels are more
Speaker 1: entertaining to me now because I know what they're really about.
Speaker 1: I know what they're up to. All right, Well, you
Speaker 1: can check out all the other episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That is the mothership. That is where you will find
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