Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And Robert I got a question for you. Give me
Speaker 1: with it. What wild animal do you most associate with
Speaker 1: American founding icon Benjamin Franklin's Gonna Be the Turkey had
Speaker 1: that whole song about it right in seventy six? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: were you in seventeen seventy six? Did you play Ben Franklin?
Speaker 1: I played Thomas Jefferson. Okay, community theater performance of it. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's that's who I was. But you got to be
Speaker 1: the boring guy without a sense of humor, Yes, but
Speaker 1: with with bright red hair. That was the main appeal
Speaker 1: and U. Ben Franklin was played by a local attorney
Speaker 1: named Ray Freely. Ray Freely y f He did wonderful job.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad I had the part I had. I
Speaker 1: was more suited for just red haired and kind of boring. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know Timmy Jefferson, Timmy Timmy. Yeah, he is kind
Speaker 1: of a Timmy and that isn't he? He like he
Speaker 1: There are scenes where he plays the violin, right did
Speaker 1: you play the violin? Oh gosh, I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: remember scenes where I was had pretending to write in
Speaker 1: Wada paper. Okay, oh, sorry, we got sidetracked here, but
Speaker 1: there is a song in there where Benjamin Franklin he
Speaker 1: suggests that the U. S National bird should not be
Speaker 1: the should not be the eagle, and should not be
Speaker 1: the dove, but should be the turkey because it is
Speaker 1: a most majestic bird. And I found no evidence that
Speaker 1: Franklin actually suggested that the national birds should be the turkey.
Speaker 1: But Franklin was all about some turkeys, especially was all
Speaker 1: about killing turkeys, and especially it was all about killing
Speaker 1: turkeys with his favorite technological toys, the ladon jar. Uh.
Speaker 1: We we've talked before in our episodes about the early
Speaker 1: days of electricity about that that barbecue Franklin hosted where
Speaker 1: he wanted to kill turkeys with with electrical shocks and
Speaker 1: then roast them with an electrical jack and then uh
Speaker 1: and and I guess, I don't know, char their skin
Speaker 1: with electrical fire from a bottle. It was a rousing affair,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, because Franklin actually ended up electrocuting or not electrocuting,
Speaker 1: but he shocked himself very badly. See why isn't this
Speaker 1: our Thanksgiving tradition? Should a big, 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. No pardon for you,
Speaker 1: all right? So if the if the turkey wasn't his
Speaker 1: favorite animal, uh what pray tell? Was it? Well? Who
Speaker 1: knows if it was actually his favorite animal. But the
Speaker 1: animal 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. And he
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to Georgiana Shipley in seventeen seventy two
Speaker 1: where where he said, I lament with you most sincerely
Speaker 1: the unfortunate end of poor Mungo. Few squirrels were better accomplished,
Speaker 1: for he had had a good education, had traveled far
Speaker 1: and seen much of the world. In other words, I
Speaker 1: I put it, put him in a cage, and carried
Speaker 1: him on a I don't know, an oceanic journey. There's
Speaker 1: some ironies in this story that we can tease out
Speaker 1: in the second. In fact, Benjamin Franklin wrote a poem
Speaker 1: of lament. It is like an elegy for poor Mungo.
Speaker 1: I wonder if we should do a reading of this
Speaker 1: poem for Mango. What do you think, Well, I don't
Speaker 1: really have a good Benjamin Franklin voice. Neither do I,
Speaker 1: but I can give it a shot. Alas poor Mungo,
Speaker 1: happy wort, thou hatst thou known thy own felicity, remote
Speaker 1: from the fierce, bald eagle tyrant of thy native woods,
Speaker 1: thou hatst not to fear from his piercing talents, nor
Speaker 1: from the murdering gun of the thoughtless sportsman, Safe in
Speaker 1: his why aired castle, Grimalkin never could annoy thee Grimalkin,
Speaker 1: of course, is the which is familiar the cat from Macbeth.
Speaker 1: I think 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. But you didn't
Speaker 1: know that one either. I didn't, But you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of people by by the time
Speaker 1: we're done with the special two part exploration of the squirrel,
Speaker 1: I think some people are going to adopt skug as
Speaker 1: an appropriate a bit of terminology for these strange furry
Speaker 1: creatures that, for many obvious fill our backyards in our lives. Robert,
Speaker 1: I am so excited to talk about squirrels for two
Speaker 1: whole episodes because I would never have imagined there were
Speaker 1: two episodes worth of startling squirrel knowledge and oh boy
Speaker 1: is there Yeah, there is. But before anybody and it
Speaker 1: thinks I'll skip the squirrels, No no no, no, no, stick
Speaker 1: 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 environment. They may shake
Speaker 1: 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 my family. We like to when 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 garden.
Speaker 1: You can try, but they are tenacious. They have an
Speaker 1: insatiable mammalian quality, a mammalian vitality that the birds just
Speaker 1: do not have. Even though we we love birds and
Speaker 1: we've explored you know, when when you put a bird
Speaker 1: feeder out, you wonder why the squirrels always seem to
Speaker 1: take it over, And it does seem to have something
Speaker 1: to do with their mammalian craftiness. And that's despite the
Speaker 1: fact that birds are often craftier than we expect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I it is I I root for the
Speaker 1: birds though when the birds drive the squirrels away, But
Speaker 1: then the squirrels are just going to get in there
Speaker 1: and also have their their meal as well. Um. Another
Speaker 1: thing that I always noticed about the squirrels is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: for for many of us, we we barely notice them,
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. Chipmunk is I think,
Speaker 1: objectively cute, whereas the squirrel is a little larger and
Speaker 1: a little more grotesque and a little more like a
Speaker 1: tree rat. There's a reason the rescue rangers are not squirrels,
Speaker 1: and they just be less cute that way. But but
Speaker 1: one thing I noticed is that when you have people
Speaker 1: who are not accustomed to squirrel suddenly encountering them, tourists
Speaker 1: from Afar, they'll they're just totally one over body scurring
Speaker 1: creatures and their pointing at them, and then of course
Speaker 1: they they may give in to the temptation to feed them.
Speaker 1: Which means if you go to a place like the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon, where you know you have you have tours
Speaker 1: from around the world coming to to see this natural
Speaker 1: um landscape that's just truly inspiring, uh scene to behold,
Speaker 1: people are also gonna encounter the squirrels. They're gonna end
Speaker 1: up beating the squirrels, even though everyone tells them not to.
Speaker 1: And then you have situations like the one my wife
Speaker 1: and I encountered on a hike into the Grand canyon
Speaker 1: where we set down for a second, we're gonna share
Speaker 1: some some snack mix, and then the squirrel comes and
Speaker 1: the squirrel starts climbing on us on our bodies to
Speaker 1: get to the snack mix because it's become so accustomed
Speaker 1: to eating food given to it by humans. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was just absolutely terrifying, especially when you watch like the
Speaker 1: fleet jump off of its nose. It's only a matter
Speaker 1: of time until they can pull a switchblade on you. Exactly.
Speaker 1: They're like they are. They are tenacious, and you should
Speaker 1: and you feed them at your peril, 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. I no, no, no,
Speaker 1: please rant on. I've been ranting about them a bit
Speaker 1: as my family watches the bird feeder as well, to
Speaker 1: the point that my my son told me recently. He's
Speaker 1: he's 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 bidding. That's 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 peasants,
Speaker 1: the you know, thank you lord kind of guys who
Speaker 1: go out and do what they're told. But yet there
Speaker 1: is an honesty in the rat. We look at the rat,
Speaker 1: and sometimes we judge the rat too harshly, it's true,
Speaker 1: but when you look at a rat and you know
Speaker 1: what the rat does. The squirrel, however, as we will
Speaker 1: explore in these episodes, the squirrel is not what it seems.
Speaker 1: The squirrel has managed to to pull one over on us.
Speaker 1: So by now you may be going, Okay, what is
Speaker 1: the secret squirrel knowledge? I've been I want the squirrel nosis.
Speaker 1: Let me into this religion. So I guess we should
Speaker 1: pave the way to divulge that knowledge. So let's enter
Speaker 1: the kingdom of the skugs. So what are what is
Speaker 1: a good skug? What? What is a skug? At its
Speaker 1: 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, and the likely
Speaker 1: extinct cream colored giant squirrel. Many additional varieties roamed in
Speaker 1: prehistoric times. Uh and plus this family also includes groundhogs
Speaker 1: 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 except Antarctica. So I
Speaker 1: think maybe we've been burying the lead. We should not
Speaker 1: bury the lead. Part one of this two part exploration.
Speaker 1: One of the main things you're gonna learn is that
Speaker 1: you have probably been too trusting of squirrels if you
Speaker 1: were like I was. I used to look out at
Speaker 1: the squirrels of my yard and think about them like
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin's Poor Mungo. This this victim, this poor little
Speaker 1: victim creature that could be eaten by a dog, and
Speaker 1: was a harmless, sweet little herbivore gathering nuts and hiding
Speaker 1: them and just going about a peaceful life without ever
Speaker 1: bothering anybody else. But the fact that blew my mind
Speaker 1: is that squirrels are not, in fact strictly herbivores. Some
Speaker 1: not very strictly at all. That's right, and uh and
Speaker 1: I and I have to say, right before we we
Speaker 1: actually researched this episode, I had this revelate revelation as
Speaker 1: well through the bird feeders that we put out, because
Speaker 1: one of the things we put out in addition to
Speaker 1: you know, a few different types of bird seed aimed
Speaker 1: as particular birds, we also put out meal worms, and
Speaker 1: these dried, dried out worms like you would feed chickens,
Speaker 1: and birds generally love them as well. But then we
Speaker 1: started noticing that the squirrels would just eat the ever
Speaker 1: loving hell out of those meal worms. We feel up
Speaker 1: this little cup, and you know, squirrel would come and
Speaker 1: you know, surreptitiously eat one and you know, grab one,
Speaker 1: get to a place where it could be on the
Speaker 1: lookout for hawks or whatnot, and then go down and
Speaker 1: get another one, and then eventually give up on any
Speaker 1: pretense of looking out for hawks and just just go
Speaker 1: face down into a this cup of meal worms and
Speaker 1: just eat absolutely all of them. And we were a
Speaker 1: little stounded because we were, like, I had we had
Speaker 1: no idea that that that squirrels eat me, but clearly
Speaker 1: these squirrels really love meal worms. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: might not have predicted that, but at least meal worms.
Speaker 1: I look at that, Okay, I'm like, it's a worm.
Speaker 1: I guess maybe a lot of things might eat a worm,
Speaker 1: right right, I I don't know, it's it's like that's
Speaker 1: 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 they are.
Speaker 1: Now that sounds so crazy. That makes me think, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, are we just dealing with like, uh like
Speaker 1: urban legend kind of observations here, Like I've read stories
Speaker 1: that I don't believe about squirrel attacks, like the idea
Speaker 1: that squirrels will will take down deer and kill them.
Speaker 1: That's right, according to a two thousand fourteen Popular Science article,
Speaker 1: the tufted ground squirrel of Borneo is said to wait
Speaker 1: on a low branch for passing deer and then jump
Speaker 1: out onto them and bite the jugular vein. And once
Speaker 1: the deer is bled to death from this bite, the
Speaker 1: s world disembowels the deer and eats the contents of
Speaker 1: the stomach as well as the heart and the liver.
Speaker 1: And I do want to just drive home. This is
Speaker 1: not This is far from any kind of a verified observation.
Speaker 1: This is very much seems to be in the realm
Speaker 1: of love of urban legends. This account was told by
Speaker 1: local hunters who find the remains of the squirrel slaughtered
Speaker 1: deer and then supposed squirrels supposed alleged squirrel slaughtered deer.
Speaker 1: And then they also attest to the hearts and livers
Speaker 1: having been eaten from domestic chickens. Again, uh, fingers pointed
Speaker 1: at the squirrels. This almost reminds me of like the
Speaker 1: Coppa legend, right reaching up through your anus to pull
Speaker 1: your liver out. Yeah, there there seems to be a
Speaker 1: lot of making sense. Are trying to make sense of
Speaker 1: stranger remains, but by making several leaps uh in uh
Speaker 1: in your logic here, as opposed to saying, well, it
Speaker 1: was probably some sort of scavenger that came and did that. No,
Speaker 1: it was probably a ferocious and strategically ishous squirrel. Now,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, supposedly these squirrels could I mean,
Speaker 1: if you happen to put your finger in their mouths, say,
Speaker 1: they could do some damage. Yeah. In fact, the author
Speaker 1: of that article, Douglas Main, points out that those those
Speaker 1: squirrels do pack quite a fierce bite, and that the
Speaker 1: giant squirrel ratufa a finnis is known to stalk and
Speaker 1: prey on birds. Okay, but the idea of a squirrel
Speaker 1: attacking and taking down an adult dear, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I highly skeptical. I don't buy it. It sounds like
Speaker 1: one of those kind of hunter legends. Yeah, it reminds
Speaker 1: me a lot of of cattle mutilation stories. You know,
Speaker 1: someone finds again, someone looks at the remains of an animal.
Speaker 1: There's something kind of weird look going on, and so
Speaker 1: you jump to uh, totally implausible explanations, such as an
Speaker 1: alien being performed an autopsy in the middle of a
Speaker 1: cow field, or squirrels or hunting impacts. But how much
Speaker 1: could you really learn in the middle of a cow field.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's it's like guided research. I would
Speaker 1: think they would want to remove to some kind of
Speaker 1: sterile 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 will 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 to Yanov said
Speaker 1: that 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, things must be pretty bad in
Speaker 1: our forest. I can hear that in the Don la
Speaker 1: Fontaine voice. Yes, things must be pretty bad in our forest. Wait,
Speaker 1: that's not Don la Fontaine. Who's that one? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't really know them by name. I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry to say. In a world where squirrels chew dogs
Speaker 1: to death, Russian media is the only one brave enough
Speaker 1: to report. But the thing about these stories is is that, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not convinced that squirrels are killing dear. I'm
Speaker 1: not convinced that they are taking down stray dogs. I
Speaker 1: I also am skeptical of that. I'd wonder though, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe if the dog is, like, I don't know, sick
Speaker 1: and all ready almost dead, that might be a different
Speaker 1: kind of thing. I find it hard to believe that
Speaker 1: like a pack of squirrels would actually attack a dog
Speaker 1: that could move exactly. Yeah, but if you but the
Speaker 1: thing is you start looking around at different papers, particularly
Speaker 1: Journal of Mammalogy papers, mostly from the twentieth century, you'll
Speaker 1: find a number of different papers that look at carnivorous
Speaker 1: ground squirrels and carnivorous activity among squirrels uh with titles
Speaker 1: such as Carnivorous behavior in the Mexican ground squirrel or
Speaker 1: Carnivorous ground squirrels on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, or food
Speaker 1: habits of the Antelope ground squirrel in Southern Nevada. Also
Speaker 1: 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. During his excavations at the
Speaker 1: old village site of Kakuliak, located a few miles at
Speaker 1: east to the present village of Savunga, he observed some
Speaker 1: adult ground squirrels eating the old, partially dried and partially
Speaker 1: frozen lumps of whale and walrus meat, which we excavated
Speaker 1: 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 thank you,
Speaker 1: thank we're back. So before we get into squirrels as predators,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to mention another paper I looked at
Speaker 1: about squirrels eating meat, and this was from the Journal
Speaker 1: of Parasitology from nineteen fifty six by Raws and other
Speaker 1: authors called the occurrence of larvae of trick and Ella
Speaker 1: spiralis in Alaska mammals. So this is a paper looking
Speaker 1: at the prevalence of this parasite of trick and Ella
Speaker 1: spiralis in the mammals of Alaska, and trick and Ella
Speaker 1: spiralis is the nematode worm responsible for trickin nosis, which
Speaker 1: you may have heard is the you know, the reason
Speaker 1: that you should not eat pork. Tartar, though not to
Speaker 1: demonize a lot of pork is much safer these days
Speaker 1: than it used to be. So some of those fears
Speaker 1: are based on older, older ways of doing things. But
Speaker 1: you're not getting trickin 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, m what's going on here? It's clear what's
Speaker 1: going on. So the ground squirrel, that with the ground squirrel,
Speaker 1: they say, although primarily herbivorous S tell Us undulatus, and
Speaker 1: that's the ground squirrel they were looking at, also consumes
Speaker 1: mammalian flesh when available. We have observed this behavior in
Speaker 1: northeastern Alaska and in the Talqitna Mountains, where remains of
Speaker 1: voles were found in stomachs and cheek pouches of these squirrels.
Speaker 1: Such animals feeding upon carcasses of dogs or Arctic foxes
Speaker 1: would of course be exposed to infection because the dogs
Speaker 1: and the foxes can get the can get the worm,
Speaker 1: their meat gets infected, and then the squirrels go and
Speaker 1: eat the dead dogs and foxes. That's pretty messed up.
Speaker 1: The other one, though, is the red squirrel. How do
Speaker 1: the red squirrels get them quote we have observed red
Speaker 1: squirrels feeding upon the flesh of the Snowshoe, hair, carrion,
Speaker 1: and mammalian bones are often found among the food items
Speaker 1: stored by these animals for winter use. They no doubt
Speaker 1: eat any warm blooded animal they are able to capture
Speaker 1: and kill. I don't know why they keep the bones though.
Speaker 1: Why 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 for a creature the size
Speaker 1: of a squirrel was hardly predation. I mean, if I
Speaker 1: if 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. Uh. So, he
Speaker 1: pointed out that squirrels are opportunistic predators that are not
Speaker 1: morphologically specialized for the role. You can see that they
Speaker 1: don't have like wolf teeth. Yeah, and I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons it's so shocking. Yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: look like predators. They don't. They don't look like little
Speaker 1: tree dogs or or some sort of a tree cat,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, it is, so it surprises us to
Speaker 1: think of them chewing on meat. Well, it's interesting how
Speaker 1: much this emphasizes sometimes the flexibility of the animal existence
Speaker 1: as opposed to other types of existence, where an animal
Speaker 1: might not be evolved to specialize as a predator, but
Speaker 1: given 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 were,
Speaker 1: they were just not observed praying all that much. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of these reports come down to trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, you know, were they just scavenging meat, were
Speaker 1: they just eating something that was already dead, or did
Speaker 1: they or was it an opportunistic attack, or they in
Speaker 1: fact stalking something? How did you get those voles in
Speaker 1: your cheek pouches? Exactly? So, he he lists the different
Speaker 1: prey associated with a whole list of squirrel species, and
Speaker 1: the prey include the following, uh if but not 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. 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 them eating bone and antler or ignoring
Speaker 1: meat in favor of joints. Joints, so like they're trying
Speaker 1: to get like cardial edge and ligaments and stuff. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he points out to getting back to the morphology
Speaker 1: versus a behavior, says that one of the behaviors entree
Speaker 1: squirrel seems to be insinuation predation, which is largely utilized
Speaker 1: by invertebrates. Yeah, and so insinuation predation would refer to
Speaker 1: a predator lulling a prey animal into a false sense
Speaker 1: of security by appearing harmless and getting itself into an
Speaker 1: attack position or in close proximity without indicating that it's
Speaker 1: any kind of threat. The squirrels are not what they say.
Speaker 1: It's true. There they are little spies in filtrating your
Speaker 1: safe zones just to get into your nest and steal
Speaker 1: your your wild turkey chicks or something. Now we'll get
Speaker 1: to the specifics of this in a second, but we're
Speaker 1: just talking about them eating bone and antler or ligaments.
Speaker 1: Other times, they have been observed to focus on quote, brains,
Speaker 1: viscera and the flesh of the head. What squirrels eating brains? Yes,
Speaker 1: this can't be real. It is real. It is very real. Brains.
Speaker 1: So we seem to see far more squirrel meat eating
Speaker 1: and predation in colder climates. And it's and it's far
Speaker 1: more rare among tropical species. And uh. Callahan lists some
Speaker 1: possible reasons for this. So calcium and other nutrients can
Speaker 1: be obtained from certain tropical tree barks. And then uh,
Speaker 1: and in these cases too, we see these same squirrels
Speaker 1: turning to predation when their cage, when they no longer
Speaker 1: have access to those tree barks. Oh, I see carnivores
Speaker 1: and the tropics may also suffer more from stomach nematodes
Speaker 1: while 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 bird words that live in an urban environment. Say,
Speaker 1: like the example of um, the birds that learned how
Speaker 1: to open milk bottle tops that were being left on
Speaker 1: people's doorsteps, right, Um, and then the spread throughout the populations.
Speaker 1: And so you have to assume if birds can learn
Speaker 1: in that kind of way, squirrels probably can too, except
Speaker 1: in this case instead of opening milk bottle tops would
Speaker 1: be what opening a vole skull to get the brains. Indeed,
Speaker 1: now there are key reasons though to eat live meat,
Speaker 1: because ultimately that's what we're talking about, praying to obtain
Speaker 1: live meat rather than depending on just scavenged and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, meat in the flesh of the dead. So,
Speaker 1: for one thing, reproductive females may need the protein and
Speaker 1: or certain minerals more than the rest, and there are
Speaker 1: reports of lactating female specifically engaging in this sort of
Speaker 1: predation behavior. They might not be able to get the
Speaker 1: necessary calcium, phosphorus, sodium, and nitrogen from seeds alone. Another hypothesis,
Speaker 1: which is weirdly reflected in that story of the Russian
Speaker 1: dog eating squirrels, is that they may turn to meet
Speaker 1: to make up for seasonal depletion, such as during summer
Speaker 1: or indeed some other reason for a lack of seeds. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that would sort of fit the story, but we're
Speaker 1: not saying that makes it likely that they actually did
Speaker 1: take down an adult. I don't know. Yeah, but that
Speaker 1: is a that's a grain of truth. Um. But going
Speaker 1: back to that Russian um naturalist, he said, yeah, things
Speaker 1: would have to be pretty bad in the forest for
Speaker 1: this to happen in a world. So, so we've been
Speaker 1: talking about how squirrels definitely will eat things that are
Speaker 1: dead anyway, sometimes they'll eat carrion. Why why go to predation?
Speaker 1: Why must you go beyond just eating the dead that
Speaker 1: you find. Why do you have to do all these
Speaker 1: risks and spend all this energy trying to kill something
Speaker 1: that's alive. That It's a great question one I had
Speaker 1: in One 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 equable 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 uh, you know rat plus those specialized scavengers, Well
Speaker 1: they're 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 cannibalize carrying 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,
Speaker 1: like there's a frog, it's not getting away from this
Speaker 1: larger squirrel. The squirrel can eat it. But then they're
Speaker 1: the animals that are going to put up a fight
Speaker 1: or run from the squirrel potentially, and that's where we
Speaker 1: see the birds, the rodents, and the rabbits particular, like
Speaker 1: these are all going to be more challenging prey. So
Speaker 1: many researchers believe that true predation by squirrels must be
Speaker 1: just a rare occurrence, only done in the case of emergency,
Speaker 1: but growing evidence, Scallahan said, supported the idea that predation
Speaker 1: is a normal part of their behavior. So they are
Speaker 1: still opportunistic, not fundamental predators. Okay, so he's going, so
Speaker 1: you've got the idea that it's very rare, like it
Speaker 1: only happens on these bizarre, freak occasions, and then you've
Speaker 1: got the idea that they're evolved as fundamental predators and
Speaker 1: that's just part of their normal life. And he's going
Speaker 1: somewhere in between, right, Yeah, he said, like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean he's saying that for instance, you know, rating a
Speaker 1: nest when you can get a chance. That's one thing.
Speaker 1: If you kill a competitor and then you're like, well
Speaker 1: I might as well eat part of them, get a
Speaker 1: little energy boost, that's that's another thing. But but here
Speaker 1: we're talking about something far more sinister. And I do
Speaker 1: have to warn everybody out there. If you want to
Speaker 1: retain your previous a false sense of security around squirrels, uh,
Speaker 1: and there's sort of cartoon innocence, then you should probably
Speaker 1: stop listening right now because you cannot unhearu the hypothesis
Speaker 1: that I am about to share with you, lad Onmi Robert,
Speaker 1: all right, so he points Callahan points out that it's
Speaker 1: a waste of energy to avoid a creature that doesn't
Speaker 1: threaten you. It's not surprising to see birds behave defensively
Speaker 1: towards squirrels. Their hunger is likely seasonal. They're known retinest rators.
Speaker 1: But in other contexts, birds and other potential prey just
Speaker 1: ignore squirrels. And we see this all the time, you know,
Speaker 1: especially if you watch your bird feeder. But Callahan presents
Speaker 1: an interesting view on this and on the stalking behavior
Speaker 1: occasionally observed in tree squirrels. This is not uh, nest
Speaker 1: robbing behavior, but is linked to infrequent attempts at larger
Speaker 1: prey attempts, mind you, and often aborted attempts mere caricatures
Speaker 1: of stalking the Callahan finds rather conspicuous. He argues that
Speaker 1: it's possible that the effect of obvious, repeated stalking is
Speaker 1: to habituate potential prey. In other words, it is conditioning
Speaker 1: prey animals to disregard their attacks. So this would not
Speaker 1: be something we're saying that the squirrels are doing consciously,
Speaker 1: But they've somehow instinctually learned to like to to sort
Speaker 1: of feign at acts all the time to get it
Speaker 1: to our potential prey animals. Larger prey animals are like,
Speaker 1: oh whatever, it's just squirrels being squirrels. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean they're not. They're not doing in a conscious sense
Speaker 1: the same way that we would do our humans would
Speaker 1: stalk something, but they but they are doing it in
Speaker 1: the via their evolved behavior anyway. Callahan writes, if most
Speaker 1: squirrels acting like predators do not follow through, then prey
Speaker 1: should learn not to respond. This behavior is analogous to
Speaker 1: the hoarding of nuts, in that the squirrel is hoarding
Speaker 1: prey confidence. Later, when normal food items are in short supply,
Speaker 1: the squirrel can exploit this conditioning. In the longer term,
Speaker 1: selection for such behavior potentially represents an entry point to
Speaker 1: a new feeding niche, particularly in marginal habitats, where tree
Speaker 1: squirrels may be more likely to resort to predation. In
Speaker 1: other words, beware the squirrels. I am never going to
Speaker 1: be able to see squirrels the same after this episode.
Speaker 1: Now the other hand, we don't like to demonize any
Speaker 1: type of animal here, and of course predation is part
Speaker 1: of nature. 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 have
Speaker 1: to to say much the same. Again, we do we
Speaker 1: 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 dogs. 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's 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 work.
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 artificially
Speaker 1: inflating local squirrel populations such that if you ever stop
Speaker 1: 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 it looks
Speaker 1: like it might be a little bit in the shark
Speaker 1: Nado territory, where it's a little bit too self aware
Speaker 1: to be my kind of horror film. But the The
Speaker 1: better horror movie mascot for this episode would probably be uh,
Speaker 1: tromy the radioactive squirrel from Class of Newcomb High to
Speaker 1: Subhumanoid Meltdown. Uh he's also in the third film. You know,
Speaker 1: I never made it to the Class of Newcomb High sequels.
Speaker 1: How do they hold up? I have not seen the
Speaker 1: sequels either, but I I had to look up a
Speaker 1: clip of this, uh, this radio active giant squirrel rampaging
Speaker 1: and knocking over cooling towers. It it is worth checking out.
Speaker 1: But you'll definitely want to see Class of Newcomb High
Speaker 1: one first, you know, for you know, it's compurity and
Speaker 1: continuity of the saga. Alright, on that note, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take one more break and then we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. So we've been talking about opportunistic
Speaker 1: carry and eating and predation in squirrels, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention another less dramatical, less violent way, but still
Speaker 1: kind of weird and shocking way that squirrels are opportunistic feeders.
Speaker 1: So let's let's turn our eye to the red squirrel.
Speaker 1: We mentioned red squirrels earlier. In some cases where red
Speaker 1: squirrels might be eating some dead animals might be eating
Speaker 1: dead dogs or dead foxes or something like that. But
Speaker 1: the red squirrels Tammy Ascurus hudsonicus, like other squirrels, they
Speaker 1: often tried to survive through winter by building up stores
Speaker 1: of food items that are called mast, and mast is
Speaker 1: just all the edible fruits of the trees of the forest.
Speaker 1: It's acorns, pine cones, nuts, and so forth. And in
Speaker 1: the summer and fall, squirrels collect mast and store it
Speaker 1: in these caches to eat throughout the winter. And trying
Speaker 1: to survive by storing food for the winter is sometimes
Speaker 1: a dangerous strategy. You can have an unexpectedly warm winter
Speaker 1: that can cause your food stores to spoil, or caches
Speaker 1: can sometimes be discovered by other animals. They're vulnerable to
Speaker 1: theft and opportunistic scavenging, and maybe most importantly, not every
Speaker 1: warm season offers the same kind of harvest. Trees in
Speaker 1: the forest actually tend to produce greater and lesser quantities
Speaker 1: of massed on multi year cycles. So if you're a
Speaker 1: red squirrel and it's an off year where the harvests
Speaker 1: provided by the forest were very low or something else happened,
Speaker 1: what can you do? What happens if your supplies run
Speaker 1: low while it's still winter and you need some calories.
Speaker 1: I guess you can hope the tourists come by and
Speaker 1: feed you snack bars. But that's probably not a good uh,
Speaker 1: not something you can bank con right. You can't bank
Speaker 1: on tourists. You can't bank on vole brains. You might
Speaker 1: not be able to come come across any of those.
Speaker 1: So what the red squirrel does, it's it's so. The
Speaker 1: red squirrel is common throughout the United States and Canada,
Speaker 1: and it has this cool survival technique. In a book
Speaker 1: called winter World, The Ingenuity of Animal Survival UH, the
Speaker 1: University of Vermont biologist and nature writer Burned Heinrich has
Speaker 1: written about this strategy and what they do is they
Speaker 1: make tree candy. The red squirrel will find a sugar
Speaker 1: maple tree and it will make incisions in the bark
Speaker 1: of the tree with its front teeth, and this allows
Speaker 1: sap to drain out from the inside of the tree.
Speaker 1: And then after the sap runs out, its water content
Speaker 1: evaporates and it dries in the sun. And this leaves
Speaker 1: a sweet sugary residue on the outside of the tree
Speaker 1: that the squirrel can return and lick. Like a maple
Speaker 1: syrup lollipop to get some sugar in its system. There
Speaker 1: are lots of videos of this happening. Some of the
Speaker 1: videos seem to show squirrels looking trees other than maple's.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but uh that. Yeah, they're licking trees
Speaker 1: and it's pretty sick. It looks weird. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: This sounds like a refreshing dose of just cute behavior
Speaker 1: after the the brain eating and then the stalking that
Speaker 1: we just got through. So I'm all for them eating
Speaker 1: maple candy of their own construction. I wish I could
Speaker 1: have seen this without having read about it first, so
Speaker 1: I could just wonder what's going on? Did you see
Speaker 1: them biting holes in trees and then coming back and
Speaker 1: just licking tree trunks to death? But I guess maybe
Speaker 1: we should get back into more violent territories. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier you gave this list of animals from
Speaker 1: that paper that squirrels will sometimes prey on or get
Speaker 1: into battle with, And one of the animals you mentioned
Speaker 1: was the snake the serpent. So I want to talk
Speaker 1: about one particular squirrel snake relationship that is not so
Speaker 1: rare or infrequent or alleged, but instead is a well
Speaker 1: known evolutionary war spanning millions of years that has given
Speaker 1: birth to some amazing squirrel martial arts and battle tactics.
Speaker 1: So the squirreling question is the common California ground squirrel
Speaker 1: Odo sperma Phyllis b ch a. And it's found throughout
Speaker 1: the western region of North America, including California, Oregon, Washington,
Speaker 1: and the Baja Peninsula of Mexico. And this utterly mundane
Speaker 1: squirrel faces a plenty of natural predators, including rattlesnakes like
Speaker 1: the northern Pacific rattlesnakes Croatalys viridus oreganus. By some accounts,
Speaker 1: the squirrels make up about seventy percent of the western
Speaker 1: rattlesnakes diets. And for years now, scientists, especially at the
Speaker 1: University of California Davis, have been discovering more and more
Speaker 1: of these ingenious, highly adapted anti predation techniques that the
Speaker 1: squirrels used to their advantage in the Great War against
Speaker 1: the serpents of the West. All right, well, what are
Speaker 1: these techniques? Well, some are pretty straightforward. For example, research
Speaker 1: has found that adult ground squirrels inhabiting areas with greater
Speaker 1: rattlesnake populations have of all, 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. Wow, So not even not
Speaker 1: just going after you know, another omnivore, herbivore, but going
Speaker 1: 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 Rattle Snakes and
Speaker 1: rattling sounds the roles of sex, reproductive parody, and offspring
Speaker 1: age and Assessment and decision Making Rules from two thousand
Speaker 1: three UH Specifically, they found that quote larger, warmer snakes
Speaker 1: are more dangerous than smaller, colder snakes. H So that
Speaker 1: might be kind of useful, But then again, how do
Speaker 1: you know what kind of snake you're dealing with. You
Speaker 1: can't look at a snake and say, well, that snake
Speaker 1: is warmer than the other one. Apparently, what the squirrels
Speaker 1: do is they listen to the rattle. So if you
Speaker 1: rear up on two legs and you dance around aggressively
Speaker 1: and flag your tail and generally harass a rattle snake,
Speaker 1: it'll probably be rattling at you. Right, And if you
Speaker 1: listen to the sonic characteristics of the rattle, you can
Speaker 1: actually tell the difference between the rattle sound produced by big, warm,
Speaker 1: killer snakes and the rattle sound produced by small, cold,
Speaker 1: less 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. You get your enemy
Speaker 1: to reveal their strength through the sound of their rattle,
Speaker 1: and you judge how to engage, and they can tell
Speaker 1: from that sound how strong their enemy is. It also,
Speaker 1: this also is is very reminiscent of that stalking behavior
Speaker 1: we previously discussed. You know, just sort of be there,
Speaker 1: be a little obnoxious in your presence, and then use
Speaker 1: that intel to your advantage. Yeah, but some of their
Speaker 1: other tactics the same. Squirrel it just gets brilliant. So
Speaker 1: I want to talk about rattlesnake baths. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I read about this in Good magazine. This is
Speaker 1: a this is for for for for your skin tone,
Speaker 1: right right, you melt fifty rattlesnakes and get into the
Speaker 1: bathtub with your special pumice stone. No, no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: this this is for squirrels, not for humans. So rattlesnakes
Speaker 1: generally have poor vision, and one of the key senses
Speaker 1: they rely on for hunting is scent. So snakes can
Speaker 1: smell with their nostrils, but they have a much more
Speaker 1: keen sense of smell not through their nostrils, but through
Speaker 1: a region in the roof of their mouth called the
Speaker 1: Jacobson's organ. This is where the flicking tongue then connects
Speaker 1: with the roof of their mouth. Yeah, exactly right. So
Speaker 1: when you see a snake flicking out its forked tongue,
Speaker 1: that snake is sniffing the air. The flicks of the
Speaker 1: tongue collect information, which are volatile scent carrying compounds in
Speaker 1: the air, and they bring those compounds back into the
Speaker 1: mouth to mix with oral fluids and then get taken
Speaker 1: through ducts in the roof of the mouth to the
Speaker 1: Jacobson's organ. Side note, there's apparently some amount of controversy
Speaker 1: about whether humans have a functioning Jacobson's organ, Like it
Speaker 1: looks like we've got some kind of tiny analogous structure,
Speaker 1: probably nonfunctional, 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 snake skin discarded in the on the ground, it
Speaker 1: begins to set to work. So first it takes bites
Speaker 1: out of the skin and choose it up into a
Speaker 1: snakeskin mushball in its mouth, and then it spits the
Speaker 1: mushball out on itself and smears the snakeskin poultice around
Speaker 1: in its fur, and then it keeps doing this until
Speaker 1: it smells more of snake than of squirrel. And these
Speaker 1: animals have also been seen smearing snakeskin mush under their
Speaker 1: young to protect them as well. If a snakeskin is
Speaker 1: not available, sometimes they will pick up the snake scent
Speaker 1: by rubbing themselves in the soil from places where rattlesnakes
Speaker 1: have been resting, and apparently the North American rock squirrel
Speaker 1: has been observed doing the same thing. One last crazy
Speaker 1: anti snake adaptation. In addition to their sense of smell,
Speaker 1: rattlesnakes use heat sensing organs right called pit organs in
Speaker 1: their faces to hunt down by detecting body warmth. So
Speaker 1: the snake lives in a world of smell and heat.
Speaker 1: And if the squirrels have a smell based defense, do
Speaker 1: they also have a heat based defense? You bet you
Speaker 1: that this is true. Researchers, including Airin S Rundas, discovered
Speaker 1: in the two thousands that California ground squirrels threatened by
Speaker 1: rattle snakes turn their tails into this weird kind of
Speaker 1: beacon of heat energy. It's a whipping heat element. So
Speaker 1: Rundas claimed at an animal behavior conference in Mexico in
Speaker 1: two thousand four that the squirrels apparently do this by
Speaker 1: getting the fur on their tails to stand straight up,
Speaker 1: which allows more of the underlying skin to be exposed
Speaker 1: to the air and dilates the blood vessels under the skin,
Speaker 1: causing the skin to broadcast more heat in the form
Speaker 1: of infrared radiation. And further research on these initial observations
Speaker 1: involved creating a robot squirrel. Did you ever think science
Speaker 1: would take us here, Robert robot squirrel? No, I have
Speaker 1: to have to say, it seems like they're you would
Speaker 1: expect robot mice. You would expect robot snakes, and I've
Speaker 1: seen both of these, but I've never contemplated the robot squirrel. Well,
Speaker 1: I I like the swimming robots. You know that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of good robot animals out there, but
Speaker 1: I'd never heard of robot squirrel before this. But sometimes
Speaker 1: you gotta tweak different independent variables. Sometimes you need to
Speaker 1: make a robot squirrel. So that's what they did. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I want to mention one study from Proceedings of
Speaker 1: the National Academy of Sciences in two thousand seven. This
Speaker 1: is Rundus 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 since 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 and 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 act, 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's the non
Speaker 1: robot version is 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 very ant high freedom and pro security.
Speaker 1: Did you notice that vein in it? I didn't really
Speaker 1: pick up on that. Now, I guess I was just
Speaker 1: more focused on the cage squirrel without really thinking about
Speaker 1: the political implications. Well, he says again, learn hints ye
Speaker 1: who 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 warped,
Speaker 1: out of context misunderstanding of the quote is actually a
Speaker 1: lot more profound and good than the original meaning. The
Speaker 1: original meaning of that quote hinges a lot more on
Speaker 1: the idea of quote a little temporary safety. He was
Speaker 1: like writing against people who were putting in place sort
Speaker 1: of temporary inadequate security measures. Yeah. Interesting, I like the
Speaker 1: misunderstood version better. Yeah, Yeah, I think it is a
Speaker 1: more pleasant thought for sure. All Right, Well, there you
Speaker 1: have it, uh, first part of our two part exploration
Speaker 1: of just general squirrel weirdness and savagery. We hope you've
Speaker 1: 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
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