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Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's your neighbor with the smelly trash cans.
Speaker 1: What's in there? Ali Ward, I am going to make
Speaker 1: this intro as short as possible because I've squirrels on
Speaker 1: my pants. I want to start this first things first,
Speaker 1: I wanted to interview this person for years. Somehow my
Speaker 1: emails never got returned, my dreams never materialized, and then
Speaker 1: one day I realized she followed me on social media.
Speaker 1: Hot dang. I DMed her with so many exclamation points
Speaker 1: it was embarrassing, and from the first second of this interview.
Speaker 1: I'm losing my shit and I think you will too.
Speaker 1: So she got her undergrad in cell molecular biology at
Speaker 1: Arizona State University. She had a master's in ecology and
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology at Purdue, and then got a PhD in
Speaker 1: wildlife ecology and conservation back at the University of Arizona.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about it. She's now a professor
Speaker 1: of biology at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio, where she
Speaker 1: has done many things, one of them co creating a
Speaker 1: full length dance work called Liars in fur Coats about
Speaker 1: the social and mating habits of squirrels. She's studied fox squirrels,
Speaker 1: gray squirrels, ground squirrels, and more for decades, and her
Speaker 1: handles on social media reflect this commitment. Squirrel doc it's
Speaker 1: linked to the show notes. Also linked patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash ologies for a buck or more a month. You
Speaker 1: can submit questions ahead of time and I might say
Speaker 1: your name with my face. Ologyes Merch is also linked
Speaker 1: to the show notes. And thanks to everyone who leaves
Speaker 1: reviews and subscribes. I read all of them, such as
Speaker 1: this one left this week by I family who wrote
Speaker 1: there are a billion podcasts, but not all are worth
Speaker 1: a regularly scheduled listen. This one absolutely is. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Also, I've been told that this particular episode
Speaker 1: has the potential to make life good again. No pressure,
Speaker 1: So let's get into it. So scury ideology. It's hard
Speaker 1: to say, but it's a real word, people, and it
Speaker 1: comes from the Greek for shade tail. And we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about who's who and the family of scurity.
Speaker 1: I will also chat about the best part of the acorns.
Speaker 1: How many trees squirrels plant, why they're so good at
Speaker 1: bird feeders, do they glow in the dark, what their
Speaker 1: chirps and barks mean, flying squirrels, ground squirrels, litter sizes,
Speaker 1: cozy nests, If squirrels love you back, they're absolutely glorious
Speaker 1: and terrible, sex lives, hoarding, hiding, gliding, conservation, statuses that
Speaker 1: might shock you, and why you should never never put
Speaker 1: a squirrel in your pocket before you board an airplane,
Speaker 1: and so much more with mammalogist, biologist, and most importantly scuritiologist,
Speaker 1: doctor Karen Monroe.
Speaker 3: My name is Karen Monroe, and now you she her pronouns.
Speaker 1: My god, it's you it's really you, It's really me.
Speaker 3: I promise it's me.
Speaker 1: Literally, so many people in my life know today is
Speaker 1: a really exciting one for me. No chill, zero chill, whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And that is the correct way to be when talking
Speaker 1: to doctor Karen Monroe. By the way, do you know
Speaker 1: that scouriology? Do you know that? Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: the term?
Speaker 3: No, I've always referred to myself as a mammalogist.
Speaker 1: You're very good at squirrels, though, yes, And I just
Speaker 1: want you to know that out there in just the
Speaker 1: miasma of life and words, a scurtiologist is a term
Speaker 1: for someone who is very good at squirrels. I know
Speaker 1: this term.
Speaker 3: I believe you as I say. I've studied squirrels for
Speaker 3: a very long time, longer than I've been married. I
Speaker 3: mean since I was my freshman year in college, so
Speaker 3: since I was seventeen, I've studied squirrels. But I still
Speaker 3: to this day have active squirrel research because people are
Speaker 3: just fascinated by it.
Speaker 1: We love squirrels, but we're scared of most other rodents.
Speaker 3: Right. Why is that? It's the fluffy tail, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's got to be. I mean, that's where they get
Speaker 1: their name from even right, I read the right.
Speaker 3: Shade tail, shade tail.
Speaker 1: Wait a second, Wait a second, Their tail is for
Speaker 1: shade partially.
Speaker 3: Sure, it's all kinds of thermal regulations, so you know,
Speaker 3: you can think of it as an umbrella if it's
Speaker 3: just kind of misting raining, but yeah, cover yourself in
Speaker 3: sun or you know, when they splat, right, so when
Speaker 3: they lay flat, they try to thrmw A regulate. You know,
Speaker 3: it's a wait for them to give off heat, pick
Speaker 3: up heat, however, you'd.
Speaker 1: Like more unbody heat in a bit. But we have
Speaker 1: a whole ding dang episode on thermophysiology and body temperature
Speaker 1: regulation as well as a kid friendly somologies episode on
Speaker 1: It was doctor Shane Campbell Stayton. But I'm getting ahead
Speaker 1: of myself.
Speaker 4: I got to.
Speaker 1: Admit I wanted to talk about squirrels for a long time,
Speaker 1: but I don't think I've ever talked about the function
Speaker 1: of a squirrel tail. And of course they have a function.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't have evolved to have it otherwise, right.
Speaker 3: And then like when you watch them jump and fall
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, they also use it to totally
Speaker 3: right themselves so that they land, you know, on all fours.
Speaker 1: That makes so much sense. Is it kind of like
Speaker 1: when you see a tightrope walker that has one of
Speaker 1: those really big poles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, they kind of like, well, I don't know
Speaker 3: about pole, but yeah, Like at the Yankees game last day,
Speaker 3: probably ten people sent me this clip. There was a
Speaker 3: squirrel in the outfield and the fans were, you know,
Speaker 3: shocked by this. It's like running across and then it
Speaker 3: falls and it falls eight feet onto the ground.
Speaker 1: Now has it become a flying squirrel?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 1: This is not good. He sticks to landing much better
Speaker 1: than we would.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you that.
Speaker 2: Like y off to the races.
Speaker 3: And you just watch it and it kind of goes
Speaker 3: side to side to side, and like you can watch
Speaker 3: the tail kind of work as a rudder and then
Speaker 3: it lands just fine and runs away.
Speaker 1: Is there any part of that that also is just
Speaker 1: like a parachute to slow it down?
Speaker 3: About a parachute, I mean I think more like flying squirrels, right,
Speaker 3: like the gliding with that membrane really kind of is
Speaker 3: better to catch the mayor. But gray squirrels, which this
Speaker 3: was just a gray squirrel, they kind of use it
Speaker 3: more kind of as a rudder side to side.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, howdy. We will address different kinds of squirrels,
Speaker 1: gray fox, giant dwarf, flying marvel. But first let's talk
Speaker 1: about the specimen. Karen Monroe. I got to ask, how
Speaker 1: did you get? So I'm gonna say lucky that somehow
Speaker 1: life just shot doctor Karen Monroe down a path from
Speaker 1: the age of seventeen where she gets to study the
Speaker 1: most beloved woodland creature.
Speaker 3: There is the perfect confluence of luck and mistakes, I guess.
Speaker 3: So when I was in high school, right, my high
Speaker 3: school guys, so it was like, oh, you know, like biology,
Speaker 3: you should become a vet or a doctor. Right, that
Speaker 3: was pretty much the two career paths. And there was
Speaker 3: no way I could ever tell somebody they had to
Speaker 3: put their pet down. That was not even an option
Speaker 3: for me. So I was like, well, I'll be a doctor.
Speaker 3: I I like people and I really liked kids, and
Speaker 3: so I was like, oh, I'll be a pediatrician. And
Speaker 3: my undergraduate advisor one of the smartest things he did
Speaker 3: was he made me go shadow a pediatrician for a
Speaker 3: week and I learned two very important things during that
Speaker 3: week long shadowing experience. One sick kids are no fun,
Speaker 3: oh no. Two parents of sick kids are even less fun.
Speaker 3: But he at that point had already enveloped me into
Speaker 3: his lab, and so I was working for him mainly
Speaker 3: as an undergraduate. You know, hourly job collecting acorns and
Speaker 3: beating acorns to squirrels is part of his lab component.
Speaker 3: And I told my students all the time. After I
Speaker 3: figured out I did not want to be a pediatrician,
Speaker 3: I tried to find an area of medicine that I liked,
Speaker 3: and I really didn't. And I tried to find somewhere
Speaker 3: else for me to go, like, what is it that
Speaker 3: I really was interested in and what did I like?
Speaker 3: And I ended up thinking, well, I was at this small,
Speaker 3: little arts college, and that if I transferred someplace bigger.
Speaker 3: So I was from a small town. If I went
Speaker 3: to some place bigger, I would have more opportunities than
Speaker 3: I could figure it out. And so I transferred from
Speaker 3: Wilkes University, which is at that time, I think thirteen
Speaker 3: hundred students to Arizona State University. Oh so across country. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: thirteen hundred students to forty thousand students.
Speaker 1: Climate differences even.
Speaker 3: Yeah, climate, cultural, everything and anything you could possibly imagine
Speaker 3: what I really figured out and Arizona was that there
Speaker 3: were even less opportunities as a lonely undergraduate to get
Speaker 3: involved in research and really kind of figure out what
Speaker 3: it is I want to do.
Speaker 1: So Karen was majoring in cellular and molecular biology but
Speaker 1: couldn't seem to get lab experience in Arizona, so hungry
Speaker 1: for research, she would spend summers and spring breaks not
Speaker 1: getting crunk on four logos in Miami Beach, but had
Speaker 1: back to her small town to work on squirrels.
Speaker 3: And so I kind of did a huge one to eighty.
Speaker 3: So my undergrad degree is in cellular and molecular biology,
Speaker 3: and I went to Purdue and eventually ended up leaving
Speaker 3: there with my master's in ecology and evolutionary biology. But
Speaker 3: it meant I had to take all of those classes ecology,
Speaker 3: evolution and weal behavior, advanced mammology, all those kinds of
Speaker 3: things I took as a graduate student. And that's what
Speaker 3: I kind of really started putting things together that like, oh,
Speaker 3: all this solemn molecular genetic stuff that I really liked
Speaker 3: in college, I could actually apply that to the squirrels
Speaker 3: and the systems that I do so very well from
Speaker 3: working in the lab. So that's kind of where my
Speaker 3: PhD ends up. My PhD is actually in a wildlife
Speaker 3: conservation management and it really is the confluence of those
Speaker 3: two things. It's applying all the genetic stuff to an
Speaker 3: animal conservation concern was my original thought, but in that
Speaker 3: way to a group of animals that have a great
Speaker 3: conservation concern.
Speaker 1: Are squirrels in trouble? It seems they're everywhere. Maybe one
Speaker 1: tried to even steal your croissant yesterday. They seem like
Speaker 1: they're doing fine to some of us. But we will
Speaker 1: get into how different species are doing later in the episode.
Speaker 1: But yes, her interests and experience all converged to make
Speaker 1: her a truly lauded securadiologist. It sounds like one was
Speaker 1: that peanut butter and the other was the bread, and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, I guess I get make a sandwich.
Speaker 3: You've got my chocolate, my peanut butter.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to your work, was there anything
Speaker 1: about the field work that you were drawn to or
Speaker 1: was it more systemic that you liked?
Speaker 3: No, it was much more systemic. I mean I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed the fact that I could walk and I do
Speaker 3: this now right, I walk outside and my study organism
Speaker 3: is right there. It's not like I need, you know,
Speaker 3: to get on a plane and fly three thousand miles
Speaker 3: with all this equipment and things like that. It's right there,
Speaker 3: which means it's successible and I can talk about it
Speaker 3: to the public, and I can talk about it to
Speaker 3: my students, and so I really enjoyed that fact. At
Speaker 3: the same point, I've also worked places where I've had
Speaker 3: to drive six hours to the top of a mountain
Speaker 3: to work with the species, and so there are those
Speaker 3: distant and far away species as well. But I really
Speaker 3: like the fact that, especially as an undergraduate, you know,
Speaker 3: I would get on my bike and bike across campus
Speaker 3: and start trapping squirrels and making observations and things like that.
Speaker 3: It just was so accessible. I think is probably the
Speaker 3: reason I really got hooked and involved.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, anyone who's listening to this who's like
Speaker 1: working on permacross stuff probably like, right, you were frequent
Speaker 1: fire miles. But still, the availability of squirrels, that's why
Speaker 1: we love them.
Speaker 3: That's what it is. And everybody knows them, and everybody
Speaker 3: loves them, and everybody, everybody, everybody has a squirrel story. Yes,
Speaker 3: you know, I go to dinners that have you know,
Speaker 3: corporate people and business people and whatnot. They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: a scientist, We're not gonna able to talk to you.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I bet you are. I bet you,
Speaker 3: I bet you will. By the end of the night,
Speaker 3: you and I would be friends. And we love shared stories.
Speaker 1: Surely there are attention gathering no matter who you are, though,
Speaker 1: But where do squirrels live? Speaking of tundra and perma frost?
Speaker 1: What continents? Or rather, I guess where don't squirrels live?
Speaker 3: I think an articaus the only place squirrels do not live. Wow,
Speaker 3: you know from the Arctic circle down into the tropics,
Speaker 3: and you know from east to west across the way.
Speaker 1: So if you are on a continent, squirrels are native
Speaker 1: to it, except Australia, where American gray squirrels were introduced
Speaker 1: to Melbourne in the late eighteen hundreds and then a
Speaker 1: few days later a scurry of northern palm squirrels busted
Speaker 1: out of the Zoo and Perth and honestly, it's all
Speaker 1: over the place. How many there still are out there?
Speaker 1: Oh and squirrels are also not native to Antarctica. In
Speaker 1: case you're listening there, and I am impressed that you
Speaker 1: are and that you have Wi FI and I hope
Speaker 1: that you didn't bring a squirrel there. And since you
Speaker 1: have such a systemic mind about that, what are squirrels
Speaker 1: doing right to not only capture our hearts, but also
Speaker 1: to be so omnipresent, to be able to live in
Speaker 1: all these different biomes? They figured it out kind of right.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're just so charismatic, right, Like they have
Speaker 3: the little pointy noses in the face, and you know,
Speaker 3: the hands and so you can sit there and watch
Speaker 3: them rotate the acorn in their hand and get it
Speaker 3: just right so they can take the perfect bite. They're
Speaker 3: not intimidating, right, even when they make noises and things
Speaker 3: like that. I've had people like, oh, the squirrel is
Speaker 3: just saying hello as they're likep and like flapping their
Speaker 3: pail at them, and I'm like, you know, they're they're
Speaker 3: saying that you're a predator, and they're trying to make
Speaker 3: sure everybody else knows that you're a predator and and
Speaker 3: to get away. But I think that they're just kind
Speaker 3: of the right size and shape and they're just charismatic.
Speaker 1: From an evolutionary standpoint, What do you think has helped
Speaker 1: them survive on prairies and mountains and in the cold
Speaker 1: and in jungles.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: I want to say that they're such generalists, kind of
Speaker 3: across the board, that they're willing to be just about anything,
Speaker 3: but that is not always true, because there are definitely
Speaker 3: cases where they really do specifically eat, you know, a
Speaker 3: very small number of plants. Things like that. I think
Speaker 3: of like ground squirrels really specialize in a plant type
Speaker 3: and their whole physiology and when they come out of
Speaker 3: hibernation or torpor really is tied to that specific plant
Speaker 3: type and precipitation and things like that. But then I
Speaker 3: think of like the classic gray squirrel, and man, they
Speaker 3: will eat anything from plants to animals, eggs, insects, truffles.
Speaker 3: Human food is kind of the last resort. That's not
Speaker 3: generally what they're after. But their diet is so general
Speaker 3: and they have the ability just to their scatterholders, so
Speaker 3: they put a little bit of food here, there, there,
Speaker 3: and there. They like to take things like mushrooms and
Speaker 3: fungi and up into the trees and they will dry
Speaker 3: it and then put it in their dray nests with
Speaker 3: them for the winter.
Speaker 1: No, wait, they have better meal planting than I do. Right,
Speaker 1: that's hurt so bad, And I'm really impressed.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean I've seen I have a you know,
Speaker 3: a squirl my neighborhood has taken you know, a chunk
Speaker 3: of a Halloween pumpkin and put it up in the
Speaker 3: tree to dry, and I'm sure it stored it away
Speaker 3: for winter.
Speaker 1: How many of our trees are because of forgetful squirrels?
Speaker 3: Almost all of them. I know for my undergraduate research
Speaker 3: that if a acorn is handled by a squirrel, even
Speaker 3: if it is half eaten by the squirrel, it will
Speaker 3: germinate better than an acorn that it's not been touched
Speaker 3: at all by a squirrel.
Speaker 1: So we owe so much carbon capture to squirrels.
Speaker 3: I mean they really are like the gardener of the
Speaker 3: planet half eaten.
Speaker 1: Really, Yeah, just saunter over to the nineteen ninety three
Speaker 1: paper Tannins and partial consumption of acorns implications for dispersal
Speaker 1: of oaks by seed predators, and you can get a
Speaker 1: little fat snack like germination experiments revealed equal or greater
Speaker 1: germination frequencies for partially consumed acorns than for the intact acorns,
Speaker 1: and they say, we suggest that the higher tannin levels
Speaker 1: may render the apical portion less palatable and thereby increase
Speaker 1: the probability of embryo survival after attack by seed consumer,
Speaker 1: which would be the squirrel. I guess more delicious fat
Speaker 1: is at the top of the acorn. And remember this
Speaker 1: for later, because something's gonna blow your mind related to this. Also,
Speaker 1: for anyone who has ever I don't know, found a
Speaker 1: handful of loose reesis pieces in a blazer pocket that
Speaker 1: I rarely wear, you should know that the tastier the
Speaker 1: acorn is, the more likely the squirrel says to itself,
Speaker 1: None of those other jabbroni squirrels are going to eat
Speaker 1: this good one, so they bury them farther away where
Speaker 1: they might not find them, which gives the acorn distance
Speaker 1: from the parent tree, which it needs to not get
Speaker 1: choked out by its siblings. All of this drama under
Speaker 1: our noses, under our trees. Also, yes, I did eat
Speaker 1: the reesis that I found in my pocket, And no,
Speaker 1: I don't know how long they had been in there.
Speaker 1: How many acorns are boreal squirrels stashing away. I've read
Speaker 1: something that they really only remember like ten percent of them,
Speaker 1: or they don't even remember. They just look around and
Speaker 1: be like, where might there be acorns? And it might
Speaker 1: have been someone else's acorns, but they're like, yep, they're
Speaker 1: acorns exactly.
Speaker 3: It's part of my under project. We tagged thousands of
Speaker 3: acorns and put them out in the forest little brad nails,
Speaker 3: and then walked for hours with a mel detector trying
Speaker 3: to recover acorns to see how far squirrels were actually
Speaker 3: dispersing them. And it's quite a distance. And they they
Speaker 3: are so smart. They know acorns that are infested with
Speaker 3: weevils or other insects that are not going to make
Speaker 3: it through the winter, and they will either eat them
Speaker 3: immediately or excise the insect and then carry it. They
Speaker 3: will flip the acorn over, they will use their front
Speaker 3: and sizers to scrape out the cattle eating, and then
Speaker 3: stash it so that it won't germinate and it'll be
Speaker 3: there longer.
Speaker 1: So, yes, squirrels do not have a one hundred percent
Speaker 1: recovery rate with their food, all right, and they don't
Speaker 1: pretend to. It can range from twenty five to ninety
Speaker 1: five percent recovery rate depending on the species and area
Speaker 1: and food. But a ton of research has shown that
Speaker 1: squirrels have excellent spatial memory and they know to head
Speaker 1: back to their cash, But if they smell a neighbor's
Speaker 1: food buried on the way, they might eat that too. Also,
Speaker 1: according to the nineteen eighty six paper Gray Squirrel Food
Speaker 1: preferences the effects of tannin and fact concentration. Squirrels know
Speaker 1: which acorn species are more perishable, and they may bury
Speaker 1: like red oak nuts because the last longer and germinate
Speaker 1: in the spring, but they might eat white acorns because
Speaker 1: they germinate earlier in autumn. Although years later scientists at
Speaker 1: Berkeley were like, not so fast. It might just be
Speaker 1: that some acorns are just bigger. And it's like taking
Speaker 1: a few bites of a huge calzone in October and
Speaker 1: then just digging a hole in the backyard tossing it
Speaker 1: in there to snack on during the Super Bowl. Also
Speaker 1: scrape out the what the cot of lt who? Okay,
Speaker 1: so coda leedin. It sounds like a very expensive shade
Speaker 1: of paint. Everyone would be telling you to paint your kitchen,
Speaker 1: but it's actually an embryonic leaf or a pair of them,
Speaker 1: and they're in seas In an acorns, for example, it
Speaker 1: stores a lot of energy. And while the squirrels usually
Speaker 1: only bury about an inch deep in the soil, their
Speaker 1: whole food festival area can be up to seven acres wide.
Speaker 1: They're hard workers and also liars. So a two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight study titled cash Protection Strategies of scatter hoarding
Speaker 1: Rodent to tree Squirrels engage in behavioral deception, It showed
Speaker 1: that in about thirteen percent of caching events on a
Speaker 1: specific college campus, squirrels dug a hole, pretended to drop
Speaker 1: their acorn into it, but kept the acorn in their
Speaker 1: mouths and ran away. And this may have been the
Speaker 1: result of just a lot of squirrels being around and
Speaker 1: they didn't want anyone to see where they were stashed
Speaker 1: in their booty. And I didn't even think to ask this,
Speaker 1: But in the paper the researchers mentioned that they could
Speaker 1: tell which squirrel was which by noting distinctive markings, or,
Speaker 1: according to the study quote, others were uniquely marked with
Speaker 1: small spots of various brands of men's hair die applied
Speaker 1: with a plastic dropper from a short distance without restraining
Speaker 1: the animals, so squirrel researgers. They're just out there. They're
Speaker 1: offering snacks, makeovers. And then in another study published in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen out of UC Berkeley titled Cashing for Where
Speaker 1: and What Evidence for a mnemonic strategy in a scatter hoarder,
Speaker 1: that one found that fox squirrels buried their food in
Speaker 1: different areas depending on what the food was. So if
Speaker 1: they got a mixed batch of almonds and hazelnuts and
Speaker 1: pecans and walnuts, they spatially chunked their caches by not species,
Speaker 1: but only when cashing food that was taken from one
Speaker 1: single location. And I'm reading this paper and I'm like,
Speaker 1: one of the authors is none other than doctor Michael Delgado,
Speaker 1: who was the expert in our legendary phelonology episode which
Speaker 1: I will link in the show notes. But the point is,
Speaker 1: these fuzzy little babies, they're organizing their dirt panchrees. And again,
Speaker 1: unlike me, they have apparently something akin to self control.
Speaker 3: You know, they only eat an acorn based on how
Speaker 3: much other food is available, because the plant's smart and
Speaker 3: puts tannins into the acorn, and as it gets closer
Speaker 3: to the cattle, lead and it puts more tannin, so
Speaker 3: it tastes more bitter, if that's possible. If you've ever
Speaker 3: eaten an acorn, it is incredibly bitter. But the constation
Speaker 3: of tannins increases as you get towards cuttle leed, and
Speaker 3: so they will just eat the top half of the
Speaker 3: acorn and drop it. And so it is nice that
Speaker 3: kind of back and forth evolutionary adaptation between oaks and squirrels.
Speaker 3: But they do that for lots of seeds and things
Speaker 3: like that, so we really do have squirrels to thank
Speaker 3: for most of our trees and mature hardwood forests.
Speaker 1: For more on eating acorns as humans, you can listen
Speaker 1: to the Indigenous Colonology episode, which I will link in
Speaker 1: the show notes, is a great one. I'm so curious
Speaker 1: what a squirrel's yearly planner looks like. When are they sleeping,
Speaker 1: when are they up, when are they getting it on?
Speaker 1: What's their year look like at a glance.
Speaker 3: So if I kind of take a traditional gray squirrel
Speaker 3: north a record squirrel, so in the winter time, they're
Speaker 3: mainly active in the middle of the day, and that's
Speaker 3: when they're relying on most of their storage foods and
Speaker 3: things like that typically once you know, you start to
Speaker 3: get warmed up. I will say February, although the climate
Speaker 3: change is getting earlier and earlier, and I've actually seen
Speaker 3: squirrels mate as early as December. Once kind of buds
Speaker 3: on trees start happening and things like that, you'll get
Speaker 3: the first round of reproduction, and squirrels will eat the
Speaker 3: inner camium off of tree branches and limbs, as well
Speaker 3: as other insects forbes, grasses, things.
Speaker 1: Like that innercmbium side note is part of a tree.
Speaker 1: It's specifically the sugary, really nutrient heavy layer of new growth.
Speaker 1: It's just below the bark. And we talk all about
Speaker 1: it in the Dendrology two parter with KCJ. Clap. But yes,
Speaker 1: some squirrels, thanks in part to climate change, are having steamy,
Speaker 1: romantic Hallmark holidays and canoodling in December, but usually they
Speaker 1: hold off until around Valentine's Day, when spring is spring,
Speaker 1: the days grow longer and the world grows ever hornier.
Speaker 3: Once young are out, usually it's springtime and food's abundant
Speaker 3: and available, and if the squirrels are in good enough
Speaker 3: body condition, they can reproduce again. So in a few
Speaker 3: weeks later, they'll kind of go through that whole process again.
Speaker 3: Most squirrels will not reproduce until they're about a year old,
Speaker 3: and so we can kind of classify typically sub adults
Speaker 3: are you know, juveniles you less than six months, and
Speaker 3: then subadults and then once they mate, we usually refer
Speaker 3: to them as adults. So they don't ever really most
Speaker 3: worlds are not through hibernators. They'll go into torpor for
Speaker 3: a day or two and it's really cold. We know
Speaker 3: that they like to nest share a lot.
Speaker 1: Really, I love that. I love a co op.
Speaker 3: So if it's really cold out, why not get up
Speaker 3: with a bunch of your friends and all cozy and
Speaker 3: together and you know, save some body heat.
Speaker 1: It's like huga, It's like that Caandinavian concept of just like.
Speaker 3: Just snuggle down. And we know that different species they
Speaker 3: do it slightly differently. So in gray squirrels, they tend
Speaker 3: to be matrilineal, and so females attend to have some
Speaker 3: kind of related this will tend to nest together and
Speaker 3: there could be like little bachelor groups as well, kind
Speaker 3: of help save some of that body heat and whatnot.
Speaker 3: And they'll move from nest to nest from night to night.
Speaker 3: It's not like one nest, one squirrel, So they are
Speaker 3: kind of communal. They'll move from, you know, group to group.
Speaker 1: So no squirrels aren't setting up bring cameras and calling
Speaker 1: the cops if someone naps on their couch. And if
Speaker 1: you need a visual. Their dreys are like twigs on
Speaker 1: the outside forra structure, and then they're stuffed with a
Speaker 1: leafy lining for installation, and then there's like a little
Speaker 1: inner mattress of moss and fur. So when you see
Speaker 1: a clot of leaves in a denuded tree in winter,
Speaker 1: just think there might be a snoozing squirrel burpen up
Speaker 1: your bagel in there. Just heaven. Well, okay, here's the
Speaker 1: thing I try to think about, like a squirrel home,
Speaker 1: and I always think about like a hollow and a
Speaker 1: log or something. Oh sure, but I live in California
Speaker 1: where we don't have the same sort of like bare
Speaker 1: winter branches that the East coast. We have a lot
Speaker 1: of palm trees, we got oaks. But I thought when
Speaker 1: I saw clots of nests in bare winter trees, I
Speaker 1: thought those were big bird nests. And someone to me
Speaker 1: know those are scirrel nests. Yeah, how do they make
Speaker 1: a nest in the top of a tree on skinny
Speaker 1: bridges out of leaves.
Speaker 3: I mean you just kind of wove it in together,
Speaker 3: and there you can usually tell it's a squirrel nests
Speaker 3: and a bird nest from the doming on the top. Okay,
Speaker 3: So like when you look at bird nests, most of
Speaker 3: them are kind of flat and then you know, curved
Speaker 3: on the bottom. But drays have a shelter top, so
Speaker 3: they are kind of curved on the top, especially when
Speaker 3: they're being used a lot. As they become less used,
Speaker 3: they will sink down a little bit. But yeah, those
Speaker 3: big clumpy leafy pieces are squirreled rays.
Speaker 1: So a nest shaped like a bowl and for birds
Speaker 1: and a dray for squirrels is more like a bubble
Speaker 1: or a dome. And no, you didn't ask. But the
Speaker 1: study of nests is called nidology, and not two hours
Speaker 1: from me is the world's best museum of nests. It's
Speaker 1: called the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology. It's in came
Speaker 1: Rio and it's home to more than eighteen thousand nest specimens.
Speaker 1: I want to go there so bad. But back to treeholes, and.
Speaker 3: They absolutely will use cavities too in trees, So like,
Speaker 3: a cavity is definitely prime location in real estate, particular
Speaker 3: if you're going to raise young, right, So like, if
Speaker 3: you want more protection from not only the outside sources,
Speaker 3: but predators as well, the cavities are the preferred location
Speaker 3: to raise young. But then you know there are issues
Speaker 3: with things like mites and fleas and things like that,
Speaker 3: and so squirrels do kind of move between nest sites.
Speaker 1: And let's say that you love a squirrel, you love
Speaker 1: all squirrels, and you would like to offer them a
Speaker 1: home in your yard. My dad and I shared a
Speaker 1: love of squirrels, and my dad built several squirrel condominiums
Speaker 1: and just hoped that someone would take up residents. I
Speaker 1: think you put a for rent sign on one. So
Speaker 1: is there a protocol? Is there a good way to
Speaker 1: attract a squirrel or say, squirrels, please, I would like
Speaker 1: to be your friends.
Speaker 3: I mean, certainly there are squirrel nest boxes that you
Speaker 3: could build and put out, and I've seen squirrels use
Speaker 3: nest boxes. But I think it kind of depends on
Speaker 3: where you are and what kind of scroll you want
Speaker 3: to attract, Like where you are ground squirrels probably have
Speaker 3: more ground nests than they do nests kind of up
Speaker 3: in the trees and things like that. But for those
Speaker 3: people who are in the Midwest and the East coast
Speaker 3: having oak trees, having edge of forests, gray squirrels really
Speaker 3: love forest edges much like white tailed deer. They really
Speaker 3: like those highly overlapping branches. They like that high number
Speaker 3: of tree counts. If you are a true Midwesterner and
Speaker 3: you like those big, chunky fox squirrels.
Speaker 1: So these are the ones with a grayish brown fur,
Speaker 1: but they have rusty reddish coloring on their faces and
Speaker 1: paws and tails. And when I leave peanuts out for
Speaker 1: the crows, the fox squirrels come by and say thank
Speaker 1: you very much, and they probably pretend to hide it
Speaker 1: if they think that I'm watching.
Speaker 3: Which are easily twenty percent, if not fifty percent larger
Speaker 3: than gray squirrels. They really like a much more open
Speaker 3: park like place, and so they don't want lots of
Speaker 3: overlapping trees. They really want to come down on the
Speaker 3: ground and do their eating and whatnot down on the ground.
Speaker 3: And so it kind of depends on where you live
Speaker 3: and what kind of squirrels you really want to attract.
Speaker 1: I have to ask as a speridiologist, have you ever
Speaker 1: gotten in a fistfight with burders?
Speaker 3: So usually I mean, I've been asked to come and
Speaker 3: speak to all kinds of auto bond societies and the
Speaker 3: bird or groups and whatnot, and usually one of the
Speaker 3: first questions they want to ask me is how do
Speaker 3: I keep squirrels out of my birds? And so I
Speaker 3: do address this. I usually start off I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: let's just you know, let's talk about the elephant in
Speaker 3: the room first.
Speaker 1: The first thing you do, you break a bottle on
Speaker 1: the side of a table. Listen.
Speaker 3: But I talk about how cool squirrels are to watch,
Speaker 3: you know, and we talk about a lot of their behaviors.
Speaker 3: When I go and talk in public about squirrels and
Speaker 3: what it is I do and why it's important, one
Speaker 3: of the first things I try to bring up is
Speaker 3: that it's really only here kind of in the US,
Speaker 3: that we think of squirrels as like pests and a
Speaker 3: species to be managed. A species is hunted. Eighty percent
Speaker 3: of the world's squirrel populations are threatened or endangered, and
Speaker 3: I didn't expect that right and for that reason alone,
Speaker 3: you know, we should take advantage of the fact that
Speaker 3: we have this opportunity and try and study them and
Speaker 3: learn more about them so that we can help answer
Speaker 3: questions for those places. And a lot of it comes
Speaker 3: down to right habitat availability.
Speaker 1: Eighty percent of squirrels are in decline. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened
Speaker 1: Species lists the Nemdapha flying squirrel, which is globally critically endangered.
Speaker 1: It's currently described by one known specimen that was collected
Speaker 1: in northeast India in nineteen eighty one. It's the sasquatch
Speaker 1: of squirrels. People think they see it sometimes, but they're
Speaker 1: usually confused and looking at a red giant flying squirrel.
Speaker 1: And then there are eleven more globally endangered squirrel species,
Speaker 1: like the Northern Idaho ground squirrel there's only about thousand left,
Speaker 1: and Nelson's antelope squirrel, which is native to this vast
Speaker 1: California central valley that's mostly become farmland. I looked at
Speaker 1: pictures for longer than I needed to that analyope squirrel. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's a cutie. So we've all been distracted though by
Speaker 1: the really successful and ubiquitous park squirrels, and yes, sometimes
Speaker 1: they're invasive, but meanwhile, other squirrels need our help. Well,
Speaker 1: they need their land back.
Speaker 3: Really, one of my favorite places to talk about squirrels
Speaker 3: is Japan, and really the only places you find squirrels
Speaker 3: anymore in Japan are the really old sacred shrines, because
Speaker 3: that's the only places left that have enough large old
Speaker 3: growth trees to support a population of squirrels.
Speaker 1: My gosh, just thinking about they're getting shrunken and shrunken.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that they were so threatened. I would
Speaker 1: always think they must be a species of least concern
Speaker 1: because they're so visible, and that's so fascinating. And I'm
Speaker 1: also wondering how many kinds of squirrels are there, and
Speaker 1: what's the difference between a ground squirrel, a tree squirrel,
Speaker 1: a flying squirrel. Where's chipmunks in this mix? Who are they?
Speaker 3: Etrepents are cousins. They're a cute cousin. We keep them
Speaker 3: in along with the groundhogs and okay, other marmots and
Speaker 3: things like that. I believe I had to look this
Speaker 3: up actually because I wanted to make sure I gave
Speaker 3: you the correct number, because I believe two weeks ago whatever,
Speaker 3: there was a publication about a new species of squirrel found.
Speaker 3: So I believe we're up to two hundred and eighty
Speaker 3: nine species of squirrels worldwide, fewer.
Speaker 1: Than I thought to be honest, right around three hundred
Speaker 1: species from ones that glide where zip lines wish they
Speaker 1: could go to ground dwelling tunnel cuties that I want
Speaker 1: to kiss, but I won't.
Speaker 3: It really comes down to where they're used to nesting.
Speaker 3: What do they prefer, You know, tree squirrels versus ground squirrels.
Speaker 3: Flag squirrels are definitely a different grouping a lot of
Speaker 3: physiological differences or anatomical at least differences there. But I
Speaker 3: mean tree squirrels, I think they're usually what's people picture
Speaker 3: when they think about a squirrel with the fluffy tail
Speaker 3: and everything. Ground squirrels, to me, are even more fascinating,
Speaker 3: if possible, because we know a little bit less about them.
Speaker 3: You know, they're underground doing all those things that we
Speaker 3: can't really see, and I really want to know what
Speaker 3: they're doing under there. But they are highly related. They
Speaker 3: have lots of the same kinds of timings and activities
Speaker 3: and behaviors for sure.
Speaker 1: So to recap the family securited eye is in the
Speaker 1: order Rodentia, and it involves squirrels and chipmunks and even
Speaker 1: marmots and prairie dogs. But there is a smaller genus
Speaker 1: of just squirrels. But in general, all of these squirrels
Speaker 1: we're talking about may live in trees or the ground
Speaker 1: or have wildly different diets and lives, living up to
Speaker 1: ten years in the wild or twenty in captivity. Imagine
Speaker 1: a squirrel that could legally get a driver's license, but
Speaker 1: not really because it's a squirrel. You've had the privilege
Speaker 1: of being in this field since a young age, and
Speaker 1: technology has changed so much. Have you seen things change
Speaker 1: in terms of knowledge now that we can put a
Speaker 1: fiber octave camera and record on a tiny SD card
Speaker 1: that costs a dollar? Like, how has your work changed
Speaker 1: now that you can spy on them?
Speaker 3: And so for my dissertation, I study the species of
Speaker 3: squirrels called the round tailed ground squirrel. It does not
Speaker 3: have a roundtail. I don't know why it's called that.
Speaker 1: You didn't name it.
Speaker 3: I didn't name it. It looks like a little baby prairie
Speaker 3: dog and has kind of a long, thin tail, and
Speaker 3: they live in the ground in the desert, and so
Speaker 3: we really wanted to know how social these squirrels were.
Speaker 3: They were once thought to be this great model outlier
Speaker 3: in that the literature and all of the models say
Speaker 3: they should be very solitary and alone. But the two
Speaker 3: papers that were published in the mid seventies said, no,
Speaker 3: they are highly social. They're like prairie dogs. They formed
Speaker 3: these family groups. You know. Oh my goodness, they've all
Speaker 3: these social behaviors. Da, da da. And so one of
Speaker 3: the first things we want to know is, Okay, so
Speaker 3: they're going down and there, you know, holes, entrances everywhere,
Speaker 3: How manys are really connected? What are they actually doing
Speaker 3: down there? Is there a lot of social behavior going
Speaker 3: on under the ground. And my field site was the
Speaker 3: Costa Grande Ruins National Monument in Culi, Arizona, where there
Speaker 3: are sixty nine recognized archaeological sites within one square mile.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's a beautiful, stunning place. But there
Speaker 3: was no way they were about to let me dig
Speaker 3: up and look at a ground squirrel burrow in any way,
Speaker 3: shape or form. And in my four years working there,
Speaker 3: they did bring in an expert that had ground penetrating radar,
Speaker 3: and they were using it to look at some of
Speaker 3: their archaelogical sites, and we were actually able to try
Speaker 3: and use it to kind of map out a burrow area,
Speaker 3: and we weren't incredibly successful, not as much as I
Speaker 3: wanted it to be. That was a long time ago,
Speaker 3: but now I think right in terms of fiber optic cameras, yep,
Speaker 3: you can just slide one of those right down and
Speaker 3: in and and sure enough really see the extent of
Speaker 3: the burrow, and possibly you could actually even leave the
Speaker 3: camera down there and see any kind of social behaviors
Speaker 3: and actions and things like that. I know I was
Speaker 3: there to study their mating system and things like that,
Speaker 3: and I never saw squirrels mate because they clearly were
Speaker 3: doing it underground.
Speaker 1: I guess they like their privacy.
Speaker 3: I suppose we saw evidence mating. We saw coppleatory plugs
Speaker 3: and things like that, but never an actual meeting copulatory plug.
Speaker 3: Copulatory plugs really, yes, So coplatory plugs are this prettius
Speaker 3: gelatin piece that males will deposit in the female reproductive
Speaker 3: tract to try and stop her from meeting with any
Speaker 3: other males.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the divs.
Speaker 3: And lots of squirrels have this. Lots of mammals have these,
Speaker 3: and in most of the time, in just about all
Speaker 3: the squirrels I've studied, females will just take them out
Speaker 3: and made again.
Speaker 1: Oh, this drama continues, literal cock blocking, actual cocklocking going
Speaker 1: on in squirrel romance. But before you go around flipping
Speaker 1: the bird to insecure male squirrels, please know that copulatory
Speaker 1: plugs are also common in some primate species bees, kangaroos, reptiles, rats, rodents, mice, scorpions, spiders.
Speaker 1: But back to squirrels. We're talking about squirrels, So ground
Speaker 1: squirrels might keep this jiz tamp on in for almost
Speaker 1: a day. But I found a study in the Journal
Speaker 1: of Mammalogy titled Removal of copulatory plugs by female tree Squirrels,
Speaker 1: which described these in fox squirrels and Eastern gray squirrels
Speaker 1: as quote opaque white with waxy to rubbery consistency. And
Speaker 1: if you're eating right now, I'm sorry, And also that's
Speaker 1: not my fault. But now that the scene is set,
Speaker 1: both visually and from a tactile perspective, it continues. Although
Speaker 1: copulatory plugs are hypothesized to prevent the successful copulation of
Speaker 1: subsequent males, female tree squirrels often remove the plug within
Speaker 1: thirty seconds of copulating and either discard or consume it.
Speaker 1: Y eat it or eat it. Babies eat it or
Speaker 1: eat it. He's not the boss e, you can. They
Speaker 1: have litters with different paternal es. Say how many uses
Speaker 1: do they have? They have one big.
Speaker 3: It's kind of this weird corkscrew kind of shape, futerous
Speaker 3: and so round tailed ground squirrels. I had a litter
Speaker 3: of thirteen squirrels for one of my females. I would
Speaker 3: say the average was usually three to four, and in
Speaker 3: eastern gray squirrels the average litter size is between two
Speaker 3: and three. But absolutely those squirrels can be sired from
Speaker 3: different males.
Speaker 1: Okay, so usually just a few baby squirrels or kits.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're called kittens unless you have thirteen at a time.
Speaker 1: And perhaps that squirrel mom is related to my Catholic
Speaker 1: grandmother who had eleven children by the age of thirty
Speaker 1: and stark white hair. But let's get off the topic
Speaker 1: of my deceased and beloved Catholic grandmother and talk about
Speaker 1: group sex in your backyard.
Speaker 3: We know that females will mate multiply. Female gray sqirls
Speaker 3: will mate multiply. They're only an estress for eight hours,
Speaker 3: so they're only receptive to mating for eight hours. And
Speaker 3: in that eight hours, I believe the published number is
Speaker 3: twenty four males. She will meete with up to twenty
Speaker 3: four males in that eight hours.
Speaker 1: Oh get it?
Speaker 3: Girl?
Speaker 1: Is that eight hours a day or a year.
Speaker 3: A mating season maybe twice a year?
Speaker 1: Wow? So she goes fast and hard yep. And then
Speaker 1: is there any paternal care or are they just like
Speaker 1: I don't even remember, there's so much it was an orgy.
Speaker 3: Nope, Nope, just there and gone.
Speaker 1: See it never And if they can reproduce like more
Speaker 1: than once a year, do they tend to give a
Speaker 1: lot of resources to their young or is it kind
Speaker 1: of like we just kind of make as many as
Speaker 1: we can and then you know, we wish.
Speaker 3: Them well, I mean, and we know that lactation is
Speaker 3: incredibly expensive. And they tend to stay in the nest
Speaker 3: for probably six eight weeks with mom after that, and
Speaker 3: then you can actually watch them. It's one of my
Speaker 3: favorite behaviors to watches. You'll watch the juveniles come out
Speaker 3: of the nest and kind of play, and then you
Speaker 3: will see the female you'll see mom come out and
Speaker 3: basically just yell at them and chase them off, and
Speaker 3: then they'll come back and at the end of the
Speaker 3: night everything. But it's kind of this, you know, vitualized,
Speaker 3: like you kids, you start, you quit this, you don't
Speaker 3: go get out.
Speaker 1: What about rat kings in squirrel nests. I've seen SAPs
Speaker 1: that canclude their tail together. It makes me want to
Speaker 1: throw myself in the ocean. I can't. It's the saddest, cutest,
Speaker 1: most terrible thing I've ever seen. Yeah, okay, I explain
Speaker 1: that partly, but sometimes squirrel tales will get glued together
Speaker 1: by tree sap. And we discussed this notion of a
Speaker 1: rat king in the Urban Rodentology episode with doctor Bobby Corrigan.
Speaker 1: But it's just awful. Please call a wild life rehabber
Speaker 1: and unless you see it in real life, don't look
Speaker 1: it up. Don't look it up. Don't look it up.
Speaker 3: I get people all the time who call me with
Speaker 3: baby squirrels who have fallen out of nessa and things
Speaker 3: like that, and that is that is not my jam
Speaker 3: in any way, shup perform. I have several well lifereehabbers
Speaker 3: on call, and so I send them to places much
Speaker 3: like that. But I will also get calls about squirrels
Speaker 3: who have mains who've lost fur because I have a
Speaker 3: flea infection or something, and you know, I just I
Speaker 3: tell people like they know what they're doing, they know
Speaker 3: how to treat it, let them go and they'll be Okay.
Speaker 1: What about redenticide? Is that a threat since some of
Speaker 1: them are generalists.
Speaker 3: Absolutely? Yeah. I've definitely worked in places that it's one
Speaker 3: of the main ways that they will control squirrels, particularly
Speaker 3: ground squirrels, when they don't want them in a place. Mm.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like gophers are like everyone has
Speaker 1: a gopher. The culturally it's people are quite unfair to
Speaker 1: go first, right, But two ground squirrels cause that kind
Speaker 1: of damage to like lawns and sports fields and stuff
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: They can, Yeah, I certainly can.
Speaker 1: And now a once in a lifetime chance to ask
Speaker 1: a personal burning question. I cannot believe that I have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to ask a ground squirrel expert about some
Speaker 1: hazing that I got from a squirrel. Okay, can I
Speaker 1: play you a noise and can you tell me what's
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: Okay, I was having a bad day last week, you
Speaker 1: know me I get personal here. I was bummed, and
Speaker 1: my husband's like, let's go to the park and let's
Speaker 1: walk around. And I was like, that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: We did, and then this squirrel started yelling at us.
Speaker 7: This might hurt my heart what you have to tell me,
Speaker 7: But that's okay.
Speaker 1: He little guys, poor girl is hanging out just a bush,
Speaker 1: maybe five feet away from us.
Speaker 3: Call you a predator, Well, California ground squirrel probably is
Speaker 3: young down in the burrow, and so it's just kind
Speaker 3: of that warning.
Speaker 1: We're such dipshits here. We were standing there longer because
Speaker 1: we're like, does she need help? Like is she the
Speaker 1: lassie of a squirrel family? Like we were like what
Speaker 1: do we do? And then the whole time she was
Speaker 1: like away, I hate you, But I mean there's a
Speaker 1: reason why dog speaky toys sound like that right right exactly.
Speaker 3: And and really if you did not know right where
Speaker 3: she was, it would have been hard for you to
Speaker 3: locate it. It's a single tonal whistle. It's really hard
Speaker 3: from a million predator to echo locate that and figure
Speaker 3: out exactly where that is.
Speaker 1: Oh so she probably had some cute little bit is
Speaker 1: that we're underground not far from us. Yes, And if
Speaker 1: you've ever heard chirping or barking coming from a squirrel,
Speaker 1: there are correct terms. I just learned that scour idiologists
Speaker 1: have words for those like barking, like clicking Donald duck calls.
Speaker 1: They're called cooks, quaws, and moans. And according to the
Speaker 1: paper Joint Tail and Vocal Alarm Signals of Gray Squirrels
Speaker 1: in the Journal Behavior, researchers from the University of Miami
Speaker 1: flew gliders painted like hawks, and they drove robot cats
Speaker 1: around campus towards squirrels, and they found that only sweeping
Speaker 1: back and forth tail movements known as flags and vocalizations
Speaker 1: called mons are associated with a certain predator type. Mones
Speaker 1: happened more often when there were aerial predators present, and
Speaker 1: the flagging with the tail happened when the cat approached.
Speaker 1: But they also found quaws more strongly associated with aerial
Speaker 1: threats too. They might also clack their teeth at other squirrels.
Speaker 1: But my point is that if a squirrel is chirping
Speaker 1: at you and twitching its tail, it wants you to
Speaker 1: please go to hell. It hates you. I've never seen
Speaker 1: so many ground squirrels in my life.
Speaker 3: I was like, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean they were everywhere, and this was a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, so this was like late spring. Would
Speaker 1: there be a reason why they were out so much
Speaker 1: or do you think it's just a really good place
Speaker 1: for ground squirrels because the oak trees.
Speaker 3: Now I think it's probably just a great place for ground.
Speaker 1: Squirrel it's just a party. Oh that's exciting.
Speaker 3: I know. When I started to study Aroundteil ground squrels,
Speaker 3: I was trying to find a population that would be
Speaker 3: good to study, and I was having a hard time
Speaker 3: kind of really locating a good dense population. And I
Speaker 3: actually went to some snake researchers and I was like,
Speaker 3: could you look at your records and tell me, like
Speaker 3: where you have good populations? And they came through. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is you know, perfect confluence.
Speaker 1: Oh, no, one tell the snakes because like they're gonna
Speaker 1: blow up this restaurant.
Speaker 3: But the squirrels, you know, they have a relationship with
Speaker 3: the snakes as well, Like it's not like every time
Speaker 3: the snakes heeds the squirrel, the snake gets the squirrel.
Speaker 3: The squirrels fight the snakes. Right off, I saw a
Speaker 3: pregnant female totally chase off a rattlesnake. You know, you
Speaker 3: could tell from the roundness of her belly that she
Speaker 3: was pregnant and kind of the sneak was just coming through,
Speaker 3: and she started on high alert and let everybody know.
Speaker 3: And when it's a ground predator like a snake, they
Speaker 3: will also thump their back deep let anybody underground also
Speaker 3: know that there's a snake. And she just completely chased
Speaker 3: them away, and it did not bite her. Did you
Speaker 3: really try to bite her? And she just kept pouncing
Speaker 3: on it and forcing it away.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I'm learning squirrels are cute and beautiful and
Speaker 1: they also.
Speaker 3: Will talk shit. Oh they're badasses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they'll cut you.
Speaker 3: We know that they have some resistance to some venoms
Speaker 3: and possibly even some rattlesnake venoms. We don't know quite
Speaker 3: how much, but certainly they have some resistance.
Speaker 1: In all of your work, have you ever been bit
Speaker 1: by a squirrel?
Speaker 3: I have never been bit by a squirrel.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm knocking on so much wood.
Speaker 3: I have come close once and gotten a blood blister
Speaker 3: from kind of getting squished. But when we handle them,
Speaker 3: I use a cloth handling that's in the shape of
Speaker 3: a triangle. I actually usually describe it as a giant
Speaker 3: pastry bag. So if you imagine a giant pastry bag
Speaker 3: made out of like a dena material. We wrap the
Speaker 3: wide end around the trap opening because it's really easy
Speaker 3: to catch a squirrel, peanut, butter, sunflower seeds, things like that.
Speaker 3: But then you have a very angry squirrel in a
Speaker 3: metal cage. And so if you wrap the big end
Speaker 3: around the trap and open the door, the squirrel does
Speaker 3: not want to be in the trap and will run
Speaker 3: out and basically run into the narrow end and basically
Speaker 3: just wedge themselves into this pastry bag. And it's like
Speaker 3: being the same like being swallowed physiologically. So they're in there,
Speaker 3: they're all kind of nice and tight, their eyes are closed,
Speaker 3: usually their nose kind of sticks out the very end,
Speaker 3: and they're very calm, and they can open their mouth
Speaker 3: to bite me, and therefore I am very calm. They're
Speaker 3: not trying to run away, they're not trying to move
Speaker 3: or anything. They're just basically chill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, I look this up and I found
Speaker 1: fieldwork photos of doctor Monroe on a campus lawn in
Speaker 1: her lap a pillowcase sized dark blue canvas, Sack pointed
Speaker 1: one end. She is wearing a school bus yellow T
Speaker 1: shirt and it matches the shirts of her student assistance.
Speaker 1: And there's a small logo over the breast and official
Speaker 1: seal of some sort. But on the back of the shirts,
Speaker 1: in bold lettering, it reads, it's the squirrels. They're watching me.
Speaker 1: What kind of alien abduction of science do you have
Speaker 1: to do in order to make sure that their population
Speaker 1: is healthy?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Do you have to weigh them? Do you have to
Speaker 1: take their temperatures? You have to check them for fleas?
Speaker 1: Like what kinds of things are are scientists looking for?
Speaker 3: Right? So there's usually this is everything that we're doing.
Speaker 3: So we catch them, we weigh, then we take a
Speaker 3: whole set of morphological measurements. Right. We want to know
Speaker 3: not just how much they weigh, but you know how
Speaker 3: much of that is fat versus bone and things like that.
Speaker 3: Certainly I look for flea infections. I usually feel around,
Speaker 3: see if they have any broken bones, check their tails.
Speaker 3: I usually will check to see if they're pregnant or
Speaker 3: if they're lactating or things like that. Check to see
Speaker 3: if the males are actually active in reproduction, and then
Speaker 3: we mark them so we put unique colored ear tags,
Speaker 3: usually numbered and colored ear tags ears. And when I
Speaker 3: do that, I take a DNA sample. And then sometimes
Speaker 3: if we're going to see how far they're going to
Speaker 3: go and things like that, we can put a radio
Speaker 3: collar on them, which is a necklace weighs less than
Speaker 3: five grams, and then we can kind of get an
Speaker 3: idea about, you know, the number of male's, number of females,
Speaker 3: number of juveniles and things like that.
Speaker 1: If there is one that's injured or has an infestation.
Speaker 1: Can because you're a researcher and not a wildlife we
Speaker 1: have or where's the line between getting it help and
Speaker 1: letting nature do its thing? How do you decide?
Speaker 3: My general default is to let nature tickets. Course, I
Speaker 3: usually think if it's something that I personally have caused.
Speaker 3: I definitely have had a squirrel to kind of get
Speaker 3: a piece of skin, you know, on their nose or whatnot,
Speaker 3: scratched from the mal trap or whatever. I will tend
Speaker 3: to swipe a little piece of you know, spooring on
Speaker 3: that nose before I let them go. But generally speaking,
Speaker 3: I let nature tickets. Course, I have not ever come
Speaker 3: across a squirrel that I've needed to do something significant
Speaker 3: about and I'd like to keep it that way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like they just probably got wind
Speaker 1: of you and just respect you a lot. I think probably.
Speaker 3: Well, it makes it so much easier if they would
Speaker 3: just kind of stand up and be like, Hi, I
Speaker 3: weigh two and fifty grams. Here's my measurements. I'm not fragment.
Speaker 1: I'm a real knocked up right now. A great time
Speaker 1: a couple months ago. What about I have a million
Speaker 1: questions for you. I cannot tell you how exciting this is.
Speaker 1: If you could stand on a cosmic soapbox and have
Speaker 1: the biggest bullhorn ever to bust some flim flam about squirrels.
Speaker 1: What is the biggest misconception that you're like people.
Speaker 3: It's not like that, I would say. People often ask
Speaker 3: me about rabies, like I'm afraid to catch rabies and
Speaker 3: things like that. And there's never been a case of
Speaker 3: a rodent carrying rabies, and so there's never been any
Speaker 3: kind of report of squirrels carrying rabies. And so that's
Speaker 3: why I don't mind working with undergraduate students. With them,
Speaker 3: I'm always present when undergraduates trapped, But really the only
Speaker 3: thing they carry is tetanus, and so as long as
Speaker 3: students have had their tennis shot, I'm generally not so worried.
Speaker 1: You were an Arizona, and I feel like in my
Speaker 1: brain someone says, squirrels Arizona bubonic plague plague? Yes, did
Speaker 1: I make that up?
Speaker 3: So bubonic plague is definitely a thing to be worried about.
Speaker 3: When I work at the Kassa Grunde Ruins since the
Speaker 3: National Monument, they would have their fleas tested all to
Speaker 3: see if there was any chance of plague. Unfortunately, all
Speaker 3: four years that I was there, there was no chance
Speaker 3: of plagu.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, according to the CDC, small rodents like squirrels
Speaker 1: and hamsters and kuinea pigs and chipmunks and rats and
Speaker 1: durbils and mice and bunnies are almost never found to
Speaker 1: be infact with the rabies and they have not been
Speaker 1: known to transmit rabies to humans. However, groundhogs they got
Speaker 1: a little more chunk of their trunks, they have bigger bodies,
Speaker 1: so they do get reported as rabbit from time to time. Now,
Speaker 1: the bubonic plague has been transmitted by fleas on ground
Speaker 1: squirrels and wood rats and prairie dogs, but it's very rare,
Speaker 1: and please, I beg you to channel your anxiety towards
Speaker 1: really anything else or as a Slate headline from the
Speaker 1: summer of twenty twenty, red, you do not need to
Speaker 1: worry about the bubonic plague squirrel in Colorado and just
Speaker 1: reading that, like, wh what a time, what an eventful
Speaker 1: few years it's been on planet Earth? Just can we
Speaker 1: catch a break? But if you do feel very sick
Speaker 1: and have giant lymph node area nodules, just please see
Speaker 1: a doctor if you're in trouble. Speaking of being in
Speaker 1: trouble and confronting that sweet sweet ache of mortality.
Speaker 3: The most endangered mammal in North America is a squirrel species.
Speaker 3: The Mount Gram red squirrel is the most endangered mammal
Speaker 3: in North America. Now it only resides on one mountaintop.
Speaker 3: When I was there studying them, their numbers were probably
Speaker 3: in the two to three hundreds. I can say that
Speaker 3: a few years ago they were down below one hundred.
Speaker 3: They've kind of come back a little bit.
Speaker 1: But is that all habitat loss or climate?
Speaker 3: It is a The Mount Graham is a whole ecosystem
Speaker 3: of a mess. So yes, there's a lot of habitat loss.
Speaker 3: It was slated to have two dozen telescopes built on
Speaker 3: the top of the mountain, and they were denied and
Speaker 3: some were built, and then there was an insect infested
Speaker 3: it's sacred in American land. There was a several large
Speaker 3: forest fires. There's an endangered raptor that comes through that
Speaker 3: eats them. There's an introduced squirrel. I mean, like every
Speaker 3: plight that has affected an endangered species is there on
Speaker 3: the one mountain top.
Speaker 1: It sounds like they were cursed by a witch. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: So now it might be an okay time to tell
Speaker 1: you that we have episodes on fire ecology, indigenous fire ecology,
Speaker 1: fulminology about lightning strikes that cause forest fires, and a
Speaker 1: recent field trip episode about raptors. All link them in
Speaker 1: the show notes. But yes, Mount Graham is a ten
Speaker 1: thousand foot tall peak in the southeastern corner of Arizona.
Speaker 1: So this Mount Graham red squirrel. It's about eight inches long.
Speaker 1: It has dark gray brown fur and a white belly.
Speaker 1: I want a pet. And it enjoys a diet of
Speaker 1: seeds and pine cones and air dried mushrooms. Now, this
Speaker 1: crater is endangered, but at one point in the era
Speaker 1: of Camaros and Aquinet there was no home.
Speaker 3: They actually thought that they were extinct into the mid
Speaker 3: eighties and a hunter brought one in and wild effeers
Speaker 3: were like, oh, that is not the aport squirrel that
Speaker 3: you should be hunting. That is probably the endangered montgomer
Speaker 3: And squirrel.
Speaker 1: That must have been a huge day in the scarritiology community. Yes,
Speaker 1: they must have been popping bottles. I know that they
Speaker 1: couldn't text each other, but they must have been paying
Speaker 1: long distances to be like, yes, yeah, I like Barbie,
Speaker 1: I got some news that is so exciting. What about
Speaker 1: tiny squirrels on the big screen? Is there a favorite
Speaker 1: squirrel in film or TV that you're like, they got
Speaker 1: that right? Or I like that one?
Speaker 3: You know, I do love me a scrat. I keep
Speaker 3: waiting for squirrel Girl to come out. I have a
Speaker 3: number of squirrel Girl paraphernalias in my office and things
Speaker 3: like that. She was supposed to be in so many
Speaker 3: Marvel superheroes. I have so many figurines of her. I
Speaker 3: cannot wait for her. Doreen to come out and show
Speaker 3: everybody what a badassh you really is, because you know,
Speaker 3: supposedly is kick Deadpool's ass. You know, thunis ass, you
Speaker 3: know Wolverine like she is just as bad ass in
Speaker 3: the Marvel world. And yet I'm waiting.
Speaker 1: I'm waiting just a short ps. So La is very small.
Speaker 1: And I happen to know Milana Wintrope, the actress and
Speaker 1: the director who was slated to play squirrel Girl for Marvel,
Speaker 1: and I texted her. I told her that she has
Speaker 1: a friend in the squirrel world, and she said that
Speaker 1: that was the most giantest honor I know, and she'd
Speaker 1: pass it along to Ryan North, the comic book creator,
Speaker 1: who is the real hero, she says, behind squirrel Girl.
Speaker 1: And also there's a six episode scripted podcast series starring
Speaker 1: Milana called Marvel's squirrel Girl The Unbeatable Radio Show. But
Speaker 1: if you want that movie or TV series, just feel
Speaker 1: free to get those petitions going, folks, oli JITs. I
Speaker 1: have faith in you. Can I ask you listener questions? Sure,
Speaker 1: I told them you were coming on. I told them
Speaker 1: that this was the best day of my life. But
Speaker 1: before your questions, each week we donate to a cause
Speaker 1: of the ologist choosing, and this week we're going to
Speaker 1: split it between two for Karen. One is letters to
Speaker 1: a pre Scientist, which connects students to STEM professionals through
Speaker 1: snail mail to broaden students awareness of what STEM professionals
Speaker 1: look like and do it work. And the other is
Speaker 1: to squirrel Mapper, a community science project that helps researchers
Speaker 1: identify populations of squirrels and their morphs. Why they ask
Speaker 1: because together we can crack this nut. So find out
Speaker 1: more at prescientist dot org and squirrelmapper dot org. And
Speaker 1: those donations were made possible by sponsors of the show.
Speaker 1: Get value.
Speaker 2: You can't argue with Ottesco with their amazing clubcard prices.
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Speaker 1: Okay your questions. Let's start with one about goth squirrels,
Speaker 1: shall we asked by Cooper Moore, Kyler Murphy and Clay Mormon,
Speaker 1: who says I've seen a ton of melanistic gray squirrels
Speaker 1: in Ohio and Toronto, but none in New England. What's
Speaker 1: the deal? And Jess Trezon has seen them in central
Speaker 1: Illinois but almost none in and around Chicago. Huh populations
Speaker 1: pockets of squirrels like the all black squirrels in DC.
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, the Canadian black squirrels. How did they get
Speaker 1: to DC? And also, LA not supposed to have a
Speaker 1: lot of fox squirrels and yet here we are, They're everywhere.
Speaker 1: How did these Canadian squirrels get to DC?
Speaker 3: People love squirrels when they move them everywhere, that's the
Speaker 3: easy answer, right So here I'm here in Ohio. And
Speaker 3: the very classic ancer is that a man went on
Speaker 3: vacation in Canada, found these black squirrels, fell in love
Speaker 3: with them, caught ten of them, brought them back and
Speaker 3: released them.
Speaker 1: So, like anything having to do with love and smuggling,
Speaker 1: it's complicated. But the Smithsonian in Washington says that it
Speaker 1: has the receipts dating back to the year nineteen hundred
Speaker 1: when this superintendent of the National Zoo, one Frank Baker,
Speaker 1: was thirsty for the squirrels that Canada had and got
Speaker 1: about eight or ten of them sent and they were
Speaker 1: the talk of the town at this zoo in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: And six years a few litters later, they were like, listen,
Speaker 1: the gray squirrels here in Washington are getting hunted too much.
Speaker 1: What say you to a little city upgrade by releasing
Speaker 1: a few of these melanistic ones just on the zoo grounds.
Speaker 1: Of course, that didn't go as planned. Nature finds away,
Speaker 1: and so the squirrels that you see in some parts
Speaker 1: of the Northeast sporting this lustrous jet black fur are
Speaker 1: technically gray squirrels.
Speaker 3: It's a single gene. If you're missing one little part
Speaker 3: of your gray gene, right, you become this dark black squirrel.
Speaker 3: If you get both copies are black. If you get
Speaker 3: one copy, you're just kind of more grayish and you're
Speaker 3: missing your white belly and things like that. But certainly,
Speaker 3: I mean, we have black squirrels here in Ohio. They
Speaker 3: are coming kind of moving down from Canada and dispersing
Speaker 3: down and once the trait gets into the population. It
Speaker 3: just spreads. It's a dominant trait, so if you get
Speaker 3: one gene, it's going to be expressed, so we see
Speaker 3: them more and more and more. I'm only to bet
Speaker 3: that there is probably some thermal regulation advantage, but no
Speaker 3: one really knows why Listen.
Speaker 1: I know not everyone has a thermophysiologist that they can
Speaker 1: text on a whim, but I hit up my friend
Speaker 1: doctor Shane Campbell Stateton of the Thermo Physiology episodes, and
Speaker 1: he said, I would imagine being able to absorb more
Speaker 1: heat from the environment during a time when heat is
Speaker 1: at a metabolic premium like winter, would have clear benefits. However,
Speaker 1: there's also a trend called glue Boers rule that says
Speaker 1: mammals should get lighter toward the polls. Ultimately, it probably
Speaker 1: comes down to which aspect of the environment is the
Speaker 1: biggest challenge, he said, And sure enough, yep. Research has
Speaker 1: shown that black mammals have eighteen percent lower heat loss
Speaker 1: in temperatures below negative ten degrees celsius. And also when
Speaker 1: it comes to these squirrels, that darker morphs may survive
Speaker 1: the city better because researchers say they're more visible to
Speaker 1: drivers who are looking to avoid squirrel murder on their
Speaker 1: way to the post office. But remember this morph didn't
Speaker 1: evolve to live in this part of the continent. And
Speaker 1: now also is a great time to plug doctor Shane
Speaker 1: Campbell Staaten's new and really stunning PBS show called Human Footprint,
Speaker 1: which just premiered a few weeks ago. I've known he
Speaker 1: was shooting it for years. I'm so excited for you
Speaker 1: to see it, so I'll link it on my website.
Speaker 1: It's called Human Footprint on PBS. You can look it up.
Speaker 1: But yes, any melanistic squirrels in DC are likely descendants
Speaker 1: of Frank Baker's quest to populate the nation's capital with
Speaker 1: pretty little squirrel baby.
Speaker 3: People always say that they're smaller, or they're meaner, or
Speaker 3: they're more aggressive, and I've not seen any of that
Speaker 3: in my studies. They weigh the same as gray squirrels.
Speaker 3: I've definitely seen litters that are mixed black and gray.
Speaker 1: Maybe different dance.
Speaker 3: Possibly different dance, I mean, but yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 3: just you know, Burnett's versus Blonds.
Speaker 1: Al Ham is a first tip question asker who appears
Speaker 1: to know a little bit about this and asked, are
Speaker 1: the black squirrels introduced to several areas of the USA,
Speaker 1: like Kent, Ohio, Holland Michigan, some areas of Arizona, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Are they considered feral or because they were maybe escaped
Speaker 1: pets or does that even matter at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, most of.
Speaker 3: Them, it doesn't matter. So gray squirrels, whether they're black
Speaker 3: or gray, have then been introduced all over the world,
Speaker 3: and they typically will cause trouble wherever they go. They
Speaker 3: are able to outcompete most of the other squirrel species,
Speaker 3: and we don't have a really easy answer as to
Speaker 3: why why that might be. But people just love squirrels,
Speaker 3: and so they take them and introduce them places where
Speaker 3: they really shouldn't be, and places like California where there
Speaker 3: is say, western gray squirrel, the western gray squirrels are
Speaker 3: getting outcompete by the Eastern gray squirrels. Same kind of
Speaker 3: thing in Arizona, same kind of thing in England. In
Speaker 3: Italy the reports of Eastern gray squirrels in the hazel
Speaker 3: nut farms. That's a problem economically. And then if they
Speaker 3: are somehow able to get over the Alps, they'll be
Speaker 3: into Asia and they easily spread all over Asia. And
Speaker 3: so there are a lot of management concerns with people
Speaker 3: releasing pet gray squirrels, and there are lots of conservation
Speaker 3: organizations looking to rain them back and control them and
Speaker 3: manage those populations.
Speaker 1: I had never even thought about it. If you've got
Speaker 1: an almond or a walnut orchard, do they just not
Speaker 1: like the tannic whole of those nuts?
Speaker 3: Right? It's so much better. Why would you bother eating
Speaker 3: an acorn when you can eat an almond or walnut
Speaker 3: or a peanut.
Speaker 1: So then I wonder what almond farmers and stuff do
Speaker 1: about that. I definitely see a lot of owl boxes
Speaker 1: near orchards, which you know, Okay, So I did look
Speaker 1: this up and catacomb of web page led me to
Speaker 1: something called uc Integrated Pest Management Program, which said deep plowing,
Speaker 1: also known as ripping along perimeters of fields will destroy
Speaker 1: burrow entrances and will help slow the rate of ground
Speaker 1: squirrel invasion in orchards. They also say burrow fumigants, toxic baits,
Speaker 1: and traps currently are the most effective control methods. And
Speaker 1: I feel like I say this all the time, but
Speaker 1: on the topic of human footprints, even the most well
Speaker 1: meaning diet still affects the ecology. It just does. I
Speaker 1: have no answers for you, just an urge to have perspective. Okay,
Speaker 1: moving on. I thought this was an absolutely unhinged question,
Speaker 1: and I'll ask it Kate Webb for some question. Asker says,
Speaker 1: there are species of flying squirrel in Michigan that fluores.
Speaker 3: Yes, we didn't know that they'll just a few years ago,
Speaker 3: no one had any idea and they accidentally turned on
Speaker 3: a black bl and it was like, oh crap, this
Speaker 3: is like right pink, right purple. It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: For more on this, you can see the paper using
Speaker 1: mass spectrometry to investigate fluorescent compounds in squirrel fur, which
Speaker 1: will treat you to the visual of this fuzzy, furry
Speaker 1: flying squirrel cradled in the palm of a researcher exposed
Speaker 1: to black light, and the squirrel's belly looks like a
Speaker 1: neon pink hallucination. Why is this happening? Well, like many things,
Speaker 1: no one knows shit. But some scurritiologists hypothesize that fluorescent
Speaker 1: coloration on their bellies may help camouflage flying squirrels against
Speaker 1: predators that are UV detecting, like owls. Because there are
Speaker 1: plants and lichen that also glow similarly, also might be
Speaker 1: for mating, might be a communication tool as a human.
Speaker 1: You would need a canon event level breakup and a
Speaker 1: quart of menic panic to achieve it. It's amazing twelve
Speaker 1: out of ten. Oh, that is like the Bob Marley
Speaker 1: poster that no one knew that they needed. Is there
Speaker 1: any reason why these squirrels would fluoresse? Kate Web wants
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 3: I mean they can see each other, other things can
Speaker 3: see them or not see them. Right, The amount of
Speaker 3: UV radiation that happens at night is very different than
Speaker 3: the amount that happens during the day. The types of
Speaker 3: you know, eye receptors and things like that.
Speaker 1: Do you think that they are better equipped to see that?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: With night vision? Yeah, which brings me to Madison Hunter's
Speaker 1: question says, not sure if you will cover flying squirrels.
Speaker 1: But I had one as a pet when I was
Speaker 1: in middle school and I noticed it was quite active
Speaker 1: at night. And Madison says, I would usually play music
Speaker 1: to sleep, and I often caught it doing what appeared
Speaker 1: to be dancing to the music. Do you think it's
Speaker 1: possible that squirrels get down?
Speaker 3: Let's boogie. I've never personally seen it. I don't want
Speaker 3: to say that it couldn't possibly, but I've never seen it.
Speaker 1: And what about the nocturnal versus diurnal like is it
Speaker 1: totally depend on the environment and the squirrel So.
Speaker 3: Really there aren't very many tree squirrels or ground squirrels
Speaker 3: that are not turtle. Usually it's the flying squirrels that
Speaker 3: are nocturnal.
Speaker 1: Oh and those again in Leeland, like those words, are
Speaker 1: flying squirrels closely related to walking squirrels or is that
Speaker 1: name just a misnomer?
Speaker 3: It's just a total misnomber. They don't fly at all.
Speaker 3: They glide right, there's nothing. They have no capacity to
Speaker 3: actually gain lift by you know, flapping or anything. They
Speaker 3: literally are just taking advantage of the ability to get
Speaker 3: from point A to point B much faster by gliding
Speaker 3: than by going down the tree, running across the ground
Speaker 3: and going back up the tree.
Speaker 1: But thems is squirrels, Yes, okay, absolutely so, everyone such
Speaker 1: as Donnia Khan, Arena Disaso, Aaron and Anderson, Britney Shafis,
Speaker 1: Francis Hirst, Brubaker, Kimberly, Bryant, Hudson Ansley, and the squirrel
Speaker 1: queen who asked about flying squirrels. The expert word is,
Speaker 1: so the flying is a no, The squirrel is a yes, yes, yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I've never seen one in person, but so.
Speaker 3: You need to go to Japan. So one of the
Speaker 3: questions I almost always get asked is what's your favorite squirrel? Oh,
Speaker 3: they're like children. You cannot pick a favorite child. But
Speaker 3: if you're going to press me, I will typically tell
Speaker 3: you it's the two Japanese squirrels. So the Japanese pigmy
Speaker 3: dwarf squirrel, which is teeny tiny little puffball, and Musasabe.
Speaker 3: Musasabi is an eight pound flying squirrel.
Speaker 1: What that's a baby. That's the size of an infant human.
Speaker 3: It's like the size of your housecat. Right, And so
Speaker 3: when it glides over your head, it's like somebody has
Speaker 3: hurled a trash can lid over your head. Speeds up
Speaker 3: to thirty five miles an hour when they hit the tree.
Speaker 3: When they you know land, you can just hear this slam,
Speaker 3: and then you hear them kind of climbing up and
Speaker 3: then they'll take off again. So I want you to
Speaker 3: picture a group of researchers in a very sacred Japanese
Speaker 3: shrine at two three o'clock in the morning with our
Speaker 3: red head lamps on, running from tree to tree as
Speaker 3: we try and follow these musasabe. I was for sure
Speaker 3: like they're going to be headlines, you know, American squirrel
Speaker 3: research arrested.
Speaker 1: Well, someone asked if there was a black squirrel lab
Speaker 1: breach conspiracy, AZM. Have you heard that they escaped from
Speaker 1: a lab? Is there a conspiracy about this?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: And generally speaking, you know, picking squirrels inside is not
Speaker 3: always like good thing. They really do chew everything. I
Speaker 3: would not want a lab full of squirrels in any way,
Speaker 3: shape or form. Squirrels stay outside, is what I always
Speaker 3: tease my students.
Speaker 1: If you had a pet male squirrel, would it be
Speaker 1: so horny all the time, because that must be why
Speaker 1: they have giant falls?
Speaker 3: Right right, There were definitely three points when it is
Speaker 3: super aggressive and wanting to get outside and things like that. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: people who keep squirrels as pets generally don't keep them
Speaker 3: for very long because once they get to that point,
Speaker 3: they are just aggressive and bitey and one out.
Speaker 1: Well, you've been in academia a long time and you've
Speaker 1: been researching squirrels for a long time. And we have
Speaker 1: a ton of people who I will list in and aside,
Speaker 1: including Adrian who works on an elementary school campus and
Speaker 1: whose students have become a sessed with crime squirrel one
Speaker 1: who rifles through their backpacks and patron Alec Joseph whose
Speaker 1: friends have quote college squirrel trauma, and Mary con Cannon.
Speaker 1: Natalie Jones, Chelsea, Victoria Turner, Cassandra Grafts from Tara Tiger Studio.
Speaker 1: R J Deutsche, Emily Stouffer, and Kyler Murphy want to
Speaker 1: know about college squirrels. They want to know why are
Speaker 1: they so big? One says, what's up with you of
Speaker 1: m squirrels? R J Deutsche says, I dare say you
Speaker 1: haven't seen Rutgers squirrels. Emily Stauffer, what is up with
Speaker 1: squirrels on college campuses? They seem to never have a
Speaker 1: fear of people. Natalie Jones says, I've seen a college
Speaker 1: campus squirrel drag a whole bagel away, stop, don't come back.
Speaker 1: What is it about college campuses and squirrels, I mean
Speaker 1: their diurnal College students are mostly dire, and so you know,
Speaker 1: they just go kind of hand in hand.
Speaker 3: I think because they are so charismatic, people feed them
Speaker 3: all the time. I mean, I can tell you that
Speaker 3: the squirrels on my campus are twenty percent larger than
Speaker 3: if they were just out somewhere else. And people know
Speaker 3: that I study squirrels on campus. I'm well known, squirrel
Speaker 3: doc is well known. But people still will feed squirrels.
Speaker 3: There is an Instagram account that is not run by me,
Speaker 3: just for our campus squirrels, and I sometimes get salty
Speaker 3: with them because I will submit good pictures and they
Speaker 3: are not chosen to be featured on the Instagram feed.
Speaker 1: How dare?
Speaker 3: How dare?
Speaker 1: Patricia Juese notes that they found a squirrel eating a
Speaker 1: hot dog bund in a tree a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: I mean, just the idea of them eating whole hot
Speaker 1: dog bond. Chandler Weddington wants to know, how do they
Speaker 1: not get poisoned when they eat mushrooms? Do they ever
Speaker 1: get high? How do they know? I can't I can't
Speaker 1: forage for mushrooms, and I have a computer in my pocket.
Speaker 3: So they do eat mushrooms that would be poisonous to us.
Speaker 3: So they clearly have a different digestive system and processing
Speaker 3: system than we do. And they probably do have occasionally
Speaker 3: had psychedelic mushrooms. I have seen videos of squirrels drunk
Speaker 3: after they've eaten pumpkins or apples or things like that
Speaker 3: that have fermented and have alcohol in them, and really
Speaker 3: can't climb up a tree very well. They kind of
Speaker 3: keep falling off and falling over and lack of coordination.
Speaker 1: Do you think they're having fun or do you think
Speaker 1: they're like, what the fuck? Why is the tree moving?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Why's the tree spinning? Sometimes it's a fermented pumpkin, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a fizzy crab apple, and sometimes it's standing under
Speaker 1: a keg like a rainforest shower. Reported by Buzz sixty.
Speaker 5: Operators at the Honeybourne Railway Club say when they opened
Speaker 5: up they found beer spilled all over the floor, glasses
Speaker 5: knocked off the shelves, and bottles scattered everywhere. Employees thought
Speaker 5: they'd been burgled, But then the culprit staggered into view,
Speaker 5: a slow moving squirrel, still apparently intoxicated from lapping up
Speaker 5: the fruits of his destructive rampage.
Speaker 1: So it happens, and this is why squirrels don't have
Speaker 1: driver's licenses. Sad Jess Donald wants to know how many
Speaker 1: nuts canna fit in their mouth? And also apologies if
Speaker 1: that sounds in appropriate, how big are their face versus
Speaker 1: when it comes to their ludicrously capacious face, how much
Speaker 1: can they fit in there? Or do chipmunks really have
Speaker 1: that down?
Speaker 3: Chipmunks really have that down. Squirrels still have pouches and
Speaker 3: they can pack some good food in there, but chipmunk
Speaker 3: are the ones really who kind of like right have
Speaker 3: that like big expanding piece. And like I do catch
Speaker 3: chipmunks in our traps, and my favorite thing is when
Speaker 3: you grab them, the first thing they do is just
Speaker 3: kind of regurgitate all of that that's in their mouth.
Speaker 3: It just kind of all just like just falls out,
Speaker 3: like I am so sorry. You can have this later.
Speaker 3: I won't take it. You can come back for it.
Speaker 3: I'll leave it right here, or better yet or works yet.
Speaker 3: It depends on how you think about because I use
Speaker 3: peanut butter typically the trap they will have their cheek
Speaker 3: stuff with peanut butter. So then it's like the Plato
Speaker 3: back fro this peanut butter kind of being squished out,
Speaker 3: so they like just take.
Speaker 1: It, just take it.
Speaker 3: I don't want this.
Speaker 1: Nick Nikash wants to know, did squirrels invent maple syrup?
Speaker 1: Have you heard this?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, certainly they will eat sap. Certainly they will
Speaker 3: pull the outer bark off and eat that inner camium
Speaker 3: and and things like that, particularly when there's not a
Speaker 3: lot of food to eat. And so maybe you could
Speaker 3: say that they, you know, have long time taken advantage
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 1: What It's true according to the Journal of Mammalogy paper
Speaker 1: Maple Sugaring by Red Squirrels, in which doctor Bernd Heinrich writes,
Speaker 1: red squirrels make a tap via a single pair of
Speaker 1: chisel like grooves from one bite into the sappy xylum
Speaker 1: layer of maple trees. But they're write quote, the dripping
Speaker 1: dilute sap was not harvested. Instead, the squirrels came back
Speaker 1: later and selectively visited the trees that had been punctured
Speaker 1: after most of the water from the sap had evaporated. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they found this all over Vermont and Maine, and
Speaker 1: the Hoode Nashoni legend credits squirrels with teaching indigenous folks
Speaker 1: how to tap and evaporate maple sap. So waffles brought
Speaker 1: to you by squirrels Oh. Speaking of food water, patron
Speaker 1: Iris Hutchings had a question about what happens when squirrels
Speaker 1: get thirsty. Where are they drinking water from? Actually? Do
Speaker 1: they get it from the plants they eat?
Speaker 3: From everything that they eat? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is it good to set up like a little water
Speaker 1: feature fountain?
Speaker 3: You can? They usually won't drink from it, though it's
Speaker 3: not something they won't so.
Speaker 1: Don't get your feelings certif they don't. No, And this
Speaker 1: one about squirrel memory was on the minds of Pupita,
Speaker 1: Diana Teeter, Alexandra cattool On, klaush, Loreene Evans, Taylor Faukner,
Speaker 1: Jeff Berg, and Alex Keeley. A ton of people want
Speaker 1: to know how do they remember where they hit their food?
Speaker 1: Do they have that kind of memory year after year?
Speaker 3: Probably not year after year because most of the resources
Speaker 3: are probably gone within a year. We do know that
Speaker 3: the size of their hippocampus, which we know is used
Speaker 3: in special memory, does increase in the fall when acorns
Speaker 3: are present. There's research that clearly shows that I was
Speaker 3: part of that as an undergrad as well. The size
Speaker 3: of the hippo campus in spring versus fall, it's much
Speaker 3: larger in fall. For them to try and remember that.
Speaker 3: But that's a great question. It's one of the things
Speaker 3: that my lab has just started to try and take on.
Speaker 3: I have some hypotheses that say that some species of
Speaker 3: squirrels are probably I don't want to say that they
Speaker 3: are are at remembering, are probably better at relocating scatter
Speaker 3: hordes of acorns and things like that.
Speaker 1: Also, in case you think scatter hoarder is an unnecessary insult,
Speaker 1: it's not just a way to say that you're a
Speaker 1: mess squirrels. It's just a mammalogy scritiology term for hiding
Speaker 1: your shit in a few different places, which is a
Speaker 1: thing that you might do with lip bombs or money,
Speaker 1: except it's lunch and it's in the dirt. A few people,
Speaker 1: including Amanda and Chase panics want to know, by the way,
Speaker 1: I just want to say never. In three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty episodes of this podcast, have I gotten so many
Speaker 1: questions that start with a story, and that is the best.
Speaker 1: Amanda says, I have a squirrel that comes to my
Speaker 1: window and waits patiently until I give it nuts. It
Speaker 1: looks like she gets excited when she sees me and
Speaker 1: recognizes me. Can squirrels recognize individual humans like pros Can
Speaker 1: and Chase and others want to know like do they
Speaker 1: remember friendly faces or are you of any machine?
Speaker 3: I don't think so, but I'm willing to bet that
Speaker 3: her behavior is the same every time, and so she
Speaker 3: recognizes the same.
Speaker 1: Behavior Madison Hunter and some other people also Wild Pack
Speaker 1: of Dogs, Nicole d J, Dave Dbairmaker and first of
Speaker 1: question asker Julia Suamela wants to know if you've seen
Speaker 1: Mark Robers squirrel obstacle course videos.
Speaker 8: So the first challenge is the bridge of instability. Now
Speaker 8: this may look easy, but the trick is it attaches
Speaker 8: at a single point on each end, and from a
Speaker 8: physics standpoint, that makes it no different than trying to
Speaker 8: crawl across the tyrope.
Speaker 1: So these videos went up during the early pandemic and
Speaker 1: they feature a backyard squirrel, well several going through what
Speaker 1: is described as an American Ninja worrior course to reach
Speaker 1: a bird feeder. These videos have wracked up hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of views. How do you feel about them?
Speaker 3: I mean it's awesome and I love that. I love
Speaker 3: it when people ask me about you know, they'll describe
Speaker 3: their entire setup of bird feeders and things like that.
Speaker 3: It's so great and it just shows really how smart
Speaker 3: they are and you know, spatially conscious. And then he
Speaker 3: has the whole piece about it, like when they get
Speaker 3: launched that they always do land correctly and you can
Speaker 3: really easily watch how they use that tail as a
Speaker 3: rudder and there and everything, and so it's just perfect.
Speaker 3: It's great. But people do this all the time. They'll
Speaker 3: be like, I have the spring and then I used
Speaker 3: vastly and I a grease this and they this is
Speaker 3: far from here and they have to do this and
Speaker 3: they have to go here, and like, yep, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Everyone, I guess with a backyard looking at you. Katie
Speaker 1: Courtwright and Ebbie Sage, Scarberry Grace Rubis show. Katie Armstrong
Speaker 1: wants to know how do we keep the bird feed safe?
Speaker 1: Jenny low Roads want to know why do they eat
Speaker 1: all the bird seed? With capital A and raining Emily
Speaker 1: asked this question. So my grandfather is constantly a war
Speaker 1: with squirrels because they eat his bird seed. And their
Speaker 1: question was is it bad for squirrels to eat bird
Speaker 1: seed or just some beef that my grandfather has with
Speaker 1: the squirrels. And I was like, Emily, I hate to
Speaker 1: tell you that, I think your grandpa's just team bird here,
Speaker 1: But is there anything bad about bird seed or is
Speaker 1: it just that they're taking from birds?
Speaker 3: No, it's just a yeah, no, there's nothing bad about
Speaker 3: bird seed or things like that. And my answer, my
Speaker 3: best answer, so listen up, is hot pepper bird seed.
Speaker 3: Go someplace it sells specialty bird seed. Get the hot
Speaker 3: pepper bird seed. It'll stop the squirrels from eating it.
Speaker 3: They'll stop the deer from meeting it, they'll stop the
Speaker 3: raccoons from eating it. And then once you've you know,
Speaker 3: dissuaded them that the bird feeder is not where they
Speaker 3: want to be, then you can kind of mix fifty
Speaker 3: to fifty hot pepper bird seed and regular bird seed
Speaker 3: and maybe even go back to this regular bird seed
Speaker 3: until they figure back out again, and then you have
Speaker 3: to go back to the hot pepper bird seed. But
Speaker 3: that is my that is my only it's my best advice,
Speaker 3: and that's nature.
Speaker 1: That's just birds can't taste it, so right. We did
Speaker 1: a Chickens episode recently about putting red pepper flakes in
Speaker 1: your chicken feed. Not only are the girls like hell no,
Speaker 1: but also you get really beautiful orange yolks. Yep, but
Speaker 1: it does bring you to a question a lot of
Speaker 1: people want to know, such as Cynthia Connor, Catherine Finny,
Speaker 1: Megan Guthrie, Maya, Cherry Webb, Pascal parent and Jackie Ross.
Speaker 1: How does one protect their gardens as much as they
Speaker 1: love them? Ls and p First time question asker, how
Speaker 1: do I get supposed to stop stealing my sunflowers? Catherine?
Speaker 1: Apparently squirrels are digging up their vegetable garden. Other heater
Speaker 1: did call them furry terrorists Jackie Ross? Is there any
Speaker 1: real way to stop them from eating your plants?
Speaker 3: Nope? World domination for sure.
Speaker 1: What about a net? Get a net?
Speaker 3: I mean, sure you can, you can try a net
Speaker 3: and keep them and the birds out, but sometimes, I mean,
Speaker 3: they're pretty smart and they can kind of usually get
Speaker 3: between the fence and the net, and like the birds
Speaker 3: who just kind of go from the top, and so
Speaker 3: it's hard, especially if you live someplace that has ground
Speaker 3: squirrels or groundhogs or woodchucks, like you're in trouble.
Speaker 1: Well, they got some judgment from some people who wanted
Speaker 1: to know why they taunt us by not eating the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Camille Charlotte Blath rip to your half eaten tomatoes,
Speaker 1: and Nina Giocave says, why do they taunt me by
Speaker 1: leaving half eaten strawberries on the edge of my garden? Apparently?
Speaker 1: Marika says, why do you squirrels leave treats and leftovers
Speaker 1: on my window sills? Why do they not finish?
Speaker 3: I have complained about this too. They will eat one
Speaker 3: bite out of the tomato and then put it down
Speaker 3: and then reach to the next one eat the next
Speaker 3: bite of the tomato, and so it's not like they
Speaker 3: respect me either. I think it comes from that natural
Speaker 3: behavior to not eat the whole acorn, not eat the
Speaker 3: whole seed, right, So they'll eat the top half of
Speaker 3: the acorn because it has less tannins, so it means
Speaker 3: more protein for them, and then drop it and move
Speaker 3: on to the next one. And because it is so abundant.
Speaker 3: You know, we could use our marginal value theorem and
Speaker 3: talk about optimal foraging that it's just better to take
Speaker 3: the best bite and move on.
Speaker 1: Take the best bite and move on, people. Horrible strategy
Speaker 1: for humans, works good for squirrels, who can be so
Speaker 1: frustrated with them. I mean, who doesn't, I guess want
Speaker 1: to just go to a Smorgasport child, little nibble everything else, both.
Speaker 3: Eat the best part of the strawberry and just yeah,
Speaker 3: the rest of it.
Speaker 1: Stephanie Coombs wants tips on keeping them out of my
Speaker 1: shed aside from rebuilding it. If they trap them, will
Speaker 1: they come back? And again a great story. But in
Speaker 1: terms of hiding mushrooms, apparently Stephanie's rubber boots were filled
Speaker 1: this year with mushroom, which is so cute. But if
Speaker 1: you wanted to keep them out of a structure such
Speaker 1: as attic squirrel having Hannah Nolan and James Nance and
Speaker 1: ness and Sydney I and Abbi Greeb who struggles with
Speaker 1: garage squirrels.
Speaker 3: You need to make sure that there's no way that
Speaker 3: you can get in. Usually we have to make sure
Speaker 3: you block up any holes or entrances or things like that,
Speaker 3: because if you don't take them very far away, they
Speaker 3: will most likely come back.
Speaker 1: Art by DJ has a weird one. They say a
Speaker 1: neighbor had a squirrel one by one steal all the
Speaker 1: bulbs off her string of deck lights, chewing them off
Speaker 1: at the cord and then just running away with them
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of this?
Speaker 3: Yes, and I don't know why. So their insizors continue
Speaker 3: to grow, so they have that need to continue to
Speaker 3: gnaw for their entire lives to keep their tooth wear down.
Speaker 3: And there definitely are some plastics that seem to be
Speaker 3: more favorite than others. And so I don't know what
Speaker 3: the component of the plastic is. I can tell you.
Speaker 3: On our campus, they bought some of the recycled plastic
Speaker 3: picnic tables that are supposedly made from corn cobs. Oh,
Speaker 3: apparently those are very tasty. Oh any like hole or
Speaker 3: break or anything. Squirrels are just in there gnawing and chewing.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if it's because it's just ever
Speaker 3: such a slightly softer plastic, or if there is actually
Speaker 3: something tasty remain left over in that corn plastic.
Speaker 1: Well, I gotta say I had a preas corn stopped working.
Speaker 1: I don't know where. I took it up with my hoe.
Speaker 1: I said, let me know if you find a dead
Speaker 1: raccoons in there, lolol. They called me back. They're like,
Speaker 1: you got a nest in your car? They cracked over
Speaker 1: my hood, half an orange, a bunch of snail shells,
Speaker 1: and apparently the wire harness and Toyta Prias's is moved
Speaker 1: with soybean oil and it is scrumptious. You've heard I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've heard this a lot, right.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's soy plastic. So ugh.
Speaker 1: It was so cute, but there was also so much
Speaker 1: poo and I was like, guys, that almost sounds like rats,
Speaker 1: right yeah, Okay, squirrels throughout the hook. Another reason why
Speaker 1: I love Patreon questions is because this I did not
Speaker 1: know a lot of people. James Hales, Ama, Craig Sedoni,
Speaker 1: S and Irish Touchings. Words asked. Is it true that
Speaker 1: red squirrels will chew off the gonecks of gray squirrels
Speaker 1: to decimate the gray squirrel's population? Is that true that
Speaker 1: they cast rate each other with their mouths?
Speaker 3: Never?
Speaker 2: Never?
Speaker 3: No, Red squirrels are definitely far more aggressive, okay than
Speaker 3: gray squirrels are fox squirrels. I generally say my rule
Speaker 3: of thumb is the smaller the squirrel, the more aggressive,
Speaker 3: or the largest squirrel, the more dopey it is. But no,
Speaker 3: there's none of that happening. So if there are red
Speaker 3: squirls around, they will typically chase off the gray squirrels
Speaker 3: and fox squirrels, but there's no interaction like that.
Speaker 1: Oh slim flambusted.
Speaker 3: So I think sometimes people kind of misjudge that because
Speaker 3: when males are sexually active, you can clearly see their testies.
Speaker 3: They're rather large, you've got to set a ball. But
Speaker 3: when they're not sexually active, those testies regress back up
Speaker 3: into the body cavity, and so then you don't see them.
Speaker 1: Oh so they put them into retirement. Yep. Okay, well
Speaker 1: that's good because I was about to that blew my
Speaker 1: whole mind. But as long as you're busting flim flam,
Speaker 1: let's talk TikTok Amanda lask first, he question As and
Speaker 1: a bunch of other people. Matthew Whitman, Lenny Olseth, Laurel,
Speaker 1: Jen Squirrel, Alvarez, Amy Ducree, Stephen Shelley, and Danielle Zonas
Speaker 1: all asked about TikTok user Andy Witch's February twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three video that apparently demonstrated some kind of squirrel mind
Speaker 1: control by undulating an outstretched arm toward a squirrel on
Speaker 1: this suburban street. Andy Witch, how literal is that last name?
Speaker 1: Because I love it? Also? What and why? How? What
Speaker 1: the hell is up with the wave hand motion thing
Speaker 1: that's supposedly mind controlling squirrels. Do you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about?
Speaker 3: I know completely what you're talking about.
Speaker 6: In a cool life act of controlling squirrels, you could
Speaker 6: actually control squirrels by using your hand in a wave
Speaker 6: motion and you could see that the scroll comes towards me.
Speaker 6: I learned this from a friend who was in the
Speaker 6: squirrel club. So now the squirrel's super close to me.
Speaker 6: You could do this on all squirrels, be careful.
Speaker 3: I had to try it because I'm like, I've never
Speaker 3: seen this. I have no idea. I've had zero luck,
Speaker 3: so I don't know what this is. Nothing I can
Speaker 3: think of it said. It kind of mimics like the
Speaker 3: giving of food, and so maybe squirrels who are in
Speaker 3: urban parks who are used to being fed by humans
Speaker 3: recognize that kind of up and down motion, but I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't have another explanation.
Speaker 1: Well, as long as we're communicating with appendages. Chris Whitman, Yes,
Speaker 1: Jeanette mass mccurty, Megan Gothrie, they want to know, in
Speaker 1: Christ's words, what does the fast tail twitching mean? What
Speaker 1: are they communicating with their tails?
Speaker 3: Typically? When it's kind of flipping back and forth. That's
Speaker 3: kind of a predator alarm call. It's a visual predator
Speaker 3: alarm calls.
Speaker 1: Okay, if they're twitching and screaming at you, they're like,
Speaker 1: you're gonna kill me, Get out here. I hate you,
Speaker 1: stranger danger.
Speaker 3: I'm telling everybody around me and preator here.
Speaker 1: Wow, they're trying to cancel you because what they're doing
Speaker 1: because we could kill them, and I see you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we are predator. There's squirrel hunters are out there. Have
Speaker 1: you ever eaten squirrel?
Speaker 3: Not knowingly? I feel like that's a line you can
Speaker 3: you can't cross, right, Like, I'm sure that somebody has
Speaker 3: sped it to me at some point, but not knowingly.
Speaker 1: Do you have any enemies? Do you think anyone's done it?
Speaker 3: Just just no, not that I know of, but I'm
Speaker 3: sure somebody, you know, I would think that that would
Speaker 3: be a welcoming kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And if your toes curled and your throat seized hearing that.
Speaker 1: I do have some historical news. So a lot of
Speaker 1: humans have been eating a lot of squirrel for a
Speaker 1: long time, and squirrels have been called the chicken of
Speaker 1: the trees and in some cultures, squirrels are considered kid's food,
Speaker 1: truly the chicken nuggets of the woods, and there are
Speaker 1: one point five million registered squirrel hunters in the US.
Speaker 1: Many ecologists and chefs praise squirrel hunting as more humane
Speaker 1: and less ecologically devastating than factory farmed meat, and a
Speaker 1: potential control of invasive species of squirrel. It's also from
Speaker 1: a taste perspective, said to have a nutty, gamey quality
Speaker 1: that can be swapped out for rabbit in some recipes.
Speaker 1: You know President James Garfield. He liked this protein source
Speaker 1: so much that the eighteen eighty seven White House Cookbook
Speaker 1: features a recipe for squirrel soup and that involves lima beans, potatoes, tomatoes,
Speaker 1: corn butter, celery, parsley, and the use of a coarse
Speaker 1: colander quote so as to get rid of the squirrel's
Speaker 1: troublesome little bones. Well. The recipe concludes with a self
Speaker 1: review very good.
Speaker 3: Squirrel hunting is a million dollars a year business in Mississippi.
Speaker 3: Like it is a hugely popular pastime, so it is
Speaker 3: a reason for management of score populations to keep numbers
Speaker 3: high so that people do have access to them. The
Speaker 3: squirrel that was introduced on Mount Graham was introduced purely
Speaker 3: for hunting purposes, so that people would have a squirrel
Speaker 3: to hunt.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, until we did a Mountain Goat episode, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize exactly how much. Obviously, conservation effort is also
Speaker 1: like we got to crunch the numbers so we can
Speaker 1: figure how many it's cool to kill, which is better
Speaker 1: than not crunching the numbers. But you know, historically a
Speaker 1: lot of conservation is also paid for by hunting licenses too,
Speaker 1: So back back and forth, I think that there maybe
Speaker 1: might be a notion that like, if you hunt this animal,
Speaker 1: you don't care about their well being. But it's way
Speaker 1: more complicated. We covered this in the deer episode too,
Speaker 1: But I feel like there's a very urban and world
Speaker 1: divide where it's like, if you go out and hunt
Speaker 1: any animal, you are a sociopath. But it's absolutely fine
Speaker 1: to have bacon at a diner in the city, you.
Speaker 3: Know, right right. I get asked questions all the time
Speaker 3: by squirrel hunters. They want to know you better ways
Speaker 3: to find squirrels, catch scrolls, things like that. I also
Speaker 3: get asked by fishermen about squirrels because scroll fur is
Speaker 3: used in a lot of fishing lures, so fly fishing
Speaker 3: lores and so.
Speaker 1: What about jack Olne Wheelan and Kate Armstrong and the
Speaker 1: diitary quality want to know in Katie verts, is it
Speaker 1: true those squirrel has a range of about ten miles
Speaker 1: and it can find its way home if you drive
Speaker 1: it ten miles away and drop it off.
Speaker 3: Probably ten miles is a little far, but not crazy far. Yeah. Really,
Speaker 3: I'm definitely thinking the squirrels five miles and had them
Speaker 3: reliably come back, so, particularly during mating season and things
Speaker 3: like that, they males will go pretty far. How are
Speaker 3: they doing that world domination? No? I mean they specially
Speaker 3: have a good recognition. Clearly they have some kind of
Speaker 3: I don't want to say homing, but they clearly have
Speaker 3: some kind of spatial recognition where they can come back.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. I wonder if you'll ever find out they
Speaker 1: have like pigeon magnets in their head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some kind of compass, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that compass might be the himpocampus, which not
Speaker 1: only helps squirrels with their spatial memory to recall all
Speaker 1: that scatter hoarding, it could be at play when it
Speaker 1: comes to squirrels making their way back home, which can
Speaker 1: definitely happen when people trap like an attic squirrel and
Speaker 1: then drive five or ten miles away and release it
Speaker 1: in a new part of town, and they're like, who
Speaker 1: glad that's over. And then a few days later it's
Speaker 1: like back at your window being like wow, ghosted, brutal,
Speaker 1: and then you have to atone to their furry little
Speaker 1: faces which you maybe never wanted to see again. I
Speaker 1: don't know, blame their brains. World domination. Megan Lynch who
Speaker 1: was a caribologist who studies carab trees, and Davis left
Speaker 1: a question about an introduced species learning to break into
Speaker 1: these tough raw pods of another introduced tree. Does one
Speaker 1: pioneer squirrel learn something and do they teach each other?
Speaker 1: Like how much of that kind of communal living and
Speaker 1: squirrel dres is teaching each other things?
Speaker 3: So, I mean, we don't really know about social learning
Speaker 3: in terms of like feeding an acorn or things like that,
Speaker 3: but a lot of their food has kind of that
Speaker 3: harder outer shell, So acorns, buck eyes, while nuts like
Speaker 3: all those kinds of things have that really hard care
Speaker 3: pace that they have to get through and kind of
Speaker 3: d shell, and so a care pod to me, probably
Speaker 3: isn't all that much different than a fuck eye or
Speaker 3: something like that, where they really kind of have to
Speaker 3: break off that outer husk to get to the inside piece,
Speaker 3: and those teeth are sharp and they have a lot
Speaker 3: of pressure. They can crush a lot of things.
Speaker 1: For more on carib than not chocolate tree with a
Speaker 1: bonker's history that might be grown on a street. We'll
Speaker 1: link that episode in the show notes. And last listener question,
Speaker 1: I could literally talk to you for like ten hours.
Speaker 1: You are so lucky that you did not get seated
Speaker 1: next to me on a flight to New Zealand because
Speaker 1: I would be You're like, I need to sleep. A
Speaker 1: good question that I didn't even think of. So many
Speaker 1: people Britney Kaufman m N nine and of course Camille
Speaker 1: Inil Charlie Banes words, what's up with squirrelproop? I have
Speaker 1: never seen. It doesn't exist. Where is it in the grass?
Speaker 3: It's in the ground. I mean it's kind of like
Speaker 3: tic TACs, like tilly beans, Like do.
Speaker 1: They poo in their nest or does that? Unknown?
Speaker 3: Yeah, typically there is kind of an area well it'll
Speaker 3: collect and things like that, but you know, if possible,
Speaker 3: they'll go outside other.
Speaker 1: Than podcast hosts. What's the worst thing about your job
Speaker 1: other than me asking you questions forever because you're the best.
Speaker 3: But that's I said there, that's not a bad part
Speaker 3: of my job, right, Like when I realized I could
Speaker 3: kind of mix the genetics and wildlife piece to be helpful,
Speaker 3: you could think about charismatic megafauna and how cool it
Speaker 3: would be to work on, you know, mountain lions and
Speaker 3: things like that. And then it was like, no, I
Speaker 3: could have this charismatic minor fauna. I don't want to
Speaker 3: say micro because they're definitely not that small, and they're
Speaker 3: not really mezzo because they're not kind of medium like
Speaker 3: skunks and raccoons. But you know, everybody knows them, and
Speaker 3: pretty much everybody has the story has a love hate
Speaker 3: relationship with them. Those are the things that make the
Speaker 3: best stories and really allow you to kind of connect
Speaker 3: with somebody and have them learn a bit about ecology
Speaker 3: and the world and talk about things like climate change
Speaker 3: and forests and hook somebody and make them passionate and
Speaker 3: make just a genuine human connection and really see each
Speaker 3: other and past all the other stuff, and so it's
Speaker 3: kind of nice, and so there really isn't a bad part.
Speaker 1: But what does suck about it? Though? Get real with us.
Speaker 3: When I was in Arizona and trapping at one hundred
Speaker 3: and ten degrees or on top of Mount Graham and
Speaker 3: you know, in ten feet of snow and snowshoes, trying
Speaker 3: to find the one squirrel mess and determine if there
Speaker 3: is a squirrel. It's not always the most fun. So
Speaker 3: it was the most comfortable.
Speaker 1: What about Have you ever had a favorite moment on
Speaker 1: the job?
Speaker 3: I do. So when I started here at Balden Wallace,
Speaker 3: they were very concerned that people would be worried that
Speaker 3: I was harming squirrels and that Peter would be protesting
Speaker 3: and things like that. And I was like, I invite
Speaker 3: anybody who has any questions to come with me, you know,
Speaker 3: come trap with me. Watch the squirrels, watch what I do.
Speaker 3: You will see that I am not inflicting pain, that
Speaker 3: they are happy to be there, They're happy to have
Speaker 3: their peanut butter treat, and you know, we try to
Speaker 3: minimize any kind of discomfort and the time that they're
Speaker 3: with us and things like that. And so I have
Speaker 3: a film crew from a news station with me. I
Speaker 3: have university relations with me and I have two students
Speaker 3: and we're catching squirrels and going through and at some
Speaker 3: point a summer camp realizes that there's a kind of
Speaker 3: a something going on over here, and we kind of
Speaker 3: want to see what's going on. And so at some
Speaker 3: point I kind of look up from measuring shin bone
Speaker 3: lengths and things like that, and I am surrounded by
Speaker 3: probably thirty thirty kids, you know, every color, size, shape,
Speaker 3: every kind of background, and they're all just watching me,
Speaker 3: just completely fascinated. And they don't know what's in the
Speaker 3: giant pastry bag, you know, and they're trying to figure
Speaker 3: that out, and they're asking me questions, and my students are,
Speaker 3: you know, trying to be calm and answer questions. And
Speaker 3: the news is fascinated, you know. So they're showing the
Speaker 3: kids and showing me and showing the kids, and it
Speaker 3: just was at the moment that you realize, like this
Speaker 3: is what you want as a scientist, Like this is
Speaker 3: what you want. You want to ask questions, get answers,
Speaker 3: and then have that information put out into the world.
Speaker 3: And so there's a picture of me, and it's me
Speaker 3: and I have a squirrel kind of sitting on my leg,
Speaker 3: and there's a squirrel on the ground and my two
Speaker 3: students are doing things and you can just see these legs,
Speaker 3: these legs of the students in the back of the picture,
Speaker 3: and that's probably one of my favorite favorite moments.
Speaker 1: This has been just such a joy. I cannot tell
Speaker 1: you the emotions I had when I clicked on your
Speaker 1: Instagram and saw like the follow back. I was like,
Speaker 1: Karen minrons.
Speaker 3: See and I had just the opposite. I had the
Speaker 3: complete imposter like like, why does she want to talk
Speaker 3: to me?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 1: Trust I looked at your research, It's like this is
Speaker 1: the squirrel expert for me. I would accept no others.
Speaker 1: So don't be scared to ask smart people scorely questions
Speaker 1: and then just scatter hooard that information for your next
Speaker 1: dinner party. Now you can follow doctor Karen Monroe at
Speaker 1: squirrel Doc, which is linked in the show notes. We
Speaker 1: also linked to the two causes we donated to in
Speaker 1: her name. We're at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. In
Speaker 1: case you're still on those, I am. I'm also at
Speaker 1: Ali Ward with one L on both and on TikTok
Speaker 1: at Ali Underscore Ologies Smologies our kid friendly shorter episodes
Speaker 1: and those are linked in the show notes. Thank you
Speaker 1: to Zeke Rodriguez, Thomas and Mercedes Maitland for working on those.
Speaker 1: Susan Hale as our managing director, she keeps the ship's sailing,
Speaker 1: including dealing with merch at ologiesmirch dot com, where we
Speaker 1: sell shirts and bags and stickers, bathing suits and hats
Speaker 1: and you can find other Ologites in the wild that way.
Speaker 1: Noel Dilworth schedules the interviews. Aaron Talbert admins the Ologies
Speaker 1: podcast Facebook group with assists from birth Lady Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 1: and her sister Shannon Feltis. Emily White of the worderre
Speaker 1: makes our professional transcripts, which are linked for free in
Speaker 1: the show notes. Kelly ar Dwyer tweaks our website and
Speaker 1: can build yours. Mark David Christensen and Jared Sleeper of
Speaker 1: mind gam Media Assistant edited this and lead editing was
Speaker 1: performed by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio, who also produced
Speaker 1: this episode alongside us. She does so much for the show.
Speaker 1: I cannot think her enough, and she does it all
Speaker 1: the way up in her cozy Canadian dre Nick Thorburn
Speaker 1: wrote theme music and if you stick around to the
Speaker 1: end of the episode, I tell you a secret, and
Speaker 1: this week it's that I am still sick with pneumonia.
Speaker 1: I'm recording this in bed, where I've been for the
Speaker 1: last twelve days, and I keep getting a lot of
Speaker 1: messages being like, don't work, don't work, don't work, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, how do I not? But also, I love
Speaker 1: this job, and let's be honest, I'd probably be researching
Speaker 1: squirrel brains anyway. But I'm on the mend and that's good.
Speaker 1: And another thing I've been doing in bed is I
Speaker 1: have this workbook that my therapist gave me. It's on
Speaker 1: self compact. It was written by Kristin Neff, I think,
Speaker 1: and I'm making notes in the margins and doing the
Speaker 1: exercises and having compassion for yourself if you're not used to.
Speaker 1: It is hard at first, but I'm learning. I'm learning
Speaker 1: every day. So if self compassion is something that you
Speaker 1: struggle with, might I suggest a work book on it?
Speaker 1: Because hey, our little squirrel brains, we love to learn things.
Speaker 1: Every day can be a little bit better than the last.
Speaker 1: All right, Okay, bye bye, pacidermatology, bombiology, rypto zoology, lithology, zeronology, meteorology, pology, nathology, seriology, silology. Wow,
Speaker 1: she had actual squirrels in her pants. Get value.
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