May 17, 2022 • 52 mins
Squirrels are rodents, sure, but they’re rodents with personalities the size of Las Vegas and Detroit put together. Get to know your bushy-tailed (and sometimes not so bushy) neighbors who live interesting hidden lives right out in the open.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry is here. And this is
one of the greatest episodes will ever do. As far
as I'm concerned. Squirrels. I really wanted squirrels. I've been
(00:26):
seeing that all day. It's wonderful. That is so wonderful.
It is that song isn't But you know, uh yeah yeah.
If you go back and listen to BC Boys, you're like, wow,
they give them a long way though, and we're announcing
that stuff. Yeah for sure. Um, so we're talking not
about the BC Boys. Surprisingly, we're talking about squirrels in
(00:47):
the morning. It's squirrels. Every evening. It's squirrels. Squirrels to syllables, right,
I don't care however you want to say it the
little squirrel sure or Boston I guess probably they say
it similarly as well. But if you want to get fancy,
you can bust out their Latin name. They're members of
(01:08):
the Road in Order, but for their family, their scure
a day, Secura day. Nope, security day. I look this
one up, all right, Sierra die like my more. Okay,
did you just toot on my renovation? Yeah, even though
(01:28):
it was correct? Did you give me a bronx cheer? How?
How is it? Siura die? Well? Let me do the
person online? Sierra die okay? Is that Emma who said that?
Or Sierra Day was another? But I think we've heard
from people that d A E. S die okay? And
that's fine. Um, if that's what it's called, I'm just
(01:50):
gonna call them squirrels from now on. But there's actually
exactly three hundred species of squirrels, and it's it's kind
of hard to wrap your head around because usually if
you live in a place with squirrels, meaning you live
on a continent outside of Antarctica, yeah, like everywhere, Basically,
they're probably a lot of squirrels living around you, and
(02:11):
they probably all look basically exactly alike, because it seems
like when they fill an ecological niche, brother, they fill
it and there's not much room for competing species, it
seems like from my experience. Yeah, I mean there are
And who helped us with this was this? This is
a grabster. Yeah, so grabs your points out that you know,
(02:35):
you can find mountain squirrels and city squirrels and forest
squirrels and jungle squirrels and desert squirrels. You can find
squirrels in Alaska that hibernate with the lowest body temperature
of any mammal, that have body temperatures below freezing at times.
You can go to Africa and find one of the
(02:58):
cutest squirrels, the African pigmies squirrel, which is as small
as the tiny little mouse. Where you can go to
Bhutan and find the giant flying squirrel of Bhutan that
with their head and body and is over two ft long.
With that tail, they're huge, no two ft long. Without
the tail stressing they're distressingly large. Yeah, because the squirrel
(03:21):
tail will get into this, but that's one of their
signature features generally, although depending on the species, because there
are three hundred species, like you said, more than are
almost three, some of those tails are a little diminished.
But usually when you think squirrel, you think of that
big bushy tail. Yeah, and not only when you think
of squirrel you think of the tail. But the Greeks themselves,
(03:45):
somebody decided that a Greek term would make sense, but
scurrios or scurios, which roughly means something like shadow tail
ed says shady Butt, also saw shadow tail, which is
a reference to how squirrels sometimes high in the shadow
cast by their own tail. It's pretty pretty clever, but
the squirrel is usually kind of the bushy tail of
(04:07):
the squirrel is what makes a squirrel of squirrel. One
of the other things that really differentiates it from other
rodents is the way that its jaw and muscle are
attached to its skull. There's actually a name for it,
sirio morphous zygo massoteric system. They look at you hooked
on phonics works for me. You even recorded the new pronunciation.
(04:30):
You worked it right in there with a syria die
I adapted, Yeah, because you should have heard it before
when I was work shopping it. That was the first take. Everybody,
we're not lying, so um so uh. Those are two
things that really kind of differentiates squirrels. But as we've
really um gotten better and better at at taxonomy with
(04:51):
the introduction of UM genome mapping, we can see like, oh,
this animal that doesn't look anything like this animal is
actually really closely related and with as with just about
every other animal we've studied using modern genetic m taxonomy,
UM squirrels are. Our understanding of squirrels has really kind
(05:12):
of changed shape of who's related to whom, who's descended
from who. But there's there. We're kind of going to
go the old school way, which is differentiating them based
on their habitat and their behavior. So there's three groups
of squirrels that we're going to cover, even though there's
technically five subfamilies now ground squirrels, tree squirrels, and flying squirrels.
(05:33):
And before we go any further, I officially dedicate this
episode to Momo, one of the great lovers of squirrels
of all time, who changed changed me in my heart
towards squirrels. I used to be a squirrel hatter, chuck squirrels.
You remember the bird feeder Momo pointed out to me, said, Dad,
(05:54):
squirrels are great. I'm going to teach you to love them.
And she did. Yeah, dogs and squirrels. It's what was
the Disney It was either Pixar Disney had animated movie
where the dog would just stop and go squirrel anytime
there's a squirrel. I can't remember which one it was.
I don't remember. It wasn't that long ago. But before
(06:16):
we move on, to ground squirrels. Uh. It is kind
of fun to learn that because of that DNA analysis
that we now have at our fingertips and fossil evidence,
we know that squirrels uh went to western North America
forty million years ago because squirrels like to get around.
As we will see, they crossed a land bridge to
(06:37):
Eurasia about ten million years after that, and then as
soon as they could, as soon as Eurasia met up
with Africa about twenty million years ago, they went all right,
we're in Africa now too. Because squirrels like to get around.
They as you will see. Um, well we'll just tease
that and say, squirrels like to get around. Yeah, I mean,
you put one tree next to another, squirrel is going
(06:59):
to go from tree a treat, but another tree is
gonna go the next tree. And if you put trees
all the way across one continent to another, they're going
to micrate. That's just what they do, and that's what
they did. But if I thought I loved squirrels before,
now that I know that they're actually native from thirty
five million years back to North America, I just think
that's that's just the tops. Yeah, And we talked about
(07:21):
it before when you were having your bird feeder issue.
But you know, Atlanta is a city in the forest,
and we have tons and tons and tons of squirrels.
Kind of everywhere along the East Coast does, but Atlanta
just has a lot of squirrels. And as I was reading,
you know, from my upstairs office, there's a window not
right in front of my face but sort of above me,
(07:43):
and are huge, big, beautiful oak in our front yard.
Um doing this on squirrels. I just look up for
a second and I see four squirrels running around that
tree together, playing like circling it like a barber pole.
I take my daughter to school this morning and count
the squirrels that I see on the way. I counted
twenty two squirrels that I just saw on a you know,
(08:05):
twelve minute car ride. You hit one of them there,
I have before. It's the worst thing ever. But they're
everywhere in Atlanta. And it hit me a while ago
about how easy it is living here, just or anywhere
where there's a lot of squirrels, just to sort of
be like, yeah, the squirrels. But it kind of hit
(08:26):
me like how crazy it is that there are these
little mammals. They're not hiding in holes generally like mice
and stuff like that. Like, they're just out all over
the place at all times. Were surrounded by these little mammals. Yeah,
out and proud. And if you come close too close
to one of their trees when you're walking by and
(08:46):
the squirrel doesn't like it, he's gonna sit there or
she uh and chatter at you and basically tell you
to beat it, you punk, get away from my tree.
That's how. That's one of the great lovable things about squirrels.
They have such huge personalities, just so great. Chuck. Remember
my famous squirrel attack not too long ago, and that
when I went outside on I got it on my
(09:06):
doorbell camera and that squirrel leaped through the air and
hit me in the leg. It was a complete accident.
Of course, I don't think the squirrel was trying to
kill me, but you don't know. They're just they're all
over the place. We're gonna get to all the fun
stuff about the black squirrels of New York and why
squirrels stop in the middle of the road when they
go to across the street. Like there we found reasons
(09:29):
for all this stuff, which I love. It's not that
squirrels are dumb, and we're going to reveal all that
in this episode. Okay, I'm a little excited. I'm a
little worked up. I know it's a ted early, but
we're so squirrel positive that, I mean, it's a great
way to put it. Chuck, all right, so are we
taking a break? I say, all right, I need to
calm down too, And I guarantee you I'm gonna go
(09:50):
like blow my nose in the other room. I'm gonna
see a squirrel. I'll be right back, all right, Chuck. So,
(10:17):
as promised, we're gonna break squirrels down into three groups crown, tree, uh,
flying or aerial um. And I proposed that we start
with the ground squirrel, many species of which you probably
not you, but I mean you, dear listener, and me
I'll include too. Didn't realize we're actual squirrels like groundhog,
(10:41):
Chuck did not know that was a squirrel, chipmunk. I
had a feeling that might be a squirrel. Gosh, they're
so great too. What about a groundhog? You already said groundhog?
Did I? Okay? In a list of four things, I'm swirling,
I'm swirling still if my love is Yeah, well that's
(11:03):
what was coming out of my mouth. Next, Yeah, prairie
dog didn't know what about that mere cat? I didn't
know that. Well, that's because they're not but prairie dogs, chipmunks,
and um, what was the other one? Mormons? Yeah, Marmattan
brought them in and groundhogs. Those are all ground squirrels.
They're squirrels friends, um, and that makes them pretty awesome.
(11:26):
But one of the reasons why they you wouldn't think
they're squirrels is because and a lot of those species
they lack that characteristic bushy tail. But then also they
live almost a totally different life from their tree dwelling
more famous cousins. Yeah. I mean they might climb a tree,
but generally you're not going to see a groundhogger prairie
(11:47):
dog up in the tree if they knew, if they
need to, you know, for a brief time, if they're
trying to find food or something or uh like on
the run from something trying to kill it, they might
go up in a tree, but they generally hang out
on the ground, hence the name. They love their rocky terrain. Uh. Chipmunks,
for speaking for them, are pretty solitary unless they're trying
(12:09):
to reproduce. But uh, I know that you've found some stuff.
Was it on the prairie dogs that that have their
big families and colonies. Yeah, I mean that's one of
the main characteristics of of ground squirrels in general, aside
from a couple, but that they're much more communal than
tree squirrels, and in particular, the largest town a prairie
(12:29):
dog town is what they're called the largest prairie dog
town on record is in Texas, because of course everything
is bigger there, but there was a colony of black
tailed prairie dogs and this town, Chuck, stretched a hundred
miles wide by two hundred and fifty miles long and
contained four hundred million prairie dogs. Again, crownd squirrels all
(12:53):
living in this kind of large community. I mean that's
like it's like a Chinese mega city or something like that.
Time's tend yea. So are these the ones that tend
to stay uh grouped with their own sex? Uh No,
those tend to be either tree squirrels or flying squirrels.
These are more the um because they live in in
(13:16):
communal groups and kinship is a big deal. Ground squirrels,
like prairie dogs, tend to have a really good ability
to send to smell the scent of other ground squirrels,
so they can tell, like who's a blood relation who's not.
And they've done studies to see, you know, if a
like if a ground squirrel, they have a lot of
(13:37):
really sophisticated calls too, because they're alerting others to the
presence of a rattlesneak or a hawk or something. So
they're really talkative and they have a lot of sophisticated
different communication um and they found that, uh, like a
prairie dog that will stand up and and take the
time to risk its own life to alert others, it's
(13:58):
actually alerting the others that it's alerting are actually related
by blood, and the groundhog or the prairie dog knows
this because it can smell it's blood relations among all
these other you know, extended family members in the town.
There's not much cuter than a squirrel sitting up on
its rear haunches, whether it's I mean, obviously those prairie dogs,
(14:21):
you know, they do it for a living, but even
our eastern gray squirrels sit upon those back legs. If
they want to work a nut with their little front
pop ads. Yeah, or a chipmunk on its back legs.
It's doesn't get much cuter as little busy hands. Goodness me. Yeah, alright,
so we can move on to our tree squirrel. This
is they're known as our boreal squirrels, obviously because they
(14:43):
are tree squirrels. And this is when you're talking your
eastern gray squirrel. This is not a groundhog. This is
not a prairie dog. This is your died in the wool,
cute little fluffy tailed sort of you know, they're called gray,
but they're sort of a light brownish color gener only,
although the colors do range, as we'll see. Uh. And
(15:03):
these are the ones that you're gonna find all over Atlanta,
jumping around, climbing around, leaping it podcasters in their front lawn. Uh.
They spend most of the time. Uh. I mean you
see him on the ground plenty. But they live in trees.
They nest in trees called Drey's or uh Drey's or
Drey's spelled within a year in a right. Um. And
(15:26):
you probably if you've ever looked up and seen a
massive like sticks and twigs in a leafless tree in
the middle of winter. You're looking at a squirrel's nest
called it dre um, and this is where you were
you were asking about them um staying in like same
sex groups apparently in the winter. Um. Even though the
tree squirrel does not live in a communal society like
(15:49):
a ground squirrel does, it's they're still social. They still
interact with one another. They play, they chase, they chase
one another off. They like mate. Um. But when gets
really cold, tree squirrels will um kind of group their
heat together by staying in a drey communally up to
like thirty members. Um. Yeah, it is very adorable. I
(16:12):
want to do a little exercise here real quick, Chuck.
I want you to use your imagination. Imagine a very
cold winter day, the winds blowing, snows being carried on
the wind, and it's passing by just outside a woodpecker hole,
and we're inside that woodpecker hole, and it's dark. The
(16:32):
light is very very faint because it's it's a kind
of an overcast sunny day to begin with. But we're
also inside a tree, in an old woodpecker hole, and
it's lined with a bunch of different leaves, and there's
half a dozen or so squirrels all kind of snuggled together, sleeping,
sharing their warmth as the winter day passes by outside
and they snooze an afternoon away fat on acorns that
(16:55):
they all just ate. Boy, isn't that amazing? Almost fell
asleep here, real Abert Frost, my friend, Thank you, thank you.
I like to think Robert Redford crossed with Robert cross
but well, you know Robert Redford if you look in
the mirror, but Robert Frost. When you pick a bin
up with the touch of Robert Gooley, if you sang it, surely,
(17:17):
uh oh man, that really did almost put me to sleep. Um,
that's quite nice. I love that scene. So here's a
little fun adaptation that squirrels have. If you see a
tree squirrel running down a tree face first with uh,
with little uh resistance, just like it was made to
do it, it's because it is. And they have those
(17:38):
little claws of course that really helps. But if you
look closely, or if you look up a picture rather
and you see like a still image, you will notice
that they have the ability to and Ed says, they
can turn their feet around. They really kind of just
turn their whole back legs around backwards to where those
claws are gripping on the way down, and that's why
(18:00):
they're you know, it's like the perfect adaptation to be
able to run up and down a tree. So, um,
have you ever watched one do that up close? Sure?
So any time I've seen that there, if you look
their legs, because they're turned around, it kicks kind of
their elbows out a little bit and though they climb down,
it looks a little different. And I've noticed that it
(18:21):
triggers the part of my lizard brain that's like a
spider alert. It's like that comes that it's it's triggered
by that. So it's like a giant, furry spider is
coming down to some little part of my brain that
sends off an alarm and it's really off putting sometimes
until I you know, the larger part, the executive functioning
(18:42):
part of my brain is like it's a squirrel, don't worry,
But there's that one just zap of. Like this is
weird and scary for a second, but it happens to
me from time to time when they come down the
tree like that. Well, it can be a little startling,
you know, if you're going to take out the trash
or something. And your trash can is next to a
big live oak like ours. And there are two or
more squirrels that are They seem like, I don't know
(19:04):
what they're doing. They seems like I have a beef
with one another. But maybe they're just playing chase. But
when they're really boogieing up and down and around a
tree right as you walk upon it is it can
be a little bit like, Oh, okay, I read that
when one was chasing the other. Um, it's a part
of the mating ritual. Okay, So that's that's embarrassing for them, right,
(19:25):
I don't I don't know if that's across the board,
but I saw that in at least one place, all right,
not like knowing that. Um. Here's another cool thing about squirrels.
They have all kinds of squirrels have scent glands, and
it depends on the species where that scent gland is located.
It can be uh, near their little bum hole. It
can be near their mouth in the corners of their mouth,
can be on their back. But in the case of
(19:47):
the tree squirrel, um, they have their scent glands on
their feet and sweat glands on the bottom of their feet,
and they are a squirrel that berries there uh their
food over large large areas sometimes like up to acres
can be their habitat where they're bearing and hiding food.
And they are literally every time they walk to bury something,
(20:08):
they're leaving a little scent trail that they can go
back and pick up. Ideally, but it's not a perfect system.
Sometimes they will lose stuff and not be able to
go back. But what they have then done is planted
a tree, yeah, which brings up their huge ecological role um,
which is like planting new forests, like keeping forests healthy
(20:28):
by forgetting about nuts. And the nut is actually a
seed and it grows into a new tree that the
squirrel helped move away from the tree. It's amazing splaining
it's range. They're known as the gardeners of the forest. Yeah,
And we taught we did a whole short stuff on
squirrels bearing nuts, and I remember one of the things
that came up was, um, there was a study that
found that if they if they know they're being watched
(20:50):
by another squirrel, they'll fake dig a hole and then
won't drop the nut in it. And then we'll go
somewhere else and mislead a squirrel. It's that they think
is watching them. Yeah, they'll look around first and be like,
did anyone seen that? Yeah? I think I'm good Todd
was watching. I better not drop the nut in this hole.
He he'll come along. Uh. So that's what the the
I'm sorry, not flying, but the tree squirrels. That's how
(21:11):
they use their scent. The ground squirrels, we should say,
mainly use their scent glands to mark their territory. And
you know, because they're all about their clan and their colony,
to sort of mark their territory and find out if
someone is a part of their clan. Yeah. And then also, um,
as far as scents go, I saw some somewhere that
some kinds of ground squirrels that are prey to rattlesnakes
(21:34):
will actually find shed rattlesnake skin rub it on themselves.
I'll chew it up and rub it on themselves to
give themselves a rattlesnake scent to throw off rattlesnakes. They
camouflaged their scent. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I wonder if
they ever wear it and just like fashion a couple
of holes and stick their arms through. Yeah, and they
bragged that they killed it. Yeah. Have you, man, I
(21:56):
shouldn't even mention this. Yeah, I'm gonna mention it, have
you because it is it is roadkill. But have you
ever seen the pictures of the squirrel road kill with
a little G I Joe Action figures? No, just look
it up. I can. They aren't squirrels that someone killed.
It's it's someone will take a roadkill picture of a
(22:18):
squirrel and they'll take the little G I. Joe figures
as if they were big game hunters, and they'll have
their guns, and they'll have like one leg up on
the squirrel's head as if it was their trophy. And
the squirrel looks positively giant next to the Little Action figures.
And it's kind of funny that one out. I don't
want to encourage people. Maybe I shouldn't have even said anything. Well,
I don't know if you're encouraging people to like swerve
(22:40):
onto a squirrel, you know, or kill a squirrel to
do that. But maybe just look it up on the
internet if you want to see that. Don't recreate it.
If you kill a squirrel and we find out about it,
we're coming to your house, I know, with a ghost
of that squirrel. Yeah, that will introduce to your attic
you so have we moved on to flying squirrels yet, Yeah,
(23:05):
let's do it. Those are you know the old story
when we had one growing up for a little while. Uh,
you probably don't remember, but my uncle gave us his
flying squirrel to watch for a while, and he would
leap from the curtains on the other side of the
room onto my shoulder. And then when we went out
of town, apparently they said the squirrel got out. But
now that I'm adult, I realized that the cat ate
(23:25):
the squirrel. Oh man, yeah, just to recap that childhood trauma.
That's wow. But for a little while, we had a
flying squirrel in our home for a brief shining moment.
That's the upshot. So a flying squirrel, and I thought this.
I thought they were fairly rare. Um. Apparently they're as
common as tree squirrels in some places. The reason that
(23:48):
you think they're rare is because they're nocturnal, so we're
usually sleeping when they're out and about. I love thinking
about those things just flying around all night. Yeah, and
flying is right, man, I saw Ed says the thing
glide up to aft. I saw three hundred in some cases.
And that's what they're doing. They're gliding. They're not flying.
They have no means of like propulsion. But they have
(24:11):
a skin flap. They've evolved the skin flap that is, um,
you know the bat suit that people like you know
skydive with. That's that is based basically on the flying
squirrels membranes between its um front legs and hind legs.
Um that it can you know, spread out when it
(24:31):
jumps and it just catches the air and they can
move it this way and that and use their tail
as a rudder and go a hundred fifty feet in
a pretty purposeful direction to Did you say what the
name of the flap was? No? Do you want to now?
I probably screwed it. I'm gonna go with a potagium.
(24:52):
That's great, had a gi um. I wonder what they
call that in the in the flying suit bit is
extreme flying suit bizz? I don't know, and I think
they call him bat suits, but that's that's a misnomer.
If you ask me that, I gotta say, I mean,
I'm not into any of that stuff. I would never
do it. But those videos are amazing, and it's is
(25:14):
it closes humans have come I think to flying it.
It feels like agreed, Yeah, I would have to have
probably a lobotomy to um to actually try that. It
would take that radical of a personality change for me
to try it well. And I mean sure that kind
of thing that's the most extreme, like years and years
of training, Yes, skydiving training and stuff like that, you know,
(25:36):
like jump into a bat suit. No, no, no, definitely not.
But even if you do, you know, once you get
to that point, like I can't imagine how dangerous that is.
You know, if you smack into something you're going really fast, Yeah, yeah,
your toast. Yeah, and that happens sadly. But I get
the impression that it's the rush is worth the risk,
(25:56):
that's right. Uh. And speaking of risk, there are endangered
flying squirrels, the Carolina Northern flying squirrel. And we talked
a little bit about these little land bridges that are
starting to pop up in the United States over overpasses
and and freeway crossings. And I just read today there's
one in in l A that's opening up that's like
(26:19):
a hundred and sixty ft wide. I can't remember the
name of it's named after someone, and to allow cougars
and you know, mountain lions to pass and all kinds
of animals. And they're using you know, they have done studies,
uh four squirrels and that they found tagged like radio
tag squirrels are foraging and building on the other side
(26:41):
of these massive freeways thanks to these bridges. Like it's
been proven to work. Yeah, for sure. I think it's
called the Robert Evans Memorial Animal Land Bridge. Baby. Yeah,
if only so. Um. That actually kind of leads us
to a quote I ran across chuck um because if
(27:02):
you put like I was saying, if you can kind
of connect the tree to another tree, which really ties
into that rewilding episode because you're you're using you're connecting
core to core via corridor basically is what they're doing
with that. Um that there was an old saying that
before well not too long ago, I think in into
the eighteenth century, maybe even early nineteenth century, that there
(27:25):
was so many chestnut trees in North America that a
squirrel could make it from Maine to Georgia without ever
touching the ground. Yeah, what do we cover that in?
Was it? I don't remember I remember that factoy that's
a great one. So, um, it really kind of goes
to show like there there used to be a lot
more forest in the United States, but there were also
(27:47):
a lot more squirrels because there's a there's a positive
correlation between masts producing trees which are um chestnut, beech
oak um trees that produced nuts, the squirrels and other
um forest animals eat um, and the number and population
density of squirrels in an area you have a lot
(28:09):
of mass producing trees, you're going to have a lot
of squirrels because again, they fill their ecological niche to
basically bursting. Yeah, and they you know, bursting with food
because uh, they are opportunistic eaters is what Ed says.
And that's a pretty good way to say it. Because
while they well, obviously if they can get fruit or
(28:29):
nuts and seeds, that's the stock of their diet. But
they will eat whatever keeps them alive. They will eat
insects and fungus and they actually spread fungus, which is great. Uh,
they eat roots, they have they have found little tiny
eggs and little tiny birds and little tiny lizards in
the guts of squirrels. Uh, so they you know, technically
(28:51):
are omnivores um, which is just to say squirrels are remarkable.
That's staying alive, and they will eat your garbage. They
will eat whatever they need too, but that's only if
they're not finding the nuts and the seeds and stuff
like that, which there are generally plenty, plenty of in
the United States. And one reason that they're um they're
suited for nuts, or that nuts are suited for them
(29:12):
is because they have two sets of incisors. I believe
upended down is the technical term. And they grow constantly
throughout their lifetime. I think they grow something like is
this even possible that I'm seeing it six inches a year? Well,
I mean they're constantly grinding them down, so I think
if a squirrel was in a coma, they could have
(29:34):
six inch bangs. That's crazy. And then apparently if they
don't continuously grind them down and they kept growing, they
would grow through the top and the bottom of their
face all at Lisa Simpson that time. She needed braces.
But that's crazy. So they use these very very hard
nuts like a chestnut or pecan or walnut shell to
(29:56):
impart as it's a food source, but as they're getting
to the food source, they're keeping their teeth ground down,
which apparently they have to do all the time. That's
pretty amazing. Squirrels also like a little sweet treat every
now and then. They have found red squirrels in Maine
that will tap sugar maple trees. They make little bite
marks in the tree and then they just say, all right,
do your thing, and they come back a few days
(30:17):
later and that trap has hardened up and run out
a little bit. And that is just a little tiny
sweet treat for a squirrel. That's right, It's pretty awesome.
They also found that um squirrels can learn by observing
other squirrels doing something, particularly finding new ways to get food.
They're adept at that. Okay, so they see Todd doing something,
(30:39):
they say, not a bad idea, let's give that a shot. Yeah,
that Todd really came around. Yeah. And if you'll notice,
I think we kind of skipped over this if we
didn't mention Australia. Uh, squirrels I think used to be
in Australia but aren't so much now. And is it
a mystery or is it just the obvious that the
Australians were like it? It It was on mate. I don't know,
(31:01):
I didn't see that anywhere, but I know that they
introduced the Eastern gray and then in Perth they introduced
the Indian palm, which is like if you mashed together
an Eastern gray squirrel in a chipmunk, that would be
an Indian palm squirrel. But apparently they both died out.
I don't know if it's a mystery or not, like
you're saying, but supposedly there's some feral colonies that escape
(31:23):
from zoos, at least in Perth. So there are wild
squirrels in Australia, but they were introduced uh in the
nineteenth century, which is actually a trend, as we'll see.
But I say, before we we tackle all that, we
take a break. How about that? All right, Well we'll
take the break and we'll talk about squirrel migration right
after this, okay, Chuck, so As I was saying, like
(32:06):
back before pre colonial days in particular, but also even
into the nineteenth century. I think even the nineteen sixties,
there were reports of massive numbers of squirrels basically stampeding.
They call them squirrel migrations, and they have been documented
enough times that that's it's not an anomaly, but they
are fairly rare. And today they've kind of figured out
(32:29):
that there aren't dense enough populations of squirrels to ever
have a genuine like squirrel stampede like they had before.
But there there used to be so many of them
that every once in a a while, thousands to tens of thousands,
two tends to tens of thousands of squirrels would pass
generally in like a big wave over an area. And
(32:49):
apparently it was quite a thing to see. I imagine
it was. And this happened because there would just be
a really big fruitful year for squirrel food, tons of availability,
and they would, you know, they would boom in numbers
because they go to where the food is. And usually
if that is followed by I guess historically when that
(33:11):
was followed by a really bad year um like the
rain you know, didn't work out so great for producing
nuts and seeds and stuff and fruit, that all of
a sudden, you've got a ton of squirrels in an
area that are all looking around going, oh, what's the deal? Uh,
and their opportunists. So they said, all right, we're getting
out of here. We're going to where the food is
(33:31):
let's go everybody. And they would do it all at once, Yeah,
all at once for some reason. And so there's migrations
they would be they'd be running through the forest, they'd
be running across the fields, they'd be swimming across rivers,
and apparently, in at least one account I saw, um,
they would be gulped up by bass in the rivers.
And I can't imagine some worse than a squirrel being
(33:53):
eaten by a fish. That seems unnatural. Yeah, but there
were so many of them. This is also at a
time where worlds were roundly among basically everyone living in
America viewed as vermin as um uh invaders as things
that were unwanted, but also a tasty food source too.
So anytime there was a squirrel stampede uh, the yokels
(34:17):
would run out with their sticks and bags and beat
squirrels to death and then cook them and sell their
pelts and do all sorts of things with them. And
one of the reasons why they were viewed as vermin
chuck is because on these squirrel migrations and other times
where they were just you know, if you were unlucky
with your planting, um, those squirrels might see as a
food source the crops you just planted all those seeds
(34:37):
and would dig them up and ruin your year's crops
in a day or so. So people didn't like squirrels
for a very long time. And this idea of squirrels
being everywhere, these little mammals living among us, like you
were talking about earlier, that's fairly new, and that's actually
very deliberate and purposeful, because squirrels were basically gone up
(34:58):
until about the mid to late nineteenth century in America. Yeah,
I mean between being hunted because people hated them on
their farms, like you said, people and people still and
like generally in certain parts of like Appalachia, still eat
squirrel on the menu. It is a little gamy from
what I'm told, I'm never gonna eat a squirrel, but
(35:19):
they still use pelts. But that kind of you know,
just like they would eat any larger mammal and use
their pelts. They would just get crafty with you know,
as small as a squirrel. And certainly in times of uh,
you know, real need, uh you know, small rodents would
come in handy on the menu back then. But uh,
they were almost gone. We started growing more urban in
(35:42):
the eighteen hundreds obviously, and they were killing squirrels as
fast as they could. And in the eighteen forties and fifties,
there were so few squirrels that they were introduced to
city parks, but not many. At first. They were just
like this weird curiosity where you would go out kind
of like bird watching and you would like try to
(36:03):
spot a squirrel running around because it was such a
novel thing. But then by the time Frederick law Olmstead,
who by the way, deserves his own podcast, came along
and really introduced the idea these really large city parks
and urban parks. Uh, they introduced a lot of squirrels
to these parks and they really really like that. That's
(36:23):
kind of why we have the squirrels we have today
was from this movement to reintroduce him in a big
way to urban parks. Yeah, and um, I mean we
talked kind of a lot about that whole idea in
our Central Park episode. This idea that you know, they
just kept building the city and building the city and
building city, and people started going crazy because there weren't
green spaces. So that that brought the parks in. And
(36:44):
then the idea of adding animals to the park just
to kind of naturalize it even more. Um that squirrels
played a huge role in that. UM And not only
you know, in Central Park, but also it started out
and I believe Philadelphia and then followed by Boston and um.
So by the mid to late nineteenth century, that's when
squirrels started to re establish themselves and the way that
(37:07):
people saw squirrels started to change too, And there was
this idea that, um, they weren't vermin anymore. Don't shoot them,
please try not to hit them with the stick. Instead,
let's go to the park, spend some time outside and
bring some nuts with you and maybe feed the squirrels.
And not only you feed the squirrels, but you've got
a little kid. That little kid wants to hit that
(37:27):
squirrel with the stick so bad, because kids are are
awful like that good. You can actually use squirrels feeding
squirrels as a way to teach kids to have compassion,
to um, be upstanding morally, to have charity. UM. And
that was kind of how the whole interaction between humans
and squirrels was kind of framed around that time, like
(37:50):
the late nineteenth early twentieth century. Yeah, the boy Scout
co founder Ernest Thompson's Seaton said that squirrels and introducing
the two boys in general, would say, would cure them
of their tendency towards cruelty. But I said, good luck
a second ago. How do you hit it? I mean,
I guess if there's a stampede. But you show me
a kid that can get a squirrel and hit it
(38:12):
with a stick, and that's a future Olympian. There's no way.
Those things are so fast. But don't try to do it, kids, definitely, no,
I don't even practice that. Don't try to qualify for
the Olympics and that because you'll show up to the
Olympics will be like, we don't, we don't have that.
That's not one of our sports. What do you think,
you say, is Australia right? Uh So these days, you know,
(38:35):
we've kind of come full circle into just sort of
letting squirrels be uh there are you know, if you're
a hunter in the United States, and that may be
the tradition in your family if you live out in
the country, to start off your child with hunting squirrels
with a little twenty two rifle or something two as
(38:57):
practice to teach young hunters. I'm certainly not into that,
but I'm not going to judge you if that's your thing.
And like I said, people still do eat squirrel in
certain parts of the United States today. Um, I guess
we can talk. I mean, we found a lot of
extra fun stuff. Well, well, let's talk about So we
were talking about how they're viewed in America. They're depending
(39:19):
on where you are in the world, and depending on
the squirl you're talking about, they're actually they can be
viewed quite negatively. I remember in our Rewilding episode we
talked about how Eastern gray squirrels are considered an invasive
species in Italy um where they call them Americans killer squirrels. Um.
And there's also an issue with Eastern gray squirrels in
(39:40):
Europe where they've killed off most of the Eurasian red
squirrels over there. Um be they've just out competed them.
It's not like they've you know, choked them or anything
like that. They they just they're like almost twice as big,
they're a lot more ornery, and they've just kind of
diminished the number of of Eurasian bread squirrels in the
(40:01):
UK so much so that three quarters of the population
lives in Scotland, and I would just like to direct
everybody to the Scottish Squirrels website. Go to Scottish Squirrels
dot org dot uk and this is very important. Slash
about and on their about page the header image is
(40:22):
maybe the cutest squirrel you'll ever see in your entire life?
Is that the one he sent me? And Jerry, Yes,
isn't that the cutest squirrel ever? It's pretty cute. You
also sent something else. If you go to RSPCA dot
org dot uk, slash Advice and Welfare, slash Wildlife, slash Animals,
slash gray squirrels, slash feeding, or you could just google
(40:45):
feeding squirrels and using nest boxes, you're gonna see a
squirrel with a chicken wing in its mouth. Yeah, that's
pretty It's better than a bass eating of squirrel, I'll
tell you that. Yeah, that's a good article you sent
because it talks about if you like squirrels around, which
I certainly do, creating a good habitat for them. Trees,
obviously it's a good thing to have. Not cutting down
(41:06):
trees is a great thing to do if you can
avoid it. Uh, And then having squirrel safe bird feeders. Uh.
And this means not that the squirrels can't get to
that seed, because they, as you have attested, they will
find a way. Life finds a way, but it don't
won't trap the squirrel inside of it. No. Um, that's
that's a big one too. They also kind of get
(41:27):
into um, they get all Macbeth or Hamlet, which one
was to be or not to be? Why you asking
me this? Because they get all Hamlet or Macbeth on
whether or not to feed squirrels. You go, Um, So
they're they're like, you could feed squirrels, but really you shouldn't.
In the RSPCA takes I think a pretty sensible tact,
(41:50):
which is build a habitat for the squirrels and that
you're planting the right kind of trees that provide a
place for them to nest in a place for them
to get food, and then just step back. I can
enjoy them. If you're like you know, me and Mo,
and you go on walks or whatever and you want
to feed the squirrels. There are some things that are
better for squirrels than others, and it's basically you want
(42:11):
to give them what they would naturally eat. Um, which
is masked unshelled nuts like walnuts, chest nuts, acorns, hazel nuts,
that kind of thing. Yes, but not black safflower seeds.
I saw that if you are one of those people
who can't stand squirrels rating your um bird feeder, black
safflower seeds are they'll eat them, but they're not crazy
(42:33):
about them, and most birds like them instead. So that's
one way to do it. But you can also feed
them vegetables too, and chuck. They included this little tip
that I didn't realize. But if you if you're feeding squirrels,
you're leaving food out for squirrels in your yard, and
you have a garden that you care about, you don't
really want the squirrel taking the food and then burying
it elsewhere. So they said, if you're gonna feed them
(42:55):
fruits and vegetables shredded, because the squirrels is gonna eat
it there, it's not gonna try to bury it. I
thought that was smart. Yeah, And if you have the nuts,
don't give them like honey roasted almonds, like unsweetened, unsalted stuff.
I have set up you know, I have a camp
cam at the family camp trail cam and it's uh
(43:15):
it's keyed in on my deer feeder that I got,
which is corn, and I've seen one deer. But almost
every night I have scores of raccoons and almost every day,
well every day, I have squirrels, crows, and now daily
turkeys visiting. Lots and lots of turkeys. So I don't
(43:37):
care that the deer aren't visiting. It's all kinds of
animals are coming around. It's always fun to watch on
the camp cam. That is very cool. Um. One thing
you want to be careful with with peanuts too, is
giving them raw peanuts because peanuts can carry um an affletoxin,
which is very It's not good. It's not good for squirrels.
It's not good for humans either. It's a type of fungus.
(43:59):
I think that actually is not only carcinogen carcinogists that
can actually like just kill you on the spot neurologically speaking. Um,
So you actually want roasted peanuts, but not salted or
anything like that. So like plain roasted peanuts, or what's
even better because it helps with their teeth, are mass
(44:20):
nuts again like pecans, walnuts, that kind of stuff. But
a lot of people say don't feed squirrels because you're
actually what you're doing is, as we've seen, if squirrels
know that there's a lot of food, they're going to
mate mate mate mate mate, and there's going to be
a lot of squirrels and they're going to become dependent
on that additional food supply. Um, and they might start
showing up at your neighbor's house, they might start burrowing
(44:41):
into your attic. There's just a lot of there's a
lot of things that to to take into consideration. I guess, yeah,
well the family camp, there's nothing but would so I
hope we get overrun. So I agree with you. So
you found a couple of cool things, um, including why
squirrels like seem to ash in front of your car
when you're driving right. Yeah, so, and and again I
(45:06):
love that we've just finally found answers for this stuff
because this is kind of a fun, non obnoxious fact
to jump on to drop on someone. If you're driving
around a neighborhood and the squirrel does that thing and
people go, why the squirrels do that? We can say, well,
it's actually an evolutionary instinct to get away from a predator.
So if you run out and you initially freeze when
(45:29):
there's a predator. The predator, it's sort of like a
football player waiting for the defensive player to make their move,
and then you go the opposite way with a little juke.
And that's what the squirrel is doing. They go out,
they freeze when they see that car, and if it
was a predator, they would wait on the predator to
sort of make a move and then they can quickly
go in a direction that is really comes in handy
(45:52):
when it's a predator, when it's a car that's going,
you know, generally in a big, hulking straight line. Uh,
it's not the same thing. But a squirrel has a
squirrel brain and it doesn't realize that. So that's why
a squirrel will jump out in the street, see a
car and just stop. They're not dumb. They're waiting on
you to make some hawk like move, which doesn't happen
(46:12):
in the car. So what you do is you just
slow down and check your review mirror. Don't say I'm
on the brakes or anything, but you know, they're everywhere,
and I've hit I think maybe two squirrels in my
adult life, so it's not like the most common thing
to run over a squirrel. Yeah, I ran over one once,
and my brother in law said that he was on
(46:33):
his way to buy a birthday present for his young
kid who was waiting forever for their dad to come
back for his birthday present for his party. It was
not helpful. Uh, and what about these black squirrels. Uh,
Emily and I we're taking a walk through Brooklyn one
day and saw a black, black, black squirrel, not just
(46:54):
a hint of black, and it was the coolest thing
I've ever seen. And I've since seen a few more
here and there in New York. And we had the
answer there too, right, Yes, Uh, they seem to be
so they used to think that they were freaks of nature.
I think is one um naturalist put it like years
and years ago, and somebody said, I don't know that
(47:15):
that's true. I think these actually might have been the
dominant version. Uh. They seem to be closely related to
Eastern grays, if not just a type of Eastern gray,
like a different breed of that species. Um. But they
were saying they used to possibly be the dominant version
and then they got edged out by the Eastern gray,
and so they're there's they're they're they're just kind of
(47:38):
uh infrequently, they infrequently appear, but there are parts of
um North America where they seem to populate more than others,
like New York. You mean, I um used to see
them in d C. Toronto. They're all over Toronto, UM
in Ontario in general, from what I understand. So it
seems like from what I could tell, that they think
(47:58):
that there they were, they're already and now we're just
kind of seeing them in like this kind of moment
in time where their numbers have diminished tremendously, where if
we went back in time we might see a lot more.
Is that Does that seem accurate? Yeah? I mean, it's
just genetics. It's a recessive gene that causes an abnormal pigmentation,
and you will, you know, you're you're only going to
(48:19):
get more of that recessive gene if these squirrels or
any uh, you know, creature is reproducing in a in
a smaller area. So if you've got to contain population,
like let's say an island like New York or apparently
Roosevelt Island has a lot of them, uh, you're just
gonna see more of them. So uh, d C is
(48:41):
a little not inexplicable, but it makes more sense in
New York because you're just going to get more, you know,
more of this recessive gene happening in a certain area.
So not at all my explanation. Then, now what's your explanation?
Now you nailed it. And this was an article the
Mysterious Black Squirrels of NYC from what turns out to
(49:03):
be a really good website called Untapped Cities dot com
and writer Michelle Young. It's it's really cool read um. Yeah,
so you got anything else on squirrels? Nothing and hug
a squirrel, Embrace the squirrel. But but don't do that,
don't know. If you do feed them, don't don't let
them meat out of your hand because they'll bite you.
Even though they're grateful, there's still bitey um. And since
(49:27):
I said that, everybody, it's time for listener mail. That's right.
And it's a great listener mail because we get to
say hello to a kindergarten class, which is always fun. Hello, Hi,
Mr Chuck and Mr Josh. My name is Katie. It's
either fink or finky, and I'm emailing with my kindergarten
(49:50):
class in Baltimore City We sometimes listen to your show,
and we were so excited when you heard you mentioned
the three Sisters in the recent watermelon episode. We actually
spent a whole week and learn about the three sisters
this fall and wanted to share with you our excitement.
We hope you do a short stuff on them soon.
We definitely will if you need some Three Sisters experts
who wanted to uh tell you these facts that we
(50:13):
learned this year. Uh, and here's a little short list.
Native Americans would plant fish first in the ground to
prepare the soil and make it healthy and rich. Love
that the corn grows so tall that holds up the beans,
and the squash keeps the soil moist so the other
two sisters have enough water to stay hydrated. And finally,
(50:34):
all three of the sisters are dried so that people
can save them to eat later in the winter, which
is a great benefit. So, uh, we really want to
share our knowledge in case you do a short stuff.
Thanks for reading. Love Miss fink E's or Miss Fink's
kindergarten class. And uh, like I said, this is in
Baltimore City. Man, that's really impressive. Like I remember in kindergarten,
(50:57):
I was learning Red Red Red. I wasn't learning about
the three sisters and groundcovers like keeping them moisture in
place for the other two. I mean, come on, that's
really impressive this week read. I think it was more
(51:17):
like that month. February is red month. All right, Oh
that's great. Well, thank you, miss Fink or Finky's class.
Hats off to you guys. Keep it up. Uh and yes,
we will definitely do a three Sisters episode some day
dedicated to you guys. All right, Chuck for sure. If
you want to get in touch with us, you can
(51:37):
to via email at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of i Heeart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(52:00):
T
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry is here. And this is
one of the greatest episodes will ever do. As far
as I'm concerned. Squirrels. I really wanted squirrels. I've been
(00:26):
seeing that all day. It's wonderful. That is so wonderful.
It is that song isn't But you know, uh yeah yeah.
If you go back and listen to BC Boys, you're like, wow,
they give them a long way though, and we're announcing
that stuff. Yeah for sure. Um, so we're talking not
about the BC Boys. Surprisingly, we're talking about squirrels in
(00:47):
the morning. It's squirrels. Every evening. It's squirrels. Squirrels to syllables, right,
I don't care however you want to say it the
little squirrel sure or Boston I guess probably they say
it similarly as well. But if you want to get fancy,
you can bust out their Latin name. They're members of
(01:08):
the Road in Order, but for their family, their scure
a day, Secura day. Nope, security day. I look this
one up, all right, Sierra die like my more. Okay,
did you just toot on my renovation? Yeah, even though
(01:28):
it was correct? Did you give me a bronx cheer? How?
How is it? Siura die? Well? Let me do the
person online? Sierra die okay? Is that Emma who said that?
Or Sierra Day was another? But I think we've heard
from people that d A E. S die okay? And
that's fine. Um, if that's what it's called, I'm just
(01:50):
gonna call them squirrels from now on. But there's actually
exactly three hundred species of squirrels, and it's it's kind
of hard to wrap your head around because usually if
you live in a place with squirrels, meaning you live
on a continent outside of Antarctica, yeah, like everywhere, Basically,
they're probably a lot of squirrels living around you, and
(02:11):
they probably all look basically exactly alike, because it seems
like when they fill an ecological niche, brother, they fill
it and there's not much room for competing species, it
seems like from my experience. Yeah, I mean there are
And who helped us with this was this? This is
a grabster. Yeah, so grabs your points out that you know,
(02:35):
you can find mountain squirrels and city squirrels and forest
squirrels and jungle squirrels and desert squirrels. You can find
squirrels in Alaska that hibernate with the lowest body temperature
of any mammal, that have body temperatures below freezing at times.
You can go to Africa and find one of the
(02:58):
cutest squirrels, the African pigmies squirrel, which is as small
as the tiny little mouse. Where you can go to
Bhutan and find the giant flying squirrel of Bhutan that
with their head and body and is over two ft long.
With that tail, they're huge, no two ft long. Without
the tail stressing they're distressingly large. Yeah, because the squirrel
(03:21):
tail will get into this, but that's one of their
signature features generally, although depending on the species, because there
are three hundred species, like you said, more than are
almost three, some of those tails are a little diminished.
But usually when you think squirrel, you think of that
big bushy tail. Yeah, and not only when you think
of squirrel you think of the tail. But the Greeks themselves,
(03:45):
somebody decided that a Greek term would make sense, but
scurrios or scurios, which roughly means something like shadow tail
ed says shady Butt, also saw shadow tail, which is
a reference to how squirrels sometimes high in the shadow
cast by their own tail. It's pretty pretty clever, but
the squirrel is usually kind of the bushy tail of
(04:07):
the squirrel is what makes a squirrel of squirrel. One
of the other things that really differentiates it from other
rodents is the way that its jaw and muscle are
attached to its skull. There's actually a name for it,
sirio morphous zygo massoteric system. They look at you hooked
on phonics works for me. You even recorded the new pronunciation.
(04:30):
You worked it right in there with a syria die
I adapted, Yeah, because you should have heard it before
when I was work shopping it. That was the first take. Everybody,
we're not lying, so um so uh. Those are two
things that really kind of differentiates squirrels. But as we've
really um gotten better and better at at taxonomy with
(04:51):
the introduction of UM genome mapping, we can see like, oh,
this animal that doesn't look anything like this animal is
actually really closely related and with as with just about
every other animal we've studied using modern genetic m taxonomy,
UM squirrels are. Our understanding of squirrels has really kind
(05:12):
of changed shape of who's related to whom, who's descended
from who. But there's there. We're kind of going to
go the old school way, which is differentiating them based
on their habitat and their behavior. So there's three groups
of squirrels that we're going to cover, even though there's
technically five subfamilies now ground squirrels, tree squirrels, and flying squirrels.
(05:33):
And before we go any further, I officially dedicate this
episode to Momo, one of the great lovers of squirrels
of all time, who changed changed me in my heart
towards squirrels. I used to be a squirrel hatter, chuck squirrels.
You remember the bird feeder Momo pointed out to me, said, Dad,
(05:54):
squirrels are great. I'm going to teach you to love them.
And she did. Yeah, dogs and squirrels. It's what was
the Disney It was either Pixar Disney had animated movie
where the dog would just stop and go squirrel anytime
there's a squirrel. I can't remember which one it was.
I don't remember. It wasn't that long ago. But before
(06:16):
we move on, to ground squirrels. Uh. It is kind
of fun to learn that because of that DNA analysis
that we now have at our fingertips and fossil evidence,
we know that squirrels uh went to western North America
forty million years ago because squirrels like to get around.
As we will see, they crossed a land bridge to
(06:37):
Eurasia about ten million years after that, and then as
soon as they could, as soon as Eurasia met up
with Africa about twenty million years ago, they went all right,
we're in Africa now too. Because squirrels like to get around.
They as you will see. Um, well we'll just tease
that and say, squirrels like to get around. Yeah, I mean,
you put one tree next to another, squirrel is going
(06:59):
to go from tree a treat, but another tree is
gonna go the next tree. And if you put trees
all the way across one continent to another, they're going
to micrate. That's just what they do, and that's what
they did. But if I thought I loved squirrels before,
now that I know that they're actually native from thirty
five million years back to North America, I just think
that's that's just the tops. Yeah, And we talked about
(07:21):
it before when you were having your bird feeder issue.
But you know, Atlanta is a city in the forest,
and we have tons and tons and tons of squirrels.
Kind of everywhere along the East Coast does, but Atlanta
just has a lot of squirrels. And as I was reading,
you know, from my upstairs office, there's a window not
right in front of my face but sort of above me,
(07:43):
and are huge, big, beautiful oak in our front yard.
Um doing this on squirrels. I just look up for
a second and I see four squirrels running around that
tree together, playing like circling it like a barber pole.
I take my daughter to school this morning and count
the squirrels that I see on the way. I counted
twenty two squirrels that I just saw on a you know,
(08:05):
twelve minute car ride. You hit one of them there,
I have before. It's the worst thing ever. But they're
everywhere in Atlanta. And it hit me a while ago
about how easy it is living here, just or anywhere
where there's a lot of squirrels, just to sort of
be like, yeah, the squirrels. But it kind of hit
(08:26):
me like how crazy it is that there are these
little mammals. They're not hiding in holes generally like mice
and stuff like that. Like, they're just out all over
the place at all times. Were surrounded by these little mammals. Yeah,
out and proud. And if you come close too close
to one of their trees when you're walking by and
(08:46):
the squirrel doesn't like it, he's gonna sit there or
she uh and chatter at you and basically tell you
to beat it, you punk, get away from my tree.
That's how. That's one of the great lovable things about squirrels.
They have such huge personalities, just so great. Chuck. Remember
my famous squirrel attack not too long ago, and that
when I went outside on I got it on my
(09:06):
doorbell camera and that squirrel leaped through the air and
hit me in the leg. It was a complete accident.
Of course, I don't think the squirrel was trying to
kill me, but you don't know. They're just they're all
over the place. We're gonna get to all the fun
stuff about the black squirrels of New York and why
squirrels stop in the middle of the road when they
go to across the street. Like there we found reasons
(09:29):
for all this stuff, which I love. It's not that
squirrels are dumb, and we're going to reveal all that
in this episode. Okay, I'm a little excited. I'm a
little worked up. I know it's a ted early, but
we're so squirrel positive that, I mean, it's a great
way to put it. Chuck, all right, so are we
taking a break? I say, all right, I need to
calm down too, And I guarantee you I'm gonna go
(09:50):
like blow my nose in the other room. I'm gonna
see a squirrel. I'll be right back, all right, Chuck. So,
(10:17):
as promised, we're gonna break squirrels down into three groups crown, tree, uh,
flying or aerial um. And I proposed that we start
with the ground squirrel, many species of which you probably
not you, but I mean you, dear listener, and me
I'll include too. Didn't realize we're actual squirrels like groundhog,
(10:41):
Chuck did not know that was a squirrel, chipmunk. I
had a feeling that might be a squirrel. Gosh, they're
so great too. What about a groundhog? You already said groundhog?
Did I? Okay? In a list of four things, I'm swirling,
I'm swirling still if my love is Yeah, well that's
(11:03):
what was coming out of my mouth. Next, Yeah, prairie
dog didn't know what about that mere cat? I didn't
know that. Well, that's because they're not but prairie dogs, chipmunks,
and um, what was the other one? Mormons? Yeah, Marmattan
brought them in and groundhogs. Those are all ground squirrels.
They're squirrels friends, um, and that makes them pretty awesome.
(11:26):
But one of the reasons why they you wouldn't think
they're squirrels is because and a lot of those species
they lack that characteristic bushy tail. But then also they
live almost a totally different life from their tree dwelling
more famous cousins. Yeah. I mean they might climb a tree,
but generally you're not going to see a groundhogger prairie
(11:47):
dog up in the tree if they knew, if they
need to, you know, for a brief time, if they're
trying to find food or something or uh like on
the run from something trying to kill it, they might
go up in a tree, but they generally hang out
on the ground, hence the name. They love their rocky terrain. Uh. Chipmunks,
for speaking for them, are pretty solitary unless they're trying
(12:09):
to reproduce. But uh, I know that you've found some stuff.
Was it on the prairie dogs that that have their
big families and colonies. Yeah, I mean that's one of
the main characteristics of of ground squirrels in general, aside
from a couple, but that they're much more communal than
tree squirrels, and in particular, the largest town a prairie
(12:29):
dog town is what they're called the largest prairie dog
town on record is in Texas, because of course everything
is bigger there, but there was a colony of black
tailed prairie dogs and this town, Chuck, stretched a hundred
miles wide by two hundred and fifty miles long and
contained four hundred million prairie dogs. Again, crownd squirrels all
(12:53):
living in this kind of large community. I mean that's
like it's like a Chinese mega city or something like that.
Time's tend yea. So are these the ones that tend
to stay uh grouped with their own sex? Uh No,
those tend to be either tree squirrels or flying squirrels.
These are more the um because they live in in
(13:16):
communal groups and kinship is a big deal. Ground squirrels,
like prairie dogs, tend to have a really good ability
to send to smell the scent of other ground squirrels,
so they can tell, like who's a blood relation who's not.
And they've done studies to see, you know, if a
like if a ground squirrel, they have a lot of
(13:37):
really sophisticated calls too, because they're alerting others to the
presence of a rattlesneak or a hawk or something. So
they're really talkative and they have a lot of sophisticated
different communication um and they found that, uh, like a
prairie dog that will stand up and and take the
time to risk its own life to alert others, it's
(13:58):
actually alerting the others that it's alerting are actually related
by blood, and the groundhog or the prairie dog knows
this because it can smell it's blood relations among all
these other you know, extended family members in the town.
There's not much cuter than a squirrel sitting up on
its rear haunches, whether it's I mean, obviously those prairie dogs,
(14:21):
you know, they do it for a living, but even
our eastern gray squirrels sit upon those back legs. If
they want to work a nut with their little front
pop ads. Yeah, or a chipmunk on its back legs.
It's doesn't get much cuter as little busy hands. Goodness me. Yeah, alright,
so we can move on to our tree squirrel. This
is they're known as our boreal squirrels, obviously because they
(14:43):
are tree squirrels. And this is when you're talking your
eastern gray squirrel. This is not a groundhog. This is
not a prairie dog. This is your died in the wool,
cute little fluffy tailed sort of you know, they're called gray,
but they're sort of a light brownish color gener only,
although the colors do range, as we'll see. Uh. And
(15:03):
these are the ones that you're gonna find all over Atlanta,
jumping around, climbing around, leaping it podcasters in their front lawn. Uh.
They spend most of the time. Uh. I mean you
see him on the ground plenty. But they live in trees.
They nest in trees called Drey's or uh Drey's or
Drey's spelled within a year in a right. Um. And
(15:26):
you probably if you've ever looked up and seen a
massive like sticks and twigs in a leafless tree in
the middle of winter. You're looking at a squirrel's nest
called it dre um, and this is where you were
you were asking about them um staying in like same
sex groups apparently in the winter. Um. Even though the
tree squirrel does not live in a communal society like
(15:49):
a ground squirrel does, it's they're still social. They still
interact with one another. They play, they chase, they chase
one another off. They like mate. Um. But when gets
really cold, tree squirrels will um kind of group their
heat together by staying in a drey communally up to
like thirty members. Um. Yeah, it is very adorable. I
(16:12):
want to do a little exercise here real quick, Chuck.
I want you to use your imagination. Imagine a very
cold winter day, the winds blowing, snows being carried on
the wind, and it's passing by just outside a woodpecker hole,
and we're inside that woodpecker hole, and it's dark. The
(16:32):
light is very very faint because it's it's a kind
of an overcast sunny day to begin with. But we're
also inside a tree, in an old woodpecker hole, and
it's lined with a bunch of different leaves, and there's
half a dozen or so squirrels all kind of snuggled together, sleeping,
sharing their warmth as the winter day passes by outside
and they snooze an afternoon away fat on acorns that
(16:55):
they all just ate. Boy, isn't that amazing? Almost fell
asleep here, real Abert Frost, my friend, Thank you, thank you.
I like to think Robert Redford crossed with Robert cross
but well, you know Robert Redford if you look in
the mirror, but Robert Frost. When you pick a bin
up with the touch of Robert Gooley, if you sang it, surely,
(17:17):
uh oh man, that really did almost put me to sleep. Um,
that's quite nice. I love that scene. So here's a
little fun adaptation that squirrels have. If you see a
tree squirrel running down a tree face first with uh,
with little uh resistance, just like it was made to
do it, it's because it is. And they have those
(17:38):
little claws of course that really helps. But if you
look closely, or if you look up a picture rather
and you see like a still image, you will notice
that they have the ability to and Ed says, they
can turn their feet around. They really kind of just
turn their whole back legs around backwards to where those
claws are gripping on the way down, and that's why
(18:00):
they're you know, it's like the perfect adaptation to be
able to run up and down a tree. So, um,
have you ever watched one do that up close? Sure?
So any time I've seen that there, if you look
their legs, because they're turned around, it kicks kind of
their elbows out a little bit and though they climb down,
it looks a little different. And I've noticed that it
(18:21):
triggers the part of my lizard brain that's like a
spider alert. It's like that comes that it's it's triggered
by that. So it's like a giant, furry spider is
coming down to some little part of my brain that
sends off an alarm and it's really off putting sometimes
until I you know, the larger part, the executive functioning
(18:42):
part of my brain is like it's a squirrel, don't worry,
But there's that one just zap of. Like this is
weird and scary for a second, but it happens to
me from time to time when they come down the
tree like that. Well, it can be a little startling,
you know, if you're going to take out the trash
or something. And your trash can is next to a
big live oak like ours. And there are two or
more squirrels that are They seem like, I don't know
(19:04):
what they're doing. They seems like I have a beef
with one another. But maybe they're just playing chase. But
when they're really boogieing up and down and around a
tree right as you walk upon it is it can
be a little bit like, Oh, okay, I read that
when one was chasing the other. Um, it's a part
of the mating ritual. Okay, So that's that's embarrassing for them, right,
(19:25):
I don't I don't know if that's across the board,
but I saw that in at least one place, all right,
not like knowing that. Um. Here's another cool thing about squirrels.
They have all kinds of squirrels have scent glands, and
it depends on the species where that scent gland is located.
It can be uh, near their little bum hole. It
can be near their mouth in the corners of their mouth,
can be on their back. But in the case of
(19:47):
the tree squirrel, um, they have their scent glands on
their feet and sweat glands on the bottom of their feet,
and they are a squirrel that berries there uh their
food over large large areas sometimes like up to acres
can be their habitat where they're bearing and hiding food.
And they are literally every time they walk to bury something,
(20:08):
they're leaving a little scent trail that they can go
back and pick up. Ideally, but it's not a perfect system.
Sometimes they will lose stuff and not be able to
go back. But what they have then done is planted
a tree, yeah, which brings up their huge ecological role um,
which is like planting new forests, like keeping forests healthy
(20:28):
by forgetting about nuts. And the nut is actually a
seed and it grows into a new tree that the
squirrel helped move away from the tree. It's amazing splaining
it's range. They're known as the gardeners of the forest. Yeah,
And we taught we did a whole short stuff on
squirrels bearing nuts, and I remember one of the things
that came up was, um, there was a study that
found that if they if they know they're being watched
(20:50):
by another squirrel, they'll fake dig a hole and then
won't drop the nut in it. And then we'll go
somewhere else and mislead a squirrel. It's that they think
is watching them. Yeah, they'll look around first and be like,
did anyone seen that? Yeah? I think I'm good Todd
was watching. I better not drop the nut in this hole.
He he'll come along. Uh. So that's what the the
I'm sorry, not flying, but the tree squirrels. That's how
(21:11):
they use their scent. The ground squirrels, we should say,
mainly use their scent glands to mark their territory. And
you know, because they're all about their clan and their colony,
to sort of mark their territory and find out if
someone is a part of their clan. Yeah. And then also, um,
as far as scents go, I saw some somewhere that
some kinds of ground squirrels that are prey to rattlesnakes
(21:34):
will actually find shed rattlesnake skin rub it on themselves.
I'll chew it up and rub it on themselves to
give themselves a rattlesnake scent to throw off rattlesnakes. They
camouflaged their scent. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I wonder if
they ever wear it and just like fashion a couple
of holes and stick their arms through. Yeah, and they
bragged that they killed it. Yeah. Have you, man, I
(21:56):
shouldn't even mention this. Yeah, I'm gonna mention it, have
you because it is it is roadkill. But have you
ever seen the pictures of the squirrel road kill with
a little G I Joe Action figures? No, just look
it up. I can. They aren't squirrels that someone killed.
It's it's someone will take a roadkill picture of a
(22:18):
squirrel and they'll take the little G I. Joe figures
as if they were big game hunters, and they'll have
their guns, and they'll have like one leg up on
the squirrel's head as if it was their trophy. And
the squirrel looks positively giant next to the Little Action figures.
And it's kind of funny that one out. I don't
want to encourage people. Maybe I shouldn't have even said anything. Well,
I don't know if you're encouraging people to like swerve
(22:40):
onto a squirrel, you know, or kill a squirrel to
do that. But maybe just look it up on the
internet if you want to see that. Don't recreate it.
If you kill a squirrel and we find out about it,
we're coming to your house, I know, with a ghost
of that squirrel. Yeah, that will introduce to your attic
you so have we moved on to flying squirrels yet, Yeah,
(23:05):
let's do it. Those are you know the old story
when we had one growing up for a little while. Uh,
you probably don't remember, but my uncle gave us his
flying squirrel to watch for a while, and he would
leap from the curtains on the other side of the
room onto my shoulder. And then when we went out
of town, apparently they said the squirrel got out. But
now that I'm adult, I realized that the cat ate
(23:25):
the squirrel. Oh man, yeah, just to recap that childhood trauma.
That's wow. But for a little while, we had a
flying squirrel in our home for a brief shining moment.
That's the upshot. So a flying squirrel, and I thought this.
I thought they were fairly rare. Um. Apparently they're as
common as tree squirrels in some places. The reason that
(23:48):
you think they're rare is because they're nocturnal, so we're
usually sleeping when they're out and about. I love thinking
about those things just flying around all night. Yeah, and
flying is right, man, I saw Ed says the thing
glide up to aft. I saw three hundred in some cases.
And that's what they're doing. They're gliding. They're not flying.
They have no means of like propulsion. But they have
(24:11):
a skin flap. They've evolved the skin flap that is, um,
you know the bat suit that people like you know
skydive with. That's that is based basically on the flying
squirrels membranes between its um front legs and hind legs.
Um that it can you know, spread out when it
(24:31):
jumps and it just catches the air and they can
move it this way and that and use their tail
as a rudder and go a hundred fifty feet in
a pretty purposeful direction to Did you say what the
name of the flap was? No? Do you want to now?
I probably screwed it. I'm gonna go with a potagium.
(24:52):
That's great, had a gi um. I wonder what they
call that in the in the flying suit bit is
extreme flying suit bizz? I don't know, and I think
they call him bat suits, but that's that's a misnomer.
If you ask me that, I gotta say, I mean,
I'm not into any of that stuff. I would never
do it. But those videos are amazing, and it's is
(25:14):
it closes humans have come I think to flying it.
It feels like agreed, Yeah, I would have to have
probably a lobotomy to um to actually try that. It
would take that radical of a personality change for me
to try it well. And I mean sure that kind
of thing that's the most extreme, like years and years
of training, Yes, skydiving training and stuff like that, you know,
(25:36):
like jump into a bat suit. No, no, no, definitely not.
But even if you do, you know, once you get
to that point, like I can't imagine how dangerous that is.
You know, if you smack into something you're going really fast, Yeah, yeah,
your toast. Yeah, and that happens sadly. But I get
the impression that it's the rush is worth the risk,
(25:56):
that's right. Uh. And speaking of risk, there are endangered
flying squirrels, the Carolina Northern flying squirrel. And we talked
a little bit about these little land bridges that are
starting to pop up in the United States over overpasses
and and freeway crossings. And I just read today there's
one in in l A that's opening up that's like
(26:19):
a hundred and sixty ft wide. I can't remember the
name of it's named after someone, and to allow cougars
and you know, mountain lions to pass and all kinds
of animals. And they're using you know, they have done studies,
uh four squirrels and that they found tagged like radio
tag squirrels are foraging and building on the other side
(26:41):
of these massive freeways thanks to these bridges. Like it's
been proven to work. Yeah, for sure. I think it's
called the Robert Evans Memorial Animal Land Bridge. Baby. Yeah,
if only so. Um. That actually kind of leads us
to a quote I ran across chuck um because if
(27:02):
you put like I was saying, if you can kind
of connect the tree to another tree, which really ties
into that rewilding episode because you're you're using you're connecting
core to core via corridor basically is what they're doing
with that. Um that there was an old saying that
before well not too long ago, I think in into
the eighteenth century, maybe even early nineteenth century, that there
(27:25):
was so many chestnut trees in North America that a
squirrel could make it from Maine to Georgia without ever
touching the ground. Yeah, what do we cover that in?
Was it? I don't remember I remember that factoy that's
a great one. So, um, it really kind of goes
to show like there there used to be a lot
more forest in the United States, but there were also
(27:47):
a lot more squirrels because there's a there's a positive
correlation between masts producing trees which are um chestnut, beech
oak um trees that produced nuts, the squirrels and other
um forest animals eat um, and the number and population
density of squirrels in an area you have a lot
(28:09):
of mass producing trees, you're going to have a lot
of squirrels because again, they fill their ecological niche to
basically bursting. Yeah, and they you know, bursting with food
because uh, they are opportunistic eaters is what Ed says.
And that's a pretty good way to say it. Because
while they well, obviously if they can get fruit or
(28:29):
nuts and seeds, that's the stock of their diet. But
they will eat whatever keeps them alive. They will eat
insects and fungus and they actually spread fungus, which is great. Uh,
they eat roots, they have they have found little tiny
eggs and little tiny birds and little tiny lizards in
the guts of squirrels. Uh, so they you know, technically
(28:51):
are omnivores um, which is just to say squirrels are remarkable.
That's staying alive, and they will eat your garbage. They
will eat whatever they need too, but that's only if
they're not finding the nuts and the seeds and stuff
like that, which there are generally plenty, plenty of in
the United States. And one reason that they're um they're
suited for nuts, or that nuts are suited for them
(29:12):
is because they have two sets of incisors. I believe
upended down is the technical term. And they grow constantly
throughout their lifetime. I think they grow something like is
this even possible that I'm seeing it six inches a year? Well,
I mean they're constantly grinding them down, so I think
if a squirrel was in a coma, they could have
(29:34):
six inch bangs. That's crazy. And then apparently if they
don't continuously grind them down and they kept growing, they
would grow through the top and the bottom of their
face all at Lisa Simpson that time. She needed braces.
But that's crazy. So they use these very very hard
nuts like a chestnut or pecan or walnut shell to
(29:56):
impart as it's a food source, but as they're getting
to the food source, they're keeping their teeth ground down,
which apparently they have to do all the time. That's
pretty amazing. Squirrels also like a little sweet treat every
now and then. They have found red squirrels in Maine
that will tap sugar maple trees. They make little bite
marks in the tree and then they just say, all right,
do your thing, and they come back a few days
(30:17):
later and that trap has hardened up and run out
a little bit. And that is just a little tiny
sweet treat for a squirrel. That's right, It's pretty awesome.
They also found that um squirrels can learn by observing
other squirrels doing something, particularly finding new ways to get food.
They're adept at that. Okay, so they see Todd doing something,
(30:39):
they say, not a bad idea, let's give that a shot. Yeah,
that Todd really came around. Yeah. And if you'll notice,
I think we kind of skipped over this if we
didn't mention Australia. Uh, squirrels I think used to be
in Australia but aren't so much now. And is it
a mystery or is it just the obvious that the
Australians were like it? It It was on mate. I don't know,
(31:01):
I didn't see that anywhere, but I know that they
introduced the Eastern gray and then in Perth they introduced
the Indian palm, which is like if you mashed together
an Eastern gray squirrel in a chipmunk, that would be
an Indian palm squirrel. But apparently they both died out.
I don't know if it's a mystery or not, like
you're saying, but supposedly there's some feral colonies that escape
(31:23):
from zoos, at least in Perth. So there are wild
squirrels in Australia, but they were introduced uh in the
nineteenth century, which is actually a trend, as we'll see.
But I say, before we we tackle all that, we
take a break. How about that? All right, Well we'll
take the break and we'll talk about squirrel migration right
after this, okay, Chuck, so As I was saying, like
(32:06):
back before pre colonial days in particular, but also even
into the nineteenth century. I think even the nineteen sixties,
there were reports of massive numbers of squirrels basically stampeding.
They call them squirrel migrations, and they have been documented
enough times that that's it's not an anomaly, but they
are fairly rare. And today they've kind of figured out
(32:29):
that there aren't dense enough populations of squirrels to ever
have a genuine like squirrel stampede like they had before.
But there there used to be so many of them
that every once in a a while, thousands to tens of thousands,
two tends to tens of thousands of squirrels would pass
generally in like a big wave over an area. And
(32:49):
apparently it was quite a thing to see. I imagine
it was. And this happened because there would just be
a really big fruitful year for squirrel food, tons of availability,
and they would, you know, they would boom in numbers
because they go to where the food is. And usually
if that is followed by I guess historically when that
(33:11):
was followed by a really bad year um like the
rain you know, didn't work out so great for producing
nuts and seeds and stuff and fruit, that all of
a sudden, you've got a ton of squirrels in an
area that are all looking around going, oh, what's the deal? Uh,
and their opportunists. So they said, all right, we're getting
out of here. We're going to where the food is
(33:31):
let's go everybody. And they would do it all at once, Yeah,
all at once for some reason. And so there's migrations
they would be they'd be running through the forest, they'd
be running across the fields, they'd be swimming across rivers,
and apparently, in at least one account I saw, um,
they would be gulped up by bass in the rivers.
And I can't imagine some worse than a squirrel being
(33:53):
eaten by a fish. That seems unnatural. Yeah, but there
were so many of them. This is also at a
time where worlds were roundly among basically everyone living in
America viewed as vermin as um uh invaders as things
that were unwanted, but also a tasty food source too.
So anytime there was a squirrel stampede uh, the yokels
(34:17):
would run out with their sticks and bags and beat
squirrels to death and then cook them and sell their
pelts and do all sorts of things with them. And
one of the reasons why they were viewed as vermin
chuck is because on these squirrel migrations and other times
where they were just you know, if you were unlucky
with your planting, um, those squirrels might see as a
food source the crops you just planted all those seeds
(34:37):
and would dig them up and ruin your year's crops
in a day or so. So people didn't like squirrels
for a very long time. And this idea of squirrels
being everywhere, these little mammals living among us, like you
were talking about earlier, that's fairly new, and that's actually
very deliberate and purposeful, because squirrels were basically gone up
(34:58):
until about the mid to late nineteenth century in America. Yeah,
I mean between being hunted because people hated them on
their farms, like you said, people and people still and
like generally in certain parts of like Appalachia, still eat
squirrel on the menu. It is a little gamy from
what I'm told, I'm never gonna eat a squirrel, but
(35:19):
they still use pelts. But that kind of you know,
just like they would eat any larger mammal and use
their pelts. They would just get crafty with you know,
as small as a squirrel. And certainly in times of uh,
you know, real need, uh you know, small rodents would
come in handy on the menu back then. But uh,
they were almost gone. We started growing more urban in
(35:42):
the eighteen hundreds obviously, and they were killing squirrels as
fast as they could. And in the eighteen forties and fifties,
there were so few squirrels that they were introduced to
city parks, but not many. At first. They were just
like this weird curiosity where you would go out kind
of like bird watching and you would like try to
(36:03):
spot a squirrel running around because it was such a
novel thing. But then by the time Frederick law Olmstead,
who by the way, deserves his own podcast, came along
and really introduced the idea these really large city parks
and urban parks. Uh, they introduced a lot of squirrels
to these parks and they really really like that. That's
(36:23):
kind of why we have the squirrels we have today
was from this movement to reintroduce him in a big
way to urban parks. Yeah, and um, I mean we
talked kind of a lot about that whole idea in
our Central Park episode. This idea that you know, they
just kept building the city and building the city and
building city, and people started going crazy because there weren't
green spaces. So that that brought the parks in. And
(36:44):
then the idea of adding animals to the park just
to kind of naturalize it even more. Um that squirrels
played a huge role in that. UM And not only
you know, in Central Park, but also it started out
and I believe Philadelphia and then followed by Boston and um.
So by the mid to late nineteenth century, that's when
squirrels started to re establish themselves and the way that
(37:07):
people saw squirrels started to change too, And there was
this idea that, um, they weren't vermin anymore. Don't shoot them,
please try not to hit them with the stick. Instead,
let's go to the park, spend some time outside and
bring some nuts with you and maybe feed the squirrels.
And not only you feed the squirrels, but you've got
a little kid. That little kid wants to hit that
(37:27):
squirrel with the stick so bad, because kids are are
awful like that good. You can actually use squirrels feeding
squirrels as a way to teach kids to have compassion,
to um, be upstanding morally, to have charity. UM. And
that was kind of how the whole interaction between humans
and squirrels was kind of framed around that time, like
(37:50):
the late nineteenth early twentieth century. Yeah, the boy Scout
co founder Ernest Thompson's Seaton said that squirrels and introducing
the two boys in general, would say, would cure them
of their tendency towards cruelty. But I said, good luck
a second ago. How do you hit it? I mean,
I guess if there's a stampede. But you show me
a kid that can get a squirrel and hit it
(38:12):
with a stick, and that's a future Olympian. There's no way.
Those things are so fast. But don't try to do it, kids, definitely, no,
I don't even practice that. Don't try to qualify for
the Olympics and that because you'll show up to the
Olympics will be like, we don't, we don't have that.
That's not one of our sports. What do you think,
you say, is Australia right? Uh So these days, you know,
(38:35):
we've kind of come full circle into just sort of
letting squirrels be uh there are you know, if you're
a hunter in the United States, and that may be
the tradition in your family if you live out in
the country, to start off your child with hunting squirrels
with a little twenty two rifle or something two as
(38:57):
practice to teach young hunters. I'm certainly not into that,
but I'm not going to judge you if that's your thing.
And like I said, people still do eat squirrel in
certain parts of the United States today. Um, I guess
we can talk. I mean, we found a lot of
extra fun stuff. Well, well, let's talk about So we
were talking about how they're viewed in America. They're depending
(39:19):
on where you are in the world, and depending on
the squirl you're talking about, they're actually they can be
viewed quite negatively. I remember in our Rewilding episode we
talked about how Eastern gray squirrels are considered an invasive
species in Italy um where they call them Americans killer squirrels. Um.
And there's also an issue with Eastern gray squirrels in
(39:40):
Europe where they've killed off most of the Eurasian red
squirrels over there. Um be they've just out competed them.
It's not like they've you know, choked them or anything
like that. They they just they're like almost twice as big,
they're a lot more ornery, and they've just kind of
diminished the number of of Eurasian bread squirrels in the
(40:01):
UK so much so that three quarters of the population
lives in Scotland, and I would just like to direct
everybody to the Scottish Squirrels website. Go to Scottish Squirrels
dot org dot uk and this is very important. Slash
about and on their about page the header image is
(40:22):
maybe the cutest squirrel you'll ever see in your entire life?
Is that the one he sent me? And Jerry, Yes,
isn't that the cutest squirrel ever? It's pretty cute. You
also sent something else. If you go to RSPCA dot
org dot uk, slash Advice and Welfare, slash Wildlife, slash Animals,
slash gray squirrels, slash feeding, or you could just google
(40:45):
feeding squirrels and using nest boxes, you're gonna see a
squirrel with a chicken wing in its mouth. Yeah, that's
pretty It's better than a bass eating of squirrel, I'll
tell you that. Yeah, that's a good article you sent
because it talks about if you like squirrels around, which
I certainly do, creating a good habitat for them. Trees,
obviously it's a good thing to have. Not cutting down
(41:06):
trees is a great thing to do if you can
avoid it. Uh, And then having squirrel safe bird feeders. Uh.
And this means not that the squirrels can't get to
that seed, because they, as you have attested, they will
find a way. Life finds a way, but it don't
won't trap the squirrel inside of it. No. Um, that's
that's a big one too. They also kind of get
(41:27):
into um, they get all Macbeth or Hamlet, which one
was to be or not to be? Why you asking
me this? Because they get all Hamlet or Macbeth on
whether or not to feed squirrels. You go, Um, So
they're they're like, you could feed squirrels, but really you shouldn't.
In the RSPCA takes I think a pretty sensible tact,
(41:50):
which is build a habitat for the squirrels and that
you're planting the right kind of trees that provide a
place for them to nest in a place for them
to get food, and then just step back. I can
enjoy them. If you're like you know, me and Mo,
and you go on walks or whatever and you want
to feed the squirrels. There are some things that are
better for squirrels than others, and it's basically you want
(42:11):
to give them what they would naturally eat. Um, which
is masked unshelled nuts like walnuts, chest nuts, acorns, hazel nuts,
that kind of thing. Yes, but not black safflower seeds.
I saw that if you are one of those people
who can't stand squirrels rating your um bird feeder, black
safflower seeds are they'll eat them, but they're not crazy
(42:33):
about them, and most birds like them instead. So that's
one way to do it. But you can also feed
them vegetables too, and chuck. They included this little tip
that I didn't realize. But if you if you're feeding squirrels,
you're leaving food out for squirrels in your yard, and
you have a garden that you care about, you don't
really want the squirrel taking the food and then burying
it elsewhere. So they said, if you're gonna feed them
(42:55):
fruits and vegetables shredded, because the squirrels is gonna eat
it there, it's not gonna try to bury it. I
thought that was smart. Yeah, And if you have the nuts,
don't give them like honey roasted almonds, like unsweetened, unsalted stuff.
I have set up you know, I have a camp
cam at the family camp trail cam and it's uh
(43:15):
it's keyed in on my deer feeder that I got,
which is corn, and I've seen one deer. But almost
every night I have scores of raccoons and almost every day,
well every day, I have squirrels, crows, and now daily
turkeys visiting. Lots and lots of turkeys. So I don't
(43:37):
care that the deer aren't visiting. It's all kinds of
animals are coming around. It's always fun to watch on
the camp cam. That is very cool. Um. One thing
you want to be careful with with peanuts too, is
giving them raw peanuts because peanuts can carry um an affletoxin,
which is very It's not good. It's not good for squirrels.
It's not good for humans either. It's a type of fungus.
(43:59):
I think that actually is not only carcinogen carcinogists that
can actually like just kill you on the spot neurologically speaking. Um,
So you actually want roasted peanuts, but not salted or
anything like that. So like plain roasted peanuts, or what's
even better because it helps with their teeth, are mass
(44:20):
nuts again like pecans, walnuts, that kind of stuff. But
a lot of people say don't feed squirrels because you're
actually what you're doing is, as we've seen, if squirrels
know that there's a lot of food, they're going to
mate mate mate mate mate, and there's going to be
a lot of squirrels and they're going to become dependent
on that additional food supply. Um, and they might start
showing up at your neighbor's house, they might start burrowing
(44:41):
into your attic. There's just a lot of there's a
lot of things that to to take into consideration. I guess, yeah,
well the family camp, there's nothing but would so I
hope we get overrun. So I agree with you. So
you found a couple of cool things, um, including why
squirrels like seem to ash in front of your car
when you're driving right. Yeah, so, and and again I
(45:06):
love that we've just finally found answers for this stuff
because this is kind of a fun, non obnoxious fact
to jump on to drop on someone. If you're driving
around a neighborhood and the squirrel does that thing and
people go, why the squirrels do that? We can say, well,
it's actually an evolutionary instinct to get away from a predator.
So if you run out and you initially freeze when
(45:29):
there's a predator. The predator, it's sort of like a
football player waiting for the defensive player to make their move,
and then you go the opposite way with a little juke.
And that's what the squirrel is doing. They go out,
they freeze when they see that car, and if it
was a predator, they would wait on the predator to
sort of make a move and then they can quickly
go in a direction that is really comes in handy
(45:52):
when it's a predator, when it's a car that's going,
you know, generally in a big, hulking straight line. Uh,
it's not the same thing. But a squirrel has a
squirrel brain and it doesn't realize that. So that's why
a squirrel will jump out in the street, see a
car and just stop. They're not dumb. They're waiting on
you to make some hawk like move, which doesn't happen
(46:12):
in the car. So what you do is you just
slow down and check your review mirror. Don't say I'm
on the brakes or anything, but you know, they're everywhere,
and I've hit I think maybe two squirrels in my
adult life, so it's not like the most common thing
to run over a squirrel. Yeah, I ran over one once,
and my brother in law said that he was on
(46:33):
his way to buy a birthday present for his young
kid who was waiting forever for their dad to come
back for his birthday present for his party. It was
not helpful. Uh, and what about these black squirrels. Uh,
Emily and I we're taking a walk through Brooklyn one
day and saw a black, black, black squirrel, not just
(46:54):
a hint of black, and it was the coolest thing
I've ever seen. And I've since seen a few more
here and there in New York. And we had the
answer there too, right, Yes, Uh, they seem to be
so they used to think that they were freaks of nature.
I think is one um naturalist put it like years
and years ago, and somebody said, I don't know that
(47:15):
that's true. I think these actually might have been the
dominant version. Uh. They seem to be closely related to
Eastern grays, if not just a type of Eastern gray,
like a different breed of that species. Um. But they
were saying they used to possibly be the dominant version
and then they got edged out by the Eastern gray,
and so they're there's they're they're they're just kind of
(47:38):
uh infrequently, they infrequently appear, but there are parts of
um North America where they seem to populate more than others,
like New York. You mean, I um used to see
them in d C. Toronto. They're all over Toronto, UM
in Ontario in general, from what I understand. So it
seems like from what I could tell, that they think
(47:58):
that there they were, they're already and now we're just
kind of seeing them in like this kind of moment
in time where their numbers have diminished tremendously, where if
we went back in time we might see a lot more.
Is that Does that seem accurate? Yeah? I mean, it's
just genetics. It's a recessive gene that causes an abnormal pigmentation,
and you will, you know, you're you're only going to
(48:19):
get more of that recessive gene if these squirrels or
any uh, you know, creature is reproducing in a in
a smaller area. So if you've got to contain population,
like let's say an island like New York or apparently
Roosevelt Island has a lot of them, uh, you're just
gonna see more of them. So uh, d C is
(48:41):
a little not inexplicable, but it makes more sense in
New York because you're just going to get more, you know,
more of this recessive gene happening in a certain area.
So not at all my explanation. Then, now what's your explanation?
Now you nailed it. And this was an article the
Mysterious Black Squirrels of NYC from what turns out to
(49:03):
be a really good website called Untapped Cities dot com
and writer Michelle Young. It's it's really cool read um. Yeah,
so you got anything else on squirrels? Nothing and hug
a squirrel, Embrace the squirrel. But but don't do that,
don't know. If you do feed them, don't don't let
them meat out of your hand because they'll bite you.
Even though they're grateful, there's still bitey um. And since
(49:27):
I said that, everybody, it's time for listener mail. That's right.
And it's a great listener mail because we get to
say hello to a kindergarten class, which is always fun. Hello, Hi,
Mr Chuck and Mr Josh. My name is Katie. It's
either fink or finky, and I'm emailing with my kindergarten
(49:50):
class in Baltimore City We sometimes listen to your show,
and we were so excited when you heard you mentioned
the three Sisters in the recent watermelon episode. We actually
spent a whole week and learn about the three sisters
this fall and wanted to share with you our excitement.
We hope you do a short stuff on them soon.
We definitely will if you need some Three Sisters experts
who wanted to uh tell you these facts that we
(50:13):
learned this year. Uh, and here's a little short list.
Native Americans would plant fish first in the ground to
prepare the soil and make it healthy and rich. Love
that the corn grows so tall that holds up the beans,
and the squash keeps the soil moist so the other
two sisters have enough water to stay hydrated. And finally,
(50:34):
all three of the sisters are dried so that people
can save them to eat later in the winter, which
is a great benefit. So, uh, we really want to
share our knowledge in case you do a short stuff.
Thanks for reading. Love Miss fink E's or Miss Fink's
kindergarten class. And uh, like I said, this is in
Baltimore City. Man, that's really impressive. Like I remember in kindergarten,
(50:57):
I was learning Red Red Red. I wasn't learning about
the three sisters and groundcovers like keeping them moisture in
place for the other two. I mean, come on, that's
really impressive this week read. I think it was more
(51:17):
like that month. February is red month. All right, Oh
that's great. Well, thank you, miss Fink or Finky's class.
Hats off to you guys. Keep it up. Uh and yes,
we will definitely do a three Sisters episode some day
dedicated to you guys. All right, Chuck for sure. If
you want to get in touch with us, you can
(51:37):
to via email at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of i Heeart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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(52:00):
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