Ologies with Alie Ward - Sciuridology (SQUIRRELS) with Karen Munroe

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

Flying squirrels. Fox squirrels. Giant squirrels. Tiny ones. Grey ones. Black ones. Fluorescent ones? Alie is losing her mind talking to dream guest and Sciuridologist, Dr. Karen Munroe. This Baldwin Wallace University professor has studied squirrels for decades and addresses where they sleep, how many babies they have, if they bite each other’s junk, how they find their acorns, Marvel movies, birdfeeder drama, imported squirrels, melanistic morphs, world domination, fistfights with birders, the rarest squirrel, the best place for squirrel tourism and more. You’ll scatter hoard so many nuggets of squirrel trivia. Enjoy. Follow Dr. Karen Munroe on Instagram and TwitterDonations were made to: Letters to a Pre-Scientist and Squirrel MapperMore episode sources and linksSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesOther episodes you may enjoy: Thermophysiology (BODY HEAT), Indigenous Cuisinology (NATIVE COOKING), Dendrology (TREES) with J. Casey Clapp, Urban Rodentology (SEWER RATS), Fire Ecology (WILDFIRES), Indigenous Fire Ecology (GOOD FIRE), Fulminology (LIGHTNING), Field Trip: Birds of Prey and Raptor Facts, Entomology (INSECTS), Mammalogy (MAMMALS), Carobology (NOT-CHOCOLATE TREES), Felinology (CATS), Chickenology (HENS & ROOSTERS), Oreamnology (MOUNTAIN GOATS ARE NOT GOATS)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media and Mark David Christenson. Co-Produced by Mercedes Maitland and Susan Hale. Transcripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hey, it's your neighbor with the smelly trash cans. What's in there? Alley Ward, I am gonna make this intro as short as possible Because I have squirrels in my pants. I want to start this first things first I wanted to interview this person for years somehow my emails never got returned my dreams never materialized And then one day I realized she followed me on social media hot dang I DMed her with so many exclamation points It was embarrassing and from the first second of this interview, I'm losing my shit. And I think you will too. So she got her undergrad in cellular and molecular biology

at Arizona State University. She had a master's in ecology and evolutionary biology at Purdue. And then got a PhD in wildlife ecology and conservation back at the University of Arizona. We're going to talk about it. She's now a professor of biology at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio, where she has done many things. One of them co-creating a full-length dance work called Lier's Infer Coats about the

social and meeting habits of squirrels. She studied fox squirrels, gray squirrels, ground squirrels, and more for decades. And her handles on social media reflect this commitment, Squirrel Doc. It's linked to the show notes. Also linked Patreon.com slash allergies for a buck or more a month, you can submit questions ahead of time, and I might say your name with my face. Allegis merch is also linked to the show notes, and thanks to everyone who leaves, reviews, and subscribes, I read all of them, such as this one left this week by I Family Who Wrote.

There are a billion podcasts, but not all are worth a regularly scheduled listen. This one absolutely is. Thank you so much. Also, I've been told that this particular episode has the potential to make life good again. No pressure. So, let's get into it. So, scary ideology, it's hard to say, but it's a real word, people, and it comes from the Greek first-shade shade tale and we're gonna talk about who's who and the family of Scurriedie will also chat about the best part of the acorns. How many trees squirrels plant? Why they're so good at bird feeders? Do they glow in the dark? What their chirps and barks mean? Flying squirrels, ground squirrels,

and barks mean flying squirrels, ground squirrels, litter sizes, cozy nests, if squirrels love you back. They're absolutely glorious and terrible sex lives, hoarding, hiding, gliding, conservation statuses that might shock you and why you should never, never put a squirrel in your pocket before you board an airplane. And so much more with memologist, biologist, and most importantly, scuridiologist, Dr. Karen Monroe.

[♪ Music playing in background, [♪ Music playing in background, my name is Karen Monroe and I use she-her-pronounce. My God, it's you. It's really you. It's really me. I promise it's me. Literally so many people in my life know today is a really exciting one for me. No chill, zero chill whatsoever, and that is the correct way to be when talking to Dr.

Karen Monroe. By the way, do you know that scuriology, do you know that have you ever heard the turn? No, I've always referred to myself as a mammologist. You're very good at squirrels though. Yes. And I just want you to know that out there in just the measma of life and words, a scouritologist is a term for someone who is very good at squirrels. I know this term, I believe you. I was gonna say, I've studied squirrels for a very long time. Longer than I've been married.

I mean, since I was my freshman year in college. So since I was 17, I've studied squirrels, but I still, to this day, have active squirrel research because people are just fascinated by it. We love squirrels, but we're scared of most other rodents. Right, why is that? It's the fluffy tail, isn't it? It's gotta be.

I mean, that's where they get their name from event, right? I read that it's... Shade tail. Shade tail. Wait a second. Wait a second. Their tail is for shade. Partially sure.

It's all kinds of thermoregulation. You think of it as an umbrella, if it's just kind of misting raining, but yeah, cover yourself in sun or when they splat, so when they lay flat, they're trying to thermoregulate, it's a way for them to give off heat, pick up heat, however you'd like. More on body heat in a bit, but we have a whole ding-ding episode on thermophysiology and body temperature regulation, as well as a kid-friendly, small-ages episode on it with Dr. Shane Campbell, Satan,

but I'm getting ahead of myself. I gotta admit, I wanted to talk about scrolls for a long time, but I don't think I've ever talked about the function of a squirrel tail. And of course they have a function. They wouldn't have evolved to have it otherwise. Right. And then like when you watch them jump and fall

and so like that, they also use it to totally write themselves so that they land, you know, on all fours. That makes so much sense. Is it kind of like when you see a tightrope walker that has one of those really big poles? Yeah, absolutely. They kind of like, well, I don't know about pole, but yeah, like at the Yankees game last day, I've probably 10 people sent me this clip.

There was a squirrel in the outfield and the fans were shocked by this. It's like running across. And then it falls and it falls eight feet onto the ground. Now he's become a flying squirrel. Oh, this is not good. He sticks a landing much better than we would. I'll tell you that. Like it's not that off to the races. And you just watch it and it kind of goes side to side to side. And like you can watch the tail kind of work as a runner and then it lands just fine and runs away. Is there any part of that that also is just like a parachute to slow it down? I'm about a parachute.

I mean, I think more like flying squirrels, right? Like the gliding with that membrane really kind of is better to catch some air. But gray squirrels, which this was just a gray squirrel, they kind of use it more kind of as a rudder side to side. Oh boy, howdy. We will address different kinds of squirrels, gray, fox, giant, dwarf, flying, marvel. But first, let's talk about the specimen,

Karen Monroe. I got to ask, how did you get, so I'm going to say lucky, that somehow life just shot Dr. Karen Monroe, down a path. From the age of 17, where she gets to study, the most beloved woodland creature there is. The perfect confluence of luck and mistakes, I guess. So when I was in high school, my high school guys' counselor was like, oh, you know, you're like biology,

you should become a vet or a doctor, right? That was pretty much the two career paths. And there was no way I could ever tell somebody they had to put their pet down. That was not even an option for me. So I was like, well, I'll be a doctor. I like people and I really like kids. And so I was like, oh, I'll be a pediatrician. And my undergraduate advisor, one of the smartest things he did was he made me go shadow a pediatrician for a week. And I learned

two very important things during that week long shadowing experience. Let's hear it. One, sick kids are no fun. Oh, no. Two, parents of sick kids are even less fun. But he, at that point, had already enveloped me into his lab. And so I was working for him mainly as an undergraduate, you know, I really job collecting acorns and eating acorns as squirrels as part of his lab component. And I tell my students all the time,

after I figured out I did not wanna be a pediatrician, I tried to find an area of medicine that I liked and I really didn't, and I tried to find somewhere else for me to go, like, what is it that I really was interested in and what did I like? And I ended up thinking, well, I was at this small liberal arts college and that if I had transferred someplace bigger, so I was from a small town,

but I went to someplace bigger, I would have more opportunities that I could figure it out. I transferred from Wilkes University, which is at that time I think 1300 students to Arizona State University. Oh, here. So across country, 1300 students to 40,000 students. Climate differences, climate, cultural, everything and anything you possibly imagined. What I really figured out in Arizona

was that there were even less opportunities as a lonely undergraduate to get involved in research and really kind of figure out what it is I wanted to do. So Karen was majoring in cellular and molecular biology, but couldn't seem to get lab experience in Arizona. So hungry for research, she would spend summers and spring breaks, not getting crunk on for logos in Miami Beach, but heading back to her small town to work on swirls.

And so, I kind of did a huge 180. So my undergrad degree is in cellular molecular biology. And I went to Purdue and eventually ended up leaving there with my master's in ecology and evolutionary biology. But I meant I had to take and eventually ended up leaving there with my master's in ecology and evolutionary biology. But I meant I had to take all of those classes, ecology, evolution, and all behavior, advanced biology, all those kinds of things. I took as a graduate student.

And that's what I kind of really started putting things together that like, oh, all of this seldom molecular genetic stuff that I really liked in college, I could actually apply that to the squirrels and the systems that I do so very well from working in the lab. So that's kind of where my PhD ends up. My PhD is actually in a wildlife conservation management, and it really is the confidence of those two things that's applying all the genetic stuff to an animal of conservation concern with my original thought.

But in that way, to a group of animals that have a great conservation concern. Our squirrels in trouble, it seems like they're everywhere. Maybe one tried to even steal your croissant yesterday. They seem like they're doing fine to some of us, but we will get into how different species are doing later in the episode. But yes, her interests and experience all converged

to make her a truly lauded securityologist. It sounds like one was the peanut butter and the other was the bread and you're like, oh, I guess I can make a sandwich. You've got my chocolate, my peanut butter. So when it comes to your work, was there anything about the field work that you were drawn to or was it more systemic that you liked? No, it was much more systemic. I mean, I really enjoyed the fact that I could walk, and I do this now,

right? I walk outside and my study organism is right there. It's not like I need, you know, to get on a plane and fly 3000 miles with all this equipment and things like that. It's right there. It's means it's accessible. I can talk about it to the public and I can talk about it to my students. And so I really enjoy that fact. At the same point, I've also worked places where I've had to drive six hours to the top of a mountain to work with the species.

And so there are those distant and far away species as well. But I really like the fact that as, especially as an undergraduate, I would get on my bike and bike across campus and start trapping squirrel bike and cross campus and start trapping squirrels and making observations and things like that. It just was so accessible, I think, is probably the reason I really got hooked and involved. I gotta say anyone who's listened to this, who's like working on Permacross stuff,

I'd probably like... Right. ...few or frequent lyre miles, but still the availability of squirrels. That's why we love them. It is. And everybody knows them and everybody loves them. And everybody, everybody, everybody has a squirrel story. Yes.

You know, I go to dinners that have, you know, corporate people and business people and what not. They're like, oh, scientists, we're not going to be able to talk to you. And I'm like, I bet you you are. I bet you. I bet you you will. By the end of the night, you and I are going, I bet you you are. I bet you, I bet you you will by the end of the night, you and I would be friends and we will have shared stories. This is surely their attention gathering,

no matter who you are though, but where do squirrels live? Speaking of tundra and permafrost, what continents, or rather, I guess, where don't squirrels live? I think Antarctica is the only place squirrels do not live. Wow. You know, from the Arctic Circle down into the tropics, and you know, from east to west across the way.

So if you are at a constant, squirrels are native to it, except Australia, where American gray squirrels were introduced to Melbourne in the late 1800s. And then a few days later, a scurry of northern palm squirrels busted out of the zoo and perth. And honestly, it's all over the place how many there still are out there. Oh, and squirrels are also not native to Antarctica in case you're listening there. And I am impressed that you are and that you have Wi-Fi.

And I hope that you didn't bring a squirrel there. And since you have such a systemic mind about that, what are squirrels doing right to not only capture our hearts, but also to be so omnipresent and to be able to live in all these different biomes? They figured it out kind of. Right, I mean, they're just so charismatic, right? Like they have the little pointy noses in the face

and the hands and so you can sit there and watch them rotate the acorn in their hand and get it just right so they can take the perfect bite. They're not intimidating, right? Even when they make noises and things like that, I've had people like, oh, this girl's just saying hello as they're like, jump, jump, jump, and like, flapping their palette on them. And I'm like, you know, they're saying that you're a predator and they're trying to make

sure everybody else knows that you're a predator and to get away. But I think that they're just kind of the right size and shape and they're just charismatic. From an evolutionary standpoint, what do you think has helped them survive in on prairies and mountains and in the cold and in jungles? You know, I want to say that there's such generalists kind of across the board that they're willing to eat

just by anything, but that is not always true because there are definitely cases where they really do specifically eat, you know, a very small number of plants, things like that. I think of like ground squirrels really specialized in a plant type and their whole physiology. And when they come out of hibernation or torpor really is tied to that specific plant type and precipitation and things like that. But then I think of like the classic gray squirrel and man, they will eat anything from plants to animals, eggs, insects, truffles, human food is kind of the last resort that's not generally what they're after,

but their diet is so general and they have the ability just to, they're scatter hoarders, so they put a little bit of food here, they're there and there, they like to take things like mushrooms and fungi and up into the trees and they will dry it and then put it in their dryness with them for the winter. No. Wait, they have better meal planning than I do. Right. That's hurt so bad and I'm really impressed. I can't. Right. I mean, I've seen I have a, you know, a scroll. My neighborhood is taking, you know, a chunk of a Halloween pumpkin and put it up in the tree to dry. And I'm sure I'm stored it away for winter. How many of our trees are because of forgetful squirrels? Almost all of them. I know from my undergraduate research that if a

acorn is handled by a squirrel, even if it is half eaten by the squirrel, it will germinate better than an acorn that it's not been touched at all by a squirrel. So we owe so much carbon capture to squirrels. I mean, they really are like the gardener of the planet. Half eaten? Really? Yeah. Just saunter over to the 1993 paper,

Tannins and partial consumption of acorns, implications for dispersal of oaks by seed predators, and you can get a little fact snack like germination experiments revealed equal or greater germination frequencies for partially consumed acorns than for the intact acorns. And they say we suggest that the higher tannin levels may render the apical portion less palatable and thereby increase the probability of embryo survival after a tack by seed consumer,

which would be the squirrel. I guess more delicious fat is at the top of the acorn and remember this for later because something's gonna blow your mind related to this. Also, for anyone who has ever, I don't know, found a handful of loose Reese's pieces in a blazer pocket that I rarely wear, you should know that the tasteier the acorn is, the more likely the squirrel says to itself,

none of those other jibroney squirrels are going to eat this good one, so they bury them farther away, where they might not find them. Which gives the acorn distance from the parent tree, which it needs to not get choked out by its siblings. All of the strama, under our noses, under our trees. Also, yes, I did eat the recess that I found on my pocket and no, I don't know how long they had been in there. How many acorns are boreal squirrels stashing away?

I've read something that they really only remember like 10% of them or they don't even remember, they just look around to be like, might there be acorns and it might Have been someone else's acorns, but they're like, yep, they're acorns exactly. It's part of my an undergrad project We tagged Thousands of acorns and put them out to forest little brad nails and then walked for hours with a melee pector trying to recover Acorns to see how far our squirrels were actually dispersing them And it's and they, they are so smart are infested with weevil

are not going to make a to either eat them immediately over. They will use th to scrape out the cattle then stash it so that it won't germinate, and it'll be there longer. So yes, squirrels do not have a 100% recovery rate with their food, all right, and they don't pretend to. It can range from 25 to 95% recovery rate, depending on the species, and area, and food, but a ton of research has shown that squirrels have excellent spatial memory.

And they know to head back to their cache, but if they smell a neighbor's food buried on the way, they might eat that too. Also according to the 1986 paper, Gray Squirrel Food Preferences, the effects of tan and in fact concentration. Squirrels know which acorn species are more perishable, and they may very like red oak nuts because the last longer and germinate in the spring, but they might eat white acorns

because they germinate earlier in autumn. Although years later scientists at Berkeley were like, mmm, not so fast, it might just be that some acorns are just bigger. And it's like taking a few bites of a huge calzone in October and then just digging a hole in the backyard, tossing it in there to snack on during the Super Bowl. Also scrape out the what, the coat of light, who?

Okay, so coat of leaden. It sounds like a very expensive shade of paint. Everyone would be telling you to paint your kitchen, but it's actually an embryonic leaf or a pair of them. And they're in seeds and in acorns, for example, it stores a lot of energy. And while this girl's usually only bury about an inch deep in the soil,

their whole food festival area can be up to seven acres wide. They're hard workers and also liars. So a 2008 study titled Cash Protection Strategies of Scatter Hording Rodent to Tree Squirrels Engage in Behavioral Deception. It showed that in about 13% of caching events on a specific college campus, squirrels dug a hole, pretended to drop their acorn into it, but kept the acorn in their mouths and ran away. And this may have been the result of just a lot of squirrels being around. And they didn't want anyone to see where they were stashing their booty.

And I didn't even think to ask this, but in the paper, the researchers mentioned that they could tell which squirrel was which by noting distinctive markings or, according to the study, quote, others were uniquely marked with small spots of various brands of men's hair dye, applied with a plastic dropper from a short distance, without restraining the animals, so squirrel researchers, they're just out there, they're offering snacks, makeovers, and then in another study, published in 2017 out of UC Berkeley titled

Caching for Where and What? Evidence for a Neumannic Strategy in a scatter hoarder. That one found that fox squirrels buried their food in different areas, depending on what the food was. So if they got a mixed batch of almonds and hazelnuts and pecans and walnuts, they spatially chunked their caches by nut species, but only when cashing food that was taken from one single location. And I'm reading this paper, and I'm like, what are the authors? Is none other than Dr. Michael Delgado, who was the expert in our legendary Philanology episode, which I will link in the show notes. But the point is, these fuzzy little babies, they're organizing their dirt pantries.

And again, unlike me, they have apparently something akin to self control. You know, they only eat an acorn based on how much of their food is available because the plant's smart and puts tannins into the acorn and as it gets closer to the cot of the lead and it puts more tannins, so it tastes more bitter, if that's possible. If you've ever eaten an acorn, it is incredibly bitter.

But the concentration of tannins increases as you get towards the cotaline, so they will just eat the top half of the acorn and drop it. And so it is nice that kind of back and forth evolutionary adaptation between oaks and squirrels. But they do that for lots of seeds and things like that. So we really do have squirrels to thank for most of our trees and mature hardwood forests. For more on eating acorns as humans, you can listen to the Indigenous Koanology episode,

which I will link in the show notes is a great one. I'm so curious what a squirrel's yearly planner looks like. When are they sleeping? When are they up? When are they up? When are they getting it on? What's their year look like at a glance? So if I kind of take a traditional gray squirrel, North American squirrel, so in the winter time,

they're mainly active in the middle of the day, and that's when they rely on most of their storage foods and things like that. Typically, once you start to get warmed up, I will say February, although the climate changes is getting earlier and earlier and I've actually seen squirrels mate as early as December. Once kind of buds on trees start happening and things like that, you'll get the first

round of reproduction. And squirrels will eat the inner cambium off of tree branches and limbs as well as other insects, forebs, grasses, things like that. Inner cambium side note is part of a tree. It's specifically the sugary, really nutrient-heavy layer of new growth. It's just below the bark, and we talk all about it in the Dendrology 2-parter with KCJ clap.

But yes, some squirrels, thanks in part to climate change, are having steamy, romantic, home-ark holidays, and canutalutling in December. But usually, they hold off until they're in Valentine's Day. When spring is springing, the days grow longer, and the world grows ever-horneier. Once young or out, usually it's springtime and foods abundant and available.

And if squirrels are in good enough body condition, they can reproduce again. So in a few weeks later, they'll kind of go through that whole process again. Most squirrels will not reproduce until they're about a year old. And so we can kind of classify typically sub adults or juveniles, you less than six months, and then sub adults. And then once they mate, we usually refer them as adults. So they don't ever really, most squirrels are not true hybronators.

They'll go into torpor for a day or two, and it's really cold. We know that they like to nest share a lot. Really? I love that. I love a co-op. So if it's really cold out, why not get up with a bunch of your friends and all cozy and together and you know save some body heat? It's like Huga. It's like that Scandinavian concept of just like Kocuz, Kocuzia. knuckle down. And we know that different species they do it slightly differently. So in gray squirrels, they tend to be matchylennial.

And so you must tend to have some kind of related this will tend to nest together. And there can be like little bachelor groups as well kind of help save some of that body heat and whatnot. And they'll move from nest to nest from night to night. It's not like one nest, one squirrel. So they are kind of communal. They'll move from group to night, it's not like one nest, one squirrel. So they are kind of communal. They'll move from group to group.

So no, squirrels aren't setting up ring cameras and calling the cops if someone naps on their couch. And if you need a visual, their dres are like twigs on the outside for structure, and then they're stuffed with a leafy lining for installation. And then there's like a little inner mattress of moss and fur. So when you see a clot of leaves in a denuded tree in winter, just think there might be a snoozing squirrel burping up your bagel in there just heaven.

Well, okay, here's the thing. I try to think about like a squirrel home and I always think about like a hollow and a log or something. Oh, sure. But I live in California where we don't have the same sort of like bare winter branches that the East Coast does. We have a lot of palm trees, we got oaks. But I thought when I saw clots of nests

in bare winter trees, I thought those were big bird nests. And someone told me, no, those are squirrel nests. Yeah. How do they make a nest in the top of a tree on skinny branches out of leaves? I mean, you just kind of woven in together and you can usually tell it's a scrumptus and then a bird nest from the doming on the top.

Okay. So like when you look at bird nest, most of them are kind of flat and then curved on the bottom, but Dres have a shelter top. So they are kind of curved on the top, especially when they're being used a lot, as they become less used, they will sink down a little bit but yeah those big clumpy leafy pieces

are squirrel dres. So a nest shaped like a bowl and for birds and a dray for squirrels is more like a bubble or a dome. And no you didn't ask but the study of nests is called Nidology, and not two hours from me is the world's best museum of nests. It's called the Western Foundation of Vertebrates, et cetera. It's in Camarillo, and it's home to more than 18,000 nest specimens. I want to go there so bad, but back to treeholes. And they absolutely will use cavities too, and trees. So like a cavities definitely prime location in real estate, particularly if you're going to raise

young, right? So like if you want more protection from not only the outside sources but predators as well, the cavities are the preferred location to raise young. But then you know, there are issues with things like mites and fleas and things like that. So squirrels do kind of move between nest sites. And let's say that you love a squirrel. You love all squirrels and you would like to offer them a home in your yard. My dad and I shared a love of squirrels and my dad built several squirrel condominiums and just hoped that someone would take a presence. I think you put a forensic sign on one. And so is there a protocol? Is there a good way to attract a squirrel or to say squirrels? Please, I would like to be your friends. I mean, certainly there are

squirrel nest boxes that you could build and put out. And I've seen squirrels use nest boxes, but I think it kind of depends on where you are and what kind of squirrel you want to attract. Like where you are ground squirrels probably have more ground nests than they do nests kind of up in the trees and things like that. But for those people who are in the Midwest and the East Coast, having oak trees,

having edge of forests, great squirrels really love forest edges. Much like whitepiltier. They really like those highly overlapping branches. They like that high number of tree counts. If you are a true Midwesterner and you like those big chunky fox squirrels. So these are the ones with the grayish brown fur,

but they have rusty reddish coloring on their faces and paws and tails. And when I leave peanuts out for the crows, the fox squirrels come by and say, thank you very much. And they probably pretend to hide it if they think that I'm watching. Which are easily 20% if not 50% larger than graze grows.

They really like a much more open park light place and so they don't want lots of overlapping trees. They really want to come down on the ground and do their eating and what not down on the ground. And so it kind of depends on where you live and what kind of squirrels you really want to attract. I have to ask is a sclerodialogist? Have you ever gotten into fist fight with burders? So usually, I mean, I've been asked to come and speak to all kinds of Autobahn societies and the bird or groups and whatnot.

And usually one of the first questions they want to ask me is how do I keep squirrels out of my bird's fur? And so I do address this. I usually start off as like, okay, let's just, you know, let's talk about the elephant in the room first. The first thing you do, you break a bottle on the side of a table. Listen.

But I talk about how cool squirrels are to watch, you know? And we talk about a lot of their behaviors. When I go and talk in public about squirrels and what it is I do and why it's important, one of the first things I try to bring up is that it's really only here, kind of in the US, that we think of squirrels as like pests and species to be managed and species to hunt it. 80% of the world's squirrel populations

are threatened or endangered. And I didn't expect that. Right? And for that reason alone, we should take advantage of the fact that we have this opportunity and try and study them and learn more about them so that we can help answer questions for those places. And a lot of it comes down to habitat availability. and try and study them and learn more about them so that we can help answer questions for those places.

And a lot of it comes down to habitat availability. 80% of squirrels are into cline. Okay, so the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of threatened species lists the Namedafa Flying Squirrel, which is globally critically endangered, it's currently described by one known specimen that was collected in Northeast India in 1981. It's the Sasquatch of squirrels. People think they see it sometimes, but they're usually confused

and looking at a red giant flying squirrel. And then there are 11 more globally endangered squirrel species like the Northern Idaho Ground Squirrel. There's only about 1,000 left. And Nelson's Anelope Squirrel, which is native to this vast California Central Valley, this mostly become farmland. I looked at pictures for longer than I needed to that Anelope Squirrel. Oh, it's a cutie.

So we've all been distracted, though, by the really successful and ubiquitous park squirrels. And yes, sometimes they're invasive. But meanwhile, other squirrels need our help. Well, they need their land back, really. One of my favorite places to talk about squirrels is Japan. And really, the only places you find squirrels anymore in Japan are the really old sacred shrines. Because that's the only places left

that have enough large old growth trees to support a population of squirrels. My gosh, just thinking about they're getting shrunken and shrunken, I didn't realize that they were so threatened. I would always think they must be a species of least concerned because they're so visible and that's so fascinating. And I'm also wondering how many kinds of scrolls are there? And what's the difference between a groundsboro,

a tree squirrel, a flying squirrel? Where's chipmunks in this mix? Who are that? The chipmunks are cousins. They're a cute cousin. We keep them in along with the groundhogs and other marmons and things like that. I believe I had to look this up actually

because I wanted to make sure I gave you the correct number because I believe two weeks ago, whatever there was a publication about a new species of squirrel found. So I believe we a publication about a new species of squirrel found So I believe we're up to 289 species of squirrels worldwide. Fewer than I thought to be honest. Right around 300 species from ones that glide where zip lines wish they could go to ground-dwelling tunnel cuties that I want to kiss, but I won't.

It really comes down to where they're used to nesting, what are they prefer, you know, tree squirrels versus ground squirrels. Flagswirls are definitely a different grouping, a lot of physiological differences or anatomically at least differences there. But I mean, tree squirrels, I think they're usually what's people picture when they think about a squirrel

with the fluffy tail and everything. Ground squirrels, to me, are even more fascinating if possible, because we know a little bit less about them. You know, they're underground doing all those things that we can't really see, and I really want to know what they're doing under there, but they are highly related. They have lots of the same kinds of timings

and activities and behaviors for sure. So to recap, the family-scurried-ed-eye is in the order redentia, and it involves squirrels and chipmunks and even marmots and prairie dogs, but there is a smaller genus of just squirrels. But in general, all of these squirrels we're talking about may live in trees or the ground or have wildly different diets and lives living up to 10 years in the wild or 20 in captivity. Imagine a squirrel that could legally get a driver's license,

but not really because it's a squirrel. You've had the privilege of being in this field since a young age, and technology has changed so much. Have you seen things changed in terms of knowledge now that we can put a fiber optic camera and record on a tiny SD card that costs a dollar? Like, how has your work changed now that you can spy on them? So for my dissertation, I studied a species of squirrels called the round-tailed ground squirrel. It does not have a round tail. I don't know why it's called that.

You didn't name it. I didn't name it. It looks like a little baby prairie dog and has kind of a long thin tail. And they live in the ground in the desert. And so we really wanted to know how social these scrolls were. They were once thought to be this great model outlier in that the literature and all of the models say they should be very solitary and alone, but the two papers that were published in the mid 70s said, no, they are highly social, they're like prairie dogs, they form these family groups, you know, oh my goodness, they've all these social behaviors, and so one of the first things we

wanted to know is, okay, so they're going down and their, you know, holes, entrances everywhere, how many of these are really connected? What are they actually doing down there? Is there a lot of social behavior going on under the ground? And my field site was the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in Pulagera, Zona, where there are 69 recognized archaeological sites within one square mile. Oh my God. It's a beautiful, stunning place. But there was no way they were about to let me dig up

and look at a groundsboro, burrow, and any way shape reform. And in my four years working there, they did bring in an expert that had ground penetrating radar. And they were using it to look at some of their archaeological sites. years working there, they did bring in an expert that had ground penetrating radar and they were using it to look at some of their archaeological sites and we were actually able to try and use it to kind of map out a burrow area and we weren't incredibly successful. That is as much as I wanted it to be. That was a long time ago. But now I think right in terms of fiber optic cameras, yep, you can just slide one of those right down and in and

And sure enough really see the extent of the burrow and Possibly you could actually even leave the camera down there and see any kind of social behaviors and actions and things like that I know I was there to study their mating system and things like that and I never saw squirrels mate Because they clearly were doing it underground things like that. And I never saw squirrels mate. Really? Because, like, clearly we're doing it underground. Oh, I guess they like their privacy, I suppose. They like their privacy, yes.

We saw evidence of mating. We saw a couple of toy plugs and things like that, but never an actual mating. A copulatory plug? A copulatory plug. Really? Yes. So, copulatory plugs are this prettiest gelatin piece that males will deposit

in the female reproductive tract to try and stop her from meeting with any other males. Well, that's a divs. And lots of squirrels have this, lots of mammals have these. And in most of the time, in just about all the squirrels, I've studied females will just take them out and made again. Oh, this drama continues. Literal cock blocking, actual cock blocking going on in squirrel romance.

But before you go around flipping the bird to insecure male squirrels, please know that copulatory plugs are also common in some primate species, bees, kangaroos, reptiles, rats, rodents, mice, scorpions, spiders, but back to squirrels. We're talking about squirrels. So ground squirrels might keep this giz-tamp on in for almost a day, but I found a study in the Journal of Memology titled Removal of Capulatory Plugs by Female Tree Squirrels, which described these infox squirrels and eastern gray squirrels as quote, opaque white with waxy, terubbery consistency.

And if you're eating right now, I'm sorry. And also, that's not my fault. But now that the scene is set both visually and from a tactile perspective, it continues. Although copulatory plugs are hypothesized to prevent the successful copulation of subsequent males, female tree squirrels often remove the plug within 30 seconds of copulating, and either discard or consume it.

Yeated or eat it, babies. Yeated or eat it. He's not the boss of you. Can they have letters with different paternal, Yeah. They can. How many uteruses do they have? They have one big one. It's kind of this weird corkscrew kind of shaped uterus. And so round-town ground squirrels, I had a litter of 13 squirrels for one of my females. I would say the average was usually three to four. And in Eastern gray squirrels, the average litter size

is between two and three. But absolutely, those squirrels can be sired from different males. Okay, so usually, just a few baby squirrels are kids. Sometimes they're called kittens. Unless you have 13 at a time, and perhaps that squirrel mom is related to my Catholic grandmother, who had 11 children by the age of 30 and stark white hair. But let's get off the topic of my deceased and beloved Catholic grandmother and talk about group sex in your backyard.

We know that females will meet, multiply, female grace girls will meet, multiply, they're only in estrus for eight hours. So they're only receptive to meeting for eight hours. And in that eight hours, I believe the published number is 24 males. She will meet with up to 24 males in that eight hours. Oh, get it girl Is that eight hours a day or a year? I'm mating season. So it's maybe twice a year. Wow. So she goes fast and hard

Yep, and then is there any paternal care or they just like I don't even remember there's so much it was an orgy No, no just there and and gone see a never And if they can reproduce like more than once a year, do they tend to give a lot of resources to their young or is it kind of like we just can't make as many as we can and then we wish them well? I mean, we know that lactation is incredibly expensive and they tend to stay in the nest for probably six, eight weeks with mom after that.

And then you can actually watch them. It's one of my favorite behavior. So I just you'll watch the juvenile's come out of the nest and kind of play. And then you will see the female. You'll see mom come out and basically just yell at them and chase them off. And then they'll come back in the end of the night. But it's kind of this, you know, ritualized like, you kids, you start you quit the side of the crew. You don't go. Get out. Go someplace. Right?

What about rat kings in squirrel nests? I've seen saps that can glue their tail together. It makes me want to throw myself in the ocean. I can't, it's the saddest, cutest, most terrible thing I've ever seen. Yeah, okay, I explained that partly, but sometimes squirrel tails will get glued together by tree sap. And we discussed this notion of a rat king

in the urban roadontology episode with Dr. Bobby Corrigan. But it's just awful. Please call a wildlife free-havard. And unless you see it in real life, donology episode with Dr. Bobby Corrigan. But it's just awful. Please call a wildlife rehabber. And unless you see it in real life, don't look it up. Don't look it up. Don't look it up. I get people all the time who call me with baby scrolls who have fallen out of an awesome thing like that.

And that is not my jam in any way she's performed. I have several wildlife rehabbers on call. And so I send them to places, much like that. But I will also get calls about squirrels who have main, she've lost fur because they have a flea infection or something, and I tell people, they know what they're doing, they know how to treat it, let them go and they'll be okay.

What about redenticide? Is that a threat since some of them are generalists? Absolutely, yeah. I've done labor in places that it's one of the main ways that they will control squirrels, particularly ground squirrels when they don't want them in a place. I mean, I feel like gofers are like, everyone has a gofer. Culturally, it's people are quite unfair to gofers.

But to ground squirrels cause that kind of damage to like lawns and sports fields and stuff like that, they can. Yeah, certainly can. And now, a once in a lifetime chance to ask a personal burning question. I cannot believe that I have the opportunity to ask a ground squirrel expert about some hazing that I got from a squirrel. Okay. Can I play you a noise and can you tell me what's going on?

Sure. Okay. I was having a bad day last week. You know me, I get personal here. I was bummed and my head was like, let's go to the park and let's walk around. And I was like, that's a good idea. We did.

And then this squirrel started yelling at us. This might hurt my heart, what you have to tell me, but that's okay. Hello, guys. Good work, girl. It's hanging out. Just under a bush. Maybe five feet away from us. Calling you a predator. Well, California Ground School probably is young, down in the burrow. And so it's just kind of that warning. We're such gipships. Here we were standing there longer, because we're like, does she need help?

Like, is she the last of a squirrel family? Like, what are you doing? We were like, what do we do? And then the whole time she was like, go away, I hate you. But I mean, there's a reason why dog squeaky toys sound like that, right? Right, exactly. And really, if you did not know where she was, it would have been hard for you to locate it.

It's a single tonal whistle. It's really hard for a million predator to echolocate that and figure out exactly where that is. Oh, so she probably had some cute little babies that were underground not far from us. Yes. And if you've ever heard chirping or barking coming from a squirrel, there are correct terms. I just learned that scurriedologists have words for those like barking, like clicking Donald.caus. They're called Coox, Quas, and Moans.

And according to the paper, joint tale and vocal alarm signals of gray squirrels in the journal behavior. Researchers from the University of Miami flew gliders, painted like hawks, and they drove robot cats around campus towards squirrels, and they found that only sweeping back and forth tail movements known as flags and vocalizations called mones are associated with a certain predator type. Mones happened more often when there were aerial predators present, and the flagging with the tail

happened when the cat approached, but they also found quas more strongly associated with aerial threats, too. They might also collect their teeth at other squirrels, but my point is that if a squirrel is chirping at you and twitching its tail, it wants you to please go to hell, it hates you. I've never seen so many ground squirrels in my life.

I was like, the thaw film. I mean, they were everywhere, and this was a couple weeks ago, so this was like late spring. Would there be a reason why they were out so much? Or do you think it's just a really good place for ground squirrels? Because of oak trees? No, I think it's probably just a great place for ground squirrels. It's just a party.

Oh, that's exciting. I know when I started to study Round Tell Ground Squirrels, I was trying to find a population that would be good to study. And I was having a hard time kind of really locating a good dense population. And I actually went to some snake researchers. And I was like, oh, do you look at your records and tell me like where you have good populations and they came through. I mean, this is, you know, perfect conflicts.

Oh, no one tell the snakes. It's like they're going to blow up this restaurant. But the squirrels, you know, they have a relationship with the snakes as well. Like, it's not like every time the snake sees the squirrel, the snake gets the squirrel. The squirrels fight the snakes right off. I saw a pregnant female totally chase off a rattlesnake. You know, you could tell from the roundness of her belly that she was pregnant and kind of the snake

was just coming through and she started on high alert and let everybody know. And when it's a ground predator like a snake, they will also thump their back deep. Let anybody underground also know that there's a snake. And she just completely chased them away. And it did not bite her. It did be really try to bite her. And she just kept counting on it and forcing it away. Okay, so I'm learning squirrels are cute and beautiful. And they also will talk shit. Oh, they're bad asses. Yeah, and they'll cut you. and they also will talk shit. Oh, they're bad asses.

Yeah, and they'll cut you. We know that they have some resistance to some venoms and possibly even some rattlesnake venoms. We don't know quite how much, but certainly they have some resistance. In all of your work, have you ever been bitten by a squirrel? I have never been bitten by a squirrel. Oh, I'm knocking on so much blood.

I have come close once and gotten a blood blister from kind of getting squished, but when we handle them, I use a cloth handling bag that's in the shape of a triangle. I actually usually describe it as a giant pastry bag. So if you imagine a giant pastry bag made out of like a denim material, we wrap the wide end around the trap opening,

because it's really easy to catch a squirrel, peanut butter, sunflower seeds, things like that. But then you have a very angry squirrel in a metal cage. And so if you wrap the big end around the trap and open the door, the squirrel does not want to be the trap and will run out and basically run into the narrow end and basically just wedge themselves into this pastry bag. And it's like being, the same like being swaddled

physiologically. So they're in there, they're all kind of nice and tight, their eyes are closed, usually their nose kind of sticks out the very end, and they're very calm, and they can't open their mouth to bite me, and therefore I am very calm. They're not trying to run away, they're not trying to move anything, they're just basically chill. Yeah, of course I look this up, and I found fieldwork photos of Dr. Monroe on a campus lawn.

In her lap, a pillowcase-sized dark blue canvas sack pointed at one end. She is wearing a school bus yellow t-shirt and it matches the shirts of her student assistance. And there's a small logo of the breast and official seal of some sort. But on the back of the shirts, in bold lettering, it reads, it's the squirrels. They're watching me. What kind of alien abduction science do you have to do in order to make sure that their population is healthy? Like, do you have to weigh them?

Do you have to take their temperatures? You have to check them for fleas? Like, what kinds of things are scientists looking for? Right. So this is usually this is everything that we're doing. So we catch them. We weigh them. We take a whole set of morphological measurements, right? We want to know not just how much they weigh, but you know, how much of that is fat versus

bone and things like that. Certainly, I look for flea infections. I usually feel around see if they have any broken bones, check their tails. I usually will check to see if they're pregnant or if they're lactating or things like that. Check to see if the males are actually active in reproduction. And then we mark them, so we put unique colored ear tags, usually numbered and colored ear tags into their ears.

And when I do that, I take a DNA sample. And then sometimes we're gonna see how far they're gonna go, and things like that, we can put a radio collar on them, which is a necklace, weighs less than five grams. And then we can kind of get an idea about, you know, number of males, number of females, number of juveniles, and things like that. If there is one that's injured or has a, a, a, an infestation, can because you're a researcher

and not a wildlife rehabber, where's the line between getting it help and letting nature do its thing? How do you decide? My general default is to let nature take its course. I usually think if it's something that I personally have caused, I definitely have had a squirrel to kind of get a piece of skin, you know, on their nose or whatnot scratched from the mill trap or whatever, I will tend to swipe a little piece of, you know, sporing on that nose before I let them go. But generally speaking, I let nature take its course.

I have not ever come across a squirrel that I've needed to do something significant about. And I'd like to keep it that way. Yeah. I mean, I feel like they just probably got wind of you and just respect you a lot. I think they probably won't. I mean, making so much easier if they were just kind of stand up and be like, hi. Hi.

I weighed 250 grams. Here's my measurements. I'm a real knocked up right now. I had a great time. A couple of months ago. What about, oh, I have a million questions for you. I cannot tell you how excited it is. If you could stand on a cosmic soap box

and have the biggest bullhorn ever to bust some flimplim about squirrels, what is the biggest misconception that you're like people? It's not like that. I would say people often ask me about rabies, like, are I afraid to catch rabies and things like that? And there's never been a case of a road carrying rabies. And so there's never been any kind of report of squirrels carrying rabies and things like that. And there's never been a case of a road and carrying rabies. And so there's never been any kind of report

of squirrels carrying rabies. And so that's why I don't mind working with undergraduate students with them. I'm always present when undergraduates draft, but really, really, they carry his tetanus. And so as long as students have had their tetanus shot, I'm generally not so worried. You were in Arizona.

And I feel like in my brain, someone says squirrels Arizona bubonic plague. Plague, yes. Did I make that up? So bubonic plague is definitely a thing to be worried about when I worked at the Costa Grande Ruins since it's a national monument. They would have their please tested,

annual to see if there was any chance of plague. And fortunately, all four years that I was there, there was no chance of plague. Okay, so according to the CDC's small rodents like squirrels, and hamsters, and kidney pigs, and chipmunks, rats, and jurbals, and mice, and bunnies are almost never found to be infected with the rabies, and they have not been known to transmit rabies to humans. However, ground hogs, they got a little more chunk in their trunks, they have bigger bodies, so they do get reported as rapid from time to time.

Now the bubonic plague has been transmitted by fleas on ground squirrels and wood rats and prairie dogs, but it's very rare and please I beg you to channel your anxiety toward really anything else. Or as a slate headline from the summer of 2020 red, you do not need to worry about the bubonic plague squirrel in Colorado. And just reading that, like, what a time machine, what an eventful few years it's been on planet Earth. Just can we catch a break. But if you do feel very sick and have giant lymph node area nodules, just please see a doctor if you're in trouble. Speaking of being in trouble and confronting that sweet, sweet ache of mortality. The most endangered mammal in North America

is a squirrel species. The Mount Cramp Red Squirrel is the most endangered mammal in North America. It only resides on one mountain top. When I was there studying them, their numbers were probably in the two to three hundredths. I could say that a few years ago they were down below a hundred. They kind of come back a little bit.

Is that all habitat loss or climate? It is a, the Mount Gram is a, is a whole ecosystem of a mess. So yes, there's a lot of habitat loss. It was slated to have two dozen telescopes built on the top of the mountain and they were denied and somewhere built and and then there was an insect infestation, it's sacred date of American land, there was a you know several large forest fires, there's an endangered raptor that comes through that each of them, there's an introduced squirrel, I mean like every plight that has affected an endangered species is there on the one mountain cup. Oh, sounds like they were cursed by a witch.

Oh boy. So now might be an okay time to tell you that we have episodes on fire ecology, indigenous fire ecology, full monology about lightning strikes that cause forest fires and a recent field trip episode about raptors. I'll link them in the show notes. But yes, Mount Graham is a 10,000-foot tall peak in the south eastern corner of Arizona. So this Mount Graham red squirrel, it's about eight inches long, it has dark gray brown fur and a white belly, I want a pet, and it enjoys a diet of seeds and pine cones and air-dried mushrooms.

Now, this critter is endangered, but at one point in the era of Camaro's and Aquanette, there was no hope. They actually thought that they were extinct into the mid-80s and a hunter brought one in and wild leifers were like, oh that is not the abrid squirrel that you should be hunting. That is probably the endangered male chrom primer squirrel. That must have been a huge day in this garrityology community. Yes. They must have been popping bottles.

I know that they couldn't text each other, but they must have been paying long distance fees to be like, yes. Yeah, it's like Barbara. Can you believe this? I got some news. That is so exciting. What about tiny squirrels on the big screen?

Is there a favorite squirrel in film or TV that you're like, they got that right? Or I like that one. You know, I do love me a scrat. I keep waiting for Squirrel Girl to come out. I have a number of Squirrel Girl paraphernalia's in my office and things like that. She was supposed to be in so many Marvel superheroes.

I had so many figurines of her. I cannot wait for her Doreen to come out and show everybody what a badass she really is. Because she, you know, she's supposedly as kick deadpools ass, you know, Thana Sass, you know, Wolverine. Like she is just as badass in the Marvel world. And yet I'm waiting, I'm waiting.

Just a short PS. So LA is very small. And I happen to know Melana Vine Trop, the actress and the director who was slated to play Squirrel Girl for Marvel. And I texted her. I told her that she has a friend in the Squirrel world. And she said that that was the most

giantist honor I know. And she'd pass it along to Ryan North. The comic book creator who is the real hero, she says behind Squirrel Girl. And also there's a six episode scripted podcast series, starring Melana called Marvel's Squirrel Girl, the Unbeatable Radio Show. But if you want that movie or TV series,

just feel free to get those petitions going, folks. All the Jets, I have faith in you. Can I ask you listener questions? Sure. I told them you were coming on. I told them that this was the best day of my life. But before your questions, each week we donate to a cause of theologist choosing. And this week, we're going to split it between two for Karen.

One is letters to a pre-scientist, which connects students to STEM professionals through snail mail to broaden students' awareness of what STEM professionals look like and do at work and the other is to Squirrelmapper a community science project that helps researchers identify populations of squirrels and their morphs. Why they ask? Because together we can crack this nut. So find out more at pre-scientist.org and Squirrelmapper.org and those donations were made possible by sponsors of the show. Okay, your questions. Let's start with one about Goth Squirrels. Shall we? Asked by Kup and Toronto, but none in New England, what's the deal? And Jess Shrazon has seen them in Central Illinois, but almost none in

and around Chicago. Populations, pockets of squirrels, like the all black squirrels in DC. Yeah, the Canadian black squirrels, how did they get to DC and also L.A. Not supposed to have a lot of Fox squirrels and yet here we are They're everywhere. How do these Canadian squirrels get to DC? People love squirrels and they move them everywhere That's the easy answer, right? So here I'm here in Ohio and the very classic answer is that a man went on vacation in Canada found these black squirrels fell in love with them them, caught ten of them, brought them back and released them.

Oops. So like anything having to do with love and smuggling, it's complicated. But the Smithsonian in Washington says that it has the receipts dating back to the year 1900, when the superintendent of the National Zoo, one Frank Baker, was thirsty for the squirrels the Canada had, and got about eight or ten of them sent, and they were the talk of the town at the zoo in Washington, D.C. In six years, a few liters later, they were like, listen, the gray squirrels here in Washington are getting hunted too much.

What say you to a little city upgrade by releasing a few of these melanistic ones just on the zoo grounds. Of course that didn't go as planned, nature finds a way. And so the squirrels that you see in some parts of the Northeast, sporting this lustrous jet black fur, are technically gray squirrels. It's a single gene. If you're missing one little part of your gray gene,

you become this dark black squirrel. If you get both copies of black, if you get one copy, you're just kind of more grayish and you're missing your white belly and things like that. But certainly, I mean, we have black squirrels here in Ohio. They are coming, kind of moving down from Canada and dispersing down. And once the trait gets into the population, it just spreads.

It's a dominant trait. So if you get one gene, it's gonna be expressed. So we see them more and more and more. I'm willing to bet that there is probably some thermoregulation advantage, but no one really knows why. Listen, I know not everyone has a thermophysiologist that they can text on a whim,

but I hit up my friend Dr. Shane Campbell-Staten of the thermophysiology episodes and he said, I would imagine being able to absorb more heat from the environment during a time when heat is at a metabolic premium. The winter would have clear benefits. However, there's also a trend called Glujer's rule that says mammals should get lighter toward the poles. Ultimately, it probably comes down to which aspect of the environment is the biggest challenge, he said.

And sure enough, yep, research has shown that black mammals have 18% lower heat loss in temperatures below negative 10 degrees Celsius. And also, when it comes to these squirrels, the darker morphs may survive the city better because researchers say they're more visible to drivers who are looking to avoid squirrel murder on their way to the post office. But remember, this morph didn't evolve to live in this part of the continent, and now also is a great time to plug Dr. Shane Campbell, Staten's new and really stunning PBS show called Human Footprint, which just premiered a few weeks ago.

I've known he was shooting it for years. I'm so excited for you to see it. So I'll link it on my website. It's called Human Footprint on PBS. You can look it up. But yes, any melanistic squirrels in DC are likely descendants of Frank Baker's quest to populate the nation's capital

with pretty little squirrel babies. People always say that they're smaller or they're meaner or they're more aggressive. And I've not seen any of that in In my studies, they weigh the same as gray squirrels. I've definitely seen litters that are mixed black and gray Maybe different dance possibly different dance. I mean Good. Oh, yeah, I mean, it's just you know brunettes for some plants I'll ham is a first-time question asker who appears to know a little bit about this and asked are the black squirrels

Introduced to several areas of the USA like Kento, Holland, Michigan, some areas of Arizona, et cetera. Are they considered feral or because they were maybe escaped pets or does that even matter at the end of the day? Most of them, it doesn't matter. So, gray squirrels, whether they're black or gray, have been introduced all over the world and they typically will cause trouble wherever they go. They are able to outcompete most of the other scroll species and we don't have a really easy answer as to why, why that might be, but people just love squirrels and so they take them and introduce them places where they really shouldn't be. And places like California where there is a western gray squirrel, the western gray squirrels are getting getting out compete by the Eastern Grace Squirrels. Same kind of thing in Arizona, same kind of thing in England, in Italy, the reports of Eastern Grace Squirrels in the Hazelnut Farms. That's a problem economically,

and then if they are somehow able to get over the Alps, they'll be into Asia and they can easily spread all over Asia. And so there are a lot of management concerns with people releasing pet grace grills. And there are lots of conservation organizations looking to rein them back and control them and manage those populations. I never even thought about it if you've got an almond or a walnut orchard. Do they just not like the tannic hole of those knots?

Right, it's so much better. Why would you bother eating an acro when you can eat an almond or a walnut or a peanut? So then, no, I wonder what home-in farmers and stuff do about that. I definitely see a lot of owl boxes near orchards, which, you know. Okay, so I did look this up and catacombe of web pages led me to something called UC Integrated Pest Management Program, which said deep plowing, also known as ripping, along parameters of fields will destroy burrow entrances and will help slow the rate of ground squirrel invasion in orchards. They also say burrow fumigants, toxic

baits, and traps currently are the most effective control methods. And I feel like I say this all the time, but on the topic of human footprints, even the most well-meaning diet still affects the ecology. It just does, I have no answers for you. Just an urge to have perspective. Okay, moving on. I thought this was an absolutely unhinged question, and I'll ask it, Kate Webb, first time question asked her.

Says, there are species of flying squirrel and Michigan that fluoresce? an absolutely unhinged question, and I'll ask it. Kate Webb, first subquest raster, says, there are species of flying squirrel and Michigan that fluoresce. Yes, we didn't know that there's just a few years ago. No one had any idea, and they accidentally turned on a black diet, and it was like, oh crap, this is like, right pink, right purple. It's pretty amazing.

For more on this, you can see the paper using mass spectrometry to investigate fluorescent compounds in squirrel fur, which will treat you to the visual of this fuzzy furry flying squirrel cradled in the palm of a researcher, exposed to black light, and the squirrel's belly looks like a neon pink hallucination. Why is this happening?

Well, like many things, no one knows shit. But some scrydologist hypothesized that fluorescent coloration on their bellies may help camouflage flying squirrels against predators that are UV detecting like owls because there are plants and lichen that also glow similarly. Also, might be for mating, might be a communication tool. As a human, you would need a canon event level breakup and a court of manic panic to achieve it. It's amazing, 12 out of 10. Oh, that is like the Bob Marley poster

that no one knew that they needed. Is there any reason why these squirrels would floresce? Kate Web wants to know? I mean, they can see each other. Other things can see them or not see them, right? The amount of UV radiation that happens at night is very differently than the amount that happens during the day.

Oh, the types of, you know, eye receptors and things like that. Do you think that they are better equipped to see that? Yes. With night vision. Yep. Which brings me to Madison Hunter's question. Says not sure if you will cover flying squirrels,

but I had one as a pet when I was in middle school, and I noticed it was quite active at night. And Madison says I would usually play music to sleep, and I often caught it doing what appeared to be dancing to the music. Do you think it's possible that squirrels get down? Let's boogie. I've never personally seen it.

I don't wanna say that it couldn't possibly, but I've never seen it. And what about the nocturnal versus diurnal? Is it totally dependent on the environment in the squirrel? So really there aren't very many tree squirrels or ground squirrels that are nocturnal. Usually it's the flying squirrels that are nocturnal. Oh, and those again, and Lila Lake those words, are flying squirrels closely related the flying squirrels that are nocturnal. Oh, and those again, in little lake those words,

are flying squirrels closely related to walking squirrels? Or is that neat just a misnomer? It's just a total misnomer. They don't fly at all. They glide, right? There's nothing like they have no capacity to actually gain lift by, you know, flapping or anything. They literally are just taking advantage of the ability to get from point A to point B much faster by gliding than by going down the tree running across the ground and going back up the tree. But thems is squirrels? Yes.

Okay. Absolutely. So, everyone, such as Donia Khan, Irene and Desazzo, Aaron Gunderson, Brittany Sheffields, Frances Horsbrubaker, Kimberly Bryant, Hudson Anzley, and the squirrel queen who asked about flying squirrels. The expert word is... So the flying isn't no, the squirrel is a yes. Yes, yes.

I think it's no. Oh, my gosh. I've never seen one in person, but... So you need to go to Japan. So one of the questions I almost always get asked is what's your favorite squirrel? Oh, they're like, children, you cannot pick a favorite child.

But if you're gonna press me, I will typically tell you it's the two Japanese squirrel. Oh, they're like children, you cannot pick a favorite child. But if you're gonna press me, I will typically tell you it's the two Japanese squirrels. So the Japanese pigmead work squirrel, which is teeny tiny little puffball. And Musasabe. Musasabe is an eight-pound flying squirrel. What? That's a baby. That's a size of an infant human. It's like the size of your house cat, right? And so when it glides over your head, it's like somebody has hurled a trash can lid over your head, speeds up to 35 miles an hour. When they hit the tree, when they land, you can just hear the slam,

and then you hear them kind of climbing up and then they'll take off again. So I want you to picture our group of researchers in a very sacred Japanese shrine, at two, three in the clock in the morning with our red headlamps on running from tree to tree as we try and follow these Mrs. Abe. I was for sure, like they're going to be headlines, you know? American squirrel research arrested.

Well, someone asked if there was a black squirrel lab breach conspiracy. A.M. Have you heard that they escaped from a lab? Is there a conspiracy about this? No, and generally speaking, you know, picking squirrels inside is not always a good thing. They really do chew everything. I would not want a lab full of squirrels in any way, shape or form. Squirrels stay outside is what I always, he's my students. If you had a pet male squirrel, would it be so horny all the time? Because that must be why they have giant balls, right? Right.

They would definitely be points when it is super aggressive and wanting to get outside and things like that. Absolutely. People who keep squirrels as pets generally don't keep them for very long because once they get to that point They are just aggressive and bitey and one out. Well, you've been in academia a long time and you've been researching squirrels for a long time And we have a ton of people who I will list and in a side including Adrian who works on an elementary school campus And whose students have become obsessed with crime squirrel one who rifles through their backpacks, and patron Alex Joseph, whose friends have, quote,

college squirrel trauma, and Mary Con Cannon, Natalie Jones, Chelsea Victoria Turner, Cassandra Grafstrom, Tara Tiger Studio, RJ Doige, Emily Stofar, and Kyla Murphy. Want to know about college squirrels? They want to know why are they so big? One says, what's up with you of M squirrels? RJ Doige says, I dare say you haven't seen Rutgers squirrels. Emily Staufer, what is up with squirrels on college campuses? They seem to never have a fear of people. Natalie Jones says, I've seen a college campus squirrel drag a whole

bagel away. Stop doing, come back. What is it about college campuses and squirrels? I mean, their diurnal college students are mostly diurnal. And so, you know, they just go kind of hand-to-hand. I think because they are so charismatic, people feed them all the time. I mean, I can tell you that the squirrels on my campus are 20% larger than if they were just out somewhere else. And people know that I study squirrels on campus,

I'm well-known, squirrel doc is well-known. But people still will feed squirrels. There is an Instagram account that is not run by me just for I study squirrels on campus. I'm well known, squirrel doc is well known. But people still will feed squirrels. There is an Instagram account that is not run by me just for our campus squirrels. And I sometimes get salty with them because I will submit good pictures. And they are not chosen to be feed for them on the Instagram feed.

How dare, how dare, I'm a Patricia G's notes that they found a squirrel eating a hotdog bun in a tree a few weeks ago. I mean, just the idea of them eating a a hotdog bun in a tree a few weeks ago. I mean just the idea of them eating Whole hotdog bun Chandler with England wants to know how do they not get poisoned when they eat mushrooms? Do they ever get high? How do they know? I can't I can't forge for mushrooms and I have a computer in my pocket So they do eat mushrooms that would be poisonous to us So they clearly have a different digestive system processing system system than we do. And they probably do have, occasionally, had psychedelic mushrooms. I

have seen videos of squirrels drunk after they've eaten pumpkins or apples or things like that that have fermented and have alcohol in them and really can't climb up a tree very well. They kind of keep falling off and falling over and lack of coordination. Do you think they're having fun or do you think they're like, what the fuck? Why is the tree moving? Like why is the tree spinning? Probably. Sometimes it's a fermented pumpkin.

Sometimes it's a fizzy crab apple. And sometimes it's standing under a keg like a rainforest shower, reported by Buzz60. Operators of the Honeyborne Railway Club say when they opened up they found found beer spilled all over the floor, glasses knocked off the shelves, and bottles scattered everywhere. Employees thought they'd been burgl'd, but then the culprit staggered into view. A slow-moving squirrel still apparently intoxicated from lapping up the fruits of his destructive rampage. So it happens, and this is why squirrels don't have driver's licenses.

Sad. Just Donald wants to know how many nuts can make their mouth and also apologies if that sounds inappropriate. How big are their face versus when it comes to their ludicrously capacious face? How much can they fit in there? Or do chipmunks really have that down? Chipmunks really have that down. Squirrels still have pouches and they can pack some good food in there. But chipmunks are the ones really kind of like, right, you have that like big expanding piece and like, I do catch chipmunks in our traps and my favorite thing is when you grab them, the first thing they do is just kind of regurgitate all of that that's in their mouth and just kind of all just like

just falls out. I am so sorry you can have this later. I won't take it. You can come back for it. I'll leave it right here. Or better yet, or worse yet, depends on how you think about it. Because I use peanut butter to play the trap. They will have their cheeks stuffed with peanut butter. And so then it's like the Play-Doh back through the peanut butter kind of being squished out.

So they're like, just take it. Just take it. I don't want this. Nick McCache wants to know, did squirrels invent maple syrup? Did you hear this? No. I don't know. I mean, certainly they will eat sap. Certainly they will pull the outer bark Nick McCache wants to know, did squirrels invent maple syrup? Did you hear this? No.

I don't know. I mean, certainly they will eat sap. Certainly they will pull the outer bark off and eat that inner cameium and things like that, particularly when there's not a lot of food to eat. And so maybe you could say that they have long time take advantage of that resource. What?

It's true. According to the Journal of Mimology Paper, maple showgaring by Red Squirrels, in which Dr. Bern Heinrich writes, Red Squirrels make a tap via a single pair of chisel-like grooves from one bite into the sappy xylom layer of maple trees. But they're right.

Quote, the dripping dilute sap was not harvested. Instead, the squirrels came back later and selectively visited the trees that had been punctured after most of the water from the sap had evaporated. Yes, so they found this all over Vermont and Maine and the Haudenosaunee legend credits squirrels with teaching indigenous folks had a tap and evaporate maple sap.

So waffles brought to you by squirrels. Oh, speaking of food and water, patron, Ivers Hutchings had a question about what happens when squirrels get thirsty. Where are they drinking water from actually? Do they get it from the plants they eat? From everything that they eat. Yeah. Is it good to set up like a little water feature fountain? You can, they usually won't drink from it though. It's not because they won't.

So don't get your feeling certified out. No. And this one about squirrel memory was on the minds of Popita, Diana Teter, Alexandra Coutul, Anke Lausch, Lorraine Evans Taylor Falkner, Jeff Berg, and Alex Keely. A ton of people wanted out how do they remember where they hid their food. Do they have that kind of memory year after year? Probably not year after year because most of the resources are probably gone within a year. We do know that the size of their hippocampus, which we know is used in spatial memory,

does increase in the fall when acorns are present. There's research that clearly shows that I was part of that as an undergrad as well. The size of the hippocampus in spring versus fall, it's much larger in fall. For them to try and remember that, but that's a great question. It's one of the things that my lab has just started to try and take on. I have some hypotheses that say that some species of squirrels are probably, I don't want to say that they are better at remembering, but probably better at relocating scatterhords of acorns, things like that. Also, in case you think scatterhorder is an unnecessary insult, it's not just a way to say that you're a mess,

squirrels. It's just a mymology, scridiology term for hiding your shit in a few different places, which is a thing that you might do with lip balms or money, except its lunch and it's in the dirt. A few people, including Amanda and Chase, Panics Want to Know. By the way, I just want to say never in 350 episodes of this podcast have I gotten so many questions that start with a story. And that is the best. Amanda says, I have a scroll that comes to my window and waits patiently until I give it nuts.

It looks like she gets excited when she sees me and recognizes me. Can squirrels recognize individual humans like crow's can and chase and others want to know? Like, do they remember friendly faces? Or are you of any machine? I don't think so, but I'm willing to bet that her behavior is the same every time. And so she recognizes the same behavior. Madison Hunter and some other people. but I'm willing to bet that her behavior is the same every time, and so she recognizes the same behavior. Madison Hunter and some other people. Also, while pack of dogs, Nicole DJ, Dave, DBR Maker, and...

First request, Jessica, Julia, Suamela. Once you know, if you've seen Mark Rober's Squirrel Obstacle Course videos. So the first challenge is the bridge of instability. Now, this may look easy, but the trick is it attaches at a single point on each end, and from a physics standpoint, that makes it no different than trying to crawl across the tightrope. So these videos went up during the early pandemic, and they feature a backyard squirrel won't several, going through what is described as an American ninja warrior course to reach

a bird feeder. These videos have racked up hundreds of millions of views. How do you feel about them? I mean, it's awesome. And I love that. I love it when people ask me about, you know, they'll describe their entire setup of bird feeders and things like that. It's just so great.

And it just shows really how smart they are and, you know, spatially conscious. And then he has the whole piece about, you're like, when they get launched, that they always do land correctly and you can really easily watch how they use that tail as a rudder and everything. And so it's just perfect, it's great.

But people do this all the time, they'll be like, I have the spring. And then I used Vaseline, I'd agree with this, and this is far from here, and they have to do this, and they have to go here and like, yep, it's amazing. Everyone, I guess with a backyard. Look at it, you, Katie Courtwright, and Ebby Sage Scar it's amazing. Everyone, I guess with a backyard. Look at you, kitty court right, and Abie, sage, scarberry, grace, ruby show, kitty, arm strong.

Once to know, how do we keep the bird's feet safe, Jenny, low road, one to know, why do they eat all the bird's seed, the capital A, and reigning Emily asks this question. So my grandfather is constantly a war with squirrels because they eat his bird seed. And their question was, is it bad for squirrels to eat bird seed or just some beef that my grandfather has with the squirrels? And I was like, finally, I hate to tell you that. I think your grandpa's just team bird here. But is there anything bad about bird seed or is it just that they're taking

from birds? No, it's just that yeah, no, there's nothing bad about bird seed or things like that. And my answer, my best answer, so listen up, is hot pepper bird seed. Go someplace, it sells specialty bird seed, get the hot pepper bird seed, it'll stop the squirrels from eating it, it'll stop the deer from eating it, it'll stop the raccoons from eating it. And then once you, you know, dissuade to them, that the bird feeder is not where they want to be, then you can kind of mix 50-50 hot pepper bird seed and regular bird seed, and maybe even go back to just regular bird seed

until they figure back out again, and then you have to go back to the hot pepper bird seed. But that is my, that is my only, it's my best advice. And that's nature. That's just, birds can't taste it. So we did a chicken's episode recently about putting red pepper flakes in your chicken feed. Not only are the scrolls like hell no, but also you get really beautiful orange yolks.

Yep. But it does bring you to a question. A lot of people want to know, such as Cynthia Conner, Catherine Finney, Megan Guthrie, Maya, Jerry Webb, Pascal Perron, and Jackie Ross. How does one protect their gardens as much as they love them? Alison P. First time question, how do I get schools to stop stealing my son flowers. Catherine apparently squirrels are digging up their vegetable garden. Heather heater did call them furry terrorists. Jackie Ross is there any real

way to stop them from eating their plants? Nope world domination for sure. What about a net? Get a net? I mean sure you can can try a net and keep them and the birds out, but sometimes I mean, they're they're pretty smart and they can kind of get usually get between the fence and the net, unlike the birds who just kind of go from the top. And so it's hard, especially if you live someplace that has ground squirrels or groundhogs or woodjucks, like you're you're in trouble. Well, they got some judgment from some people who wanted to know why they taunt us by not eating the whole thing.

Camille Charlotte Bois, RIP, to your half-eaten tomatoes. And Nina Giocabe says, why do they taunt me by leaving half-eaten strawberries on the edge of my garden? Apparently, Marika says, why do squirrels leave treats and leftovers on my window cells? Why do they not finish? I have complained about this, too.

They will eat one bite out of the tomato and then put it down and then reach the next one and eat the next bite of the tomato. And so it's not like they respect me either. I think it comes from that natural behavior to not eat the whole acorn, not eat the whole seed, right? So they'll eat the top half of the acorn because it has less tannins. So it means more protein for them and then drop it and move on to the next one.

And because it is so abundant, you know, we could use our marginal value theorem and talk about optimal foraging that it's just better to take the best bite and move on. Take the best bite and move on people. Horrible strategy for humans works good for squirrels. Who can be so frustrated with them? I mean, who doesn't, I guess, want to just go to a smorgasbord? Child little mible. Everything else goes. Eat the best part of the strawberry and just, yeah, the rest of it. Stephanie Coombs wants tips on keeping them out of my shed, aside from rebuilding it. Stephanie Coombs wants tips on keeping them out of my shed aside from rebuilding it. If they trap them, will they come back? And again, a great story, but in terms of hiding mushrooms, apparently Stephanie's rubber boots were filled this year with mushrooms, which is so cute, but

if you wanted to keep them out of a structure. Such as Attic squirrel having Hannah Nolan and James Nance and Ness and Sydney I and Abby Grebe who struggles with garage squirrels. You need to make sure that there's no way that you can get in. Usually we have to make sure you block up any holes or entrances or things like that because if you don't take them very far away, they will most likely come back. Art by DJ has a weird one. They say a neighborhood has quarrel one by one. Steal all the bulbs off her string of deck lights,

chewing them off at the cord, and then just running away with them. Have you ever heard of this? Yes, and I don't know why. So they're insiders continue to grow. So they have that need to continue to know for their entire lives that keep their tooth weird down. And there definitely are some plastics that seem to be to gnaw for their entire lives that keep their tooth wear down. And there definitely are some plastics

that seem to be more favorite than others. And so I don't know what the component of the plastic is. I can tell you, on our campus, they bought some of the recycled plastic picnic tables that are supposedly made from corncubs. Oh, apparently those are very tasty. Oh. Any like hole or break or anything,

the squirrels are just in there, gnawing and chewing. And I don't know if it's because it's just ever such a slightly softer plastic or if there is actually something tasty remain leftover in that corn plastic. Well, I got to say I had a Prius corn stock working. I don't know where. I took it and I said, what's up with the food?

I said, let me know if you find any dead raccoons in there, LOLOL, they call me back, they're like, you got a nest in your car. They cracked open my hood, half an orange, a bunch of snail shells, and apparently the wire harness in Toyota Prius is lubed with soybean oil. And it is scrumptious. You've heard, I'm sure you've heard this a lot, right?

Yep That soy plastic, so oh It was so cute, but there was also so much poo and I was like That almost sounds like um, he is raths. Yeah, probably raths. Okay squirrels. You're off the hook another reason why I love Patreon questions is because this I did not know. A lot of people, James Hales, Amacrag, Sedoni S, and Iris Hutchings words asked, is it true that red squirrels will shoe off the gonags

of gray squirrels to decimate the gray squirrel's population? Is that true that they castrate each other with their mouths? Never, Never! No. Red squirrels are definitely far more aggressive than gray squirrels or fox squirrels. I generally say my rule of thumb is the smaller the squirrel, the more aggressive

or the larger the squirrel, the more dopey it is. But no, there's none of that happening. So if there are red squirrels around, they'll typically chase off the gray squirrels and fox squirrels, but there's no Interaction like that. Oh, it's a long time busted. So I think sometimes people kind of misjunge that because when males are sexually active You can clearly see their testes. They're rather large. You've got a set of balls But when they're not sexually active those testes regress back up into the body cavity, and so then you don't see them. Oh

So they put them into retirement. Yep. Okay, well that's good because I was about to, that blew my whole mind, but as long as you're blessing flimplam, let's talk TikTok. Amanda last first time question and a bunch of other people. Matthew Whitman, Lenny Olseth, Laurel Jen Squirrel, Alvarez, Amy Ducray, Steven Shelley, and Danielle Zones all asked about TikTok user Andy Witches February 2023 video that apparently demonstrated some kind of squirrel mind control by unculating and outstretched arm toward a squirrel on this suburban street.

Andy Witch, how literal is that last name? Because I love it. Also, what and why, how, what the hell is up with the wave hand motion thing that supposedly mind controlling swirls? Do you know what I'm talking about? I know completely what you're talking about. I learned a cool life hack of controlling squirrels.

You could actually control squirrels by using your hand in a wave motion. And you could see that the squirrel comes towards me. I learned this from a friend who was in the squirrel club. So now the squirrels super close to me. You could do this on all squirrels. Be careful. I had to try it because I've never seen this.

I have no idea. I've had zero luck. So I don't know what this is. Nothing I could think you've said, it kind of mimics the giving of food. And so maybe squirrels who are in urban parks who are used to being fed by humans recognize that kind of up and down motion. But I don't have another explanation.

Well, as long as we're communicating with appendages, Chris Whitman, Jeanette Moss and McCurdy, Megan Guthrie, they want to know in Chris' words, what does the fast tail switching mean? What are they communicating with their tails? Typically when it's kind of flipping back and forth, that's kind of a predator alarm call. It's a visual predator alarm call. Okay. If they're twitching and screaming at you,

they're like, you're going to kill me, get out of here. Hey, you. Stranger danger! I'm telling everybody around me, there's a predator here. Wow, they're trying to cancel you. That's what they're doing. Yep.

Because we could kill them. And I see you. Yeah, we are predators. There's a friend that are here. Wow, they're trying to cancel you. Because what they're doing, because we could kill them. And I see you. We are predators. There's squirrel hunters are out there. Have you ever eaten squirrel? Not knowingly. I feel like that's a line you can't cross, right? Like, I'm sure that somebody has sped it to me at some point,

but not knowingly. Do you have any enemies? Do you think anyone's done it just just despite? No, nothing. I know, but I'm sure somebody would think that that would be a welcoming kind of thing. And if your toes curled and your throat seized hearing that, I do have some historical news.

So a lot of humans have been eating a lot of squirrel for a long time. And squirrels have been called the chicken of the trees, and in some cultures, squirrels are considered kids food, truly the chicken nuggets of the woods. And there are 1.5 million registered squirrel hunters in the U.S. Many ecologists and chefs praise squirrel hunting as more humane and less ecologically devastating than factory farm to meat, and a potential control of invasive species of squirrel. It's also, from a taste perspective, said to have a nutty, gamey quality that can be swapped out for rabbit in some recipes. You know, President James Garfield, he liked this protein source so much that the 1887 White House cookbook features a recipe for squirrel soup and that involves lame beans, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, butter, celery, parsley, and the use of a coarse collander, quote,

so as to get rid of the squirrels, trouble some little bones. Well, the recipe concludes with a self-review. Very good. Squirrel hunting is a million dollar a year business in Mississippi. It is a hugely popular pastime. So it is a reason for management of squirrel populations to keep number size so that people do have access to them.

The squirrel that was introduced on Mount Graham was introduced purely for hunting purposes so that people would have a squirrel to hunt. Oh, wow. Until we did a mountain goat episode, I didn't realize exactly how much obviously conservation effort is also like, we got a crunching number. So we could figure out how many it's cool to kill, which is better than not crunching the numbers. But historically, a lot of conservation

is also paid for by hunting licenses too. So it goes back to four. I think that there maybe might be a notion that like, if you hunt this animal, you don't care about their well-being. But it's way more complicated. We covered this in the deer episode too, but I feel like there's a very urban and world-wide, where it's like if you go out and hunt any animal, you are sociopath, but it's absolutely fine to have bacon at a diner in the city.

You know, right, right. I get asked questions all the time, by squirrel hunters, they want to know, you know, better ways to find squirrels, catch squirrels, things like that. I also get asked by fishermen about squirrels because squirrel fur is used in a lot of fishing lures. Oh, no. So fly fishing lures. What about Jacqueline Wheeling and Kate Armstrong and Viditricali? What are no kidding words?

Is it true that squirrel has a range of about 10 miles and it can find its way home if you drive it 10 miles away and drop it off? Probably 10 miles is a little far but not crazy far. Yeah, really? I'm definitely taking squirrels five miles and had them reliably come back. So particularly during mating season and things like that, they, males will go pretty far. How are they doing that? World domination. No, I mean, they especially have a good recognition. Clearly, they have some kind of, I don't want to say homing, but they clearly have some kind of spatial recognition when they can come back. That's amazing. I wonder if we'll ever find out they have like pigeon magnets in their head.

You know, some kind of, yeah, some kind of compass, you know, yeah. And that compass might be the hippocampus, which not only helps squirrels with their spatial memory to recall all that scatter hoarding, but it could be at play when it comes to squirrels making their way back home, which can definitely happen when people trap like an attic squirrel and then drive five or 10 miles away

and release it in a new part of town. And they're like, woo, glad that's over. And then a few days later, it's like back at your window, being like, wow, ghosted, brutal. And then you have to atone to their furry little faces, which you maybe never wanted to see again. I don't know, blame their brains, world domination. Megan Lynch, who was a caribologist,

who studies carapteries in Davis, left a question about an introduced species learning to break into these tough raw pods of another introduced tree, does one pioneer squirrel learn something and do they teach each other? Like how much of that kind of communal living in squirrel dres is teaching each other things?

So I mean, we don't really know about social learning in terms of like feeding an acorn or things like that, But a lot of their food has kind of that harder outer shell. So acorns, buckais, walnuts, like all those kinds of things have that really hard Care pace that they have to get through and kind of the shell and so The carapod to me probably isn't all that much difference than a fuckai or something like that where they really kind of have to break off that outer husk to get to the inside piece. And those teeth are sharp and they have a lot of pressure. They can crush a lot of things. For more on Carib, then not chocolate tree with a bonkers history that might be growing on your street.

We'll link that episode in the show notes. And last question. I could literally talk to you for like 10 hours. You are so lucky that you did not get seated next to me on a flight to New Zealand. Because I would be like, I need to sleep. A good question that I didn't even think of. So many people. Pretty Kaufman, MN9, and of course, Camille in...

Camille Charlabel, as words. What's up with Squirrel Poop? I have never seen it. It does exist. Where is it? Didn't the grass is in the ground? I mean, it's kind of like tic-tacs, like dilly-beams, like... Do they poo in their nest? Or is that a no? Yeah, typically there is kind of an area of well-leave, it'll collect and things like that, but you know, if possible, don't go outside.

Other than podcast hosts, what's the worst thing about your job? Other than me, asking you questions forever, because you're the best. But that's just said there's not that's not a bad part of my job, right? Like when I realized I could kind of mix the genetics and wildlife piece to be helpful, you could think about charismatic megafauna and how cool it would be to work on, you know, mountain lions and things like that. And then it was like, no, I could have this charismatic minor fauna. I don't want to say micro because they're definitely not that small and they're not really mezzo because they're not kind of medium like scung simicunes. But you know, everybody knows them and pretty much

everybody has a story has a love hate relationship with them. Those are the things that make the best stories and and really allow you to kind of connect with somebody and have them learn a bit about ecology and the world and talk about things like climate change and forests connect with somebody and have them learn a bit about ecology and the world and talk about things like climate change and forests and hook somebody and make them passionate and make it just a genuine human connection and really see each other and pass all the other stuff. And so it's kind of nice. And so there really isn't a bad part.

But what does talk about it though? Get real with us. When I was in Arizona and trapping at 110 degrees, or on top of Mount Gram, and in 10 feet of snow, in stoshies, trying to find the one squirrel nest and determine if there is a squirrel, that's not always the most fun, so I was most comfortable. The 50?

What about, have you ever had a favorite moments on the job? I do. So when I started here at Baldwin Wallace, they were very concerned that people would be worried that I was harming squirrels, and that PETA would be protesting and things like that. And I was like, I invite anybody who has any questions that come with me, come, you know, come track with me,

watch the squirrels, watch what I do. You will see that I am not in flicking pain, that they are happy to be there. They're happy to have their peanut butter treat. And, you know, we try to minimize any kind of discomfort and the time that they're with us and things like that. And so I have a film crew from a new station with me. I have university relations with me and I have two students and we're catching squirrels and going through and at point, a summer camp realizes

that there's a kind of something going on over here and we want to see what's going on. And so at some point, I kind of look up from measuring shinbone lengths and things like that. And I am surrounded by probably 30 kids. Every color or size shape, every kind of background, and they're all just watching me just completely fascinated.

And they don't know what's in the giant pastry bag. And they're trying to figure that out, and they're asking me questions. And my students are trying to be calm and answer questions. And the news is fascinating, you know, so they're showing the kids and showing me and showing the kids. And it just was at that moment that you realize, like, this is what you want as a scientist. Like, this is what you want. You want to ask questions, get answers, and then have that information put out into the world. And so there's

a picture of me, and it's me, and I have a squirrel kind of sitting on my leg, and there's a squirrel on the ground, and my two students are doing doing things and you can just see these legs, these legs of the students in the back of the picture. And that's probably one of my favorite favorite moments. This has been just such a joy. I cannot tell you the emotions I had when I clicked on your Instagram and saw like the follow back. I was like, Karen, Monroe knows about us. See, and I had just the opposite. I had the complete imposter like like, why does she want to talk to me? No, trust. I looked at your research and I was like, this is the squirrel expert for me. I would accept no others. So don't be scared to ask smart people squirrely questions and then just scatterboard that information

for your next inner party. Now you can follow Dr. Karen Monroe at Squirrel Doc, which is linked in the show notes. We also link to the two causes we donated to in her name. We're at allergies on Twitter and Instagram in case you're still on those. I am. I'm also at Allie Ward with 1L on both and on TikTok at Allie, Under the Gorogies. Smaller Gs are a kid-friendly shorter episodes and those are linked in the show notes. Thank you to Zee Grandriggas Thomas and Mercedes-Mateland for working on those. Susan Hale is our managing director. She keeps the ship sailing, including dealing with merch at oligeesmarch.com where we sell

shirts and bags and stickers, bathing suits and hats, and you can find other oligites in the wild that way. Noel Dilworth schedules the interviews, Aaron Talbert admins the oligees podcast Facebook group with assist from birthday lady, Bonnie Dutch, and her sister Shannon Feltis. Emily White of the Wordery makes our professional transcripts which are linked for free in the show notes. Kelly Ardwier tweaks our website and can build yours. Mark David Christensen and Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media assisted and edited this and lead editing was performed by Mercedes-Mateland of Mateland Audio who also produced this episode

alongside us. She does so much for the show I cannot think her enough. And she does it all the way up in her cozy Canadian Drey. Nick Thorburn wrote The Music and if you stick around to the end of the episode I tell you a secret and this week it's that I am still sick with pneumonia. I'm recording this in bed where I've been for the last 12 days and I keep getting a lot of messages being like don't work, don't work, don't work. And I'm like how do I not? But also I love this job. And let's be honest, I'd probably be researching

squirrel brains anyway. But I'm on the mend, and that's good. And another thing I've been doing in bed is I have this workbook that my therapist gave me. It's on self-compassion. It was written by Kristen Neff, I think. And I make a notes in the margins and doing the exercises and

Having compassion for yourself if you're not used to it is hard at first, but I'm learning I'm learning every day. So if self-compassion is something that you struggle with, might I suggest a workbook on it? Because hey, our little squirrel brains we love to learn. Every day can be a little bit better than last. All right, okay, bye. Pack of Durmethology, Ammiology, Rendozoology, Lysology, Danozynology, Meteorology, Loolofectology, Nephology, Serialogy, Solidology. Wow, she had actual squirrels in her pants.