Squirrel Claus!
A distinguished rodent, free audiobooks, and the eternal question of whether spiders get drunk.
I’ve been meaning to write something deep about Peanut the Squirrel and this sociopolitical moment and why, amidst all that’s happening, the cultural madness and the daily grind and the sufferings of so many human beings, animals matter.
But that can wait. In the meantime: If you’re looking for a last-minute stocking stuffer—or a treat for yourself—then I’m giving away three free audiobook downloads of Meet the Neighbors!
To enter, simply like this post before 3pm ET on December 24th. And though I’ll send the download code by email in the form of a QR code-embedded image, in spirit it will be delivered by Squirrel Claus, who showed up outside my window on the day before Christmas several years ago. (I think the beard is insulation from a nearby construction site.) Squirrel Claus does not care whether you’ve been naughty or nice. He just wants to climb down your chimney and eat cookies.
Long ago a squirrel did climb through an open window and into my apartment while I was away. While there he chewed through a styrofoam cup containing a leftover piña colada; drank some; vomited; ran across my open laptop’s keyboard, leaving a string of random characters in an open document; and vomited some more.
He was still inside when I returned, which led to hijinks as I tried to chase him back out. That probably wouldn’t have worked too well even if he’d still been sober. Only after turning the kitchen into a minor disaster did I think to open the front door and let him depart on his own schedule, which he soon did.
Speaking of drunk animals: A while back I happened upon this Journal of Arachnology paper describing spiders consuming fermented tree sap in wintertime.* Fermented tree sap is rich in sugar and protein, and the researchers think the spiders were eating it for nutritional purposes—but they also observed that it has a high alcohol content.
“From a behavioral point of view it would be of interest to find out whether consumption of fermented plant sap containing alcohols is altering the spiders’ behavior, as is known in some insects (e.g., ants and wasps) who may lose control of their coordination after getting intoxicated,” wrote the researchers. I emailed one of them, Yuya Suzuki of the University of Tsukuba, about this. The effects “are completely unknown at this point,” he wrote back.
If the spiders do become intoxicated, my next question is whether they do so intentionally. Having gotten tipsy a few times on fermented tree sap, might they later choose—even on a full stomach, maybe after a long day—to have a pint, so to speak?
And might evolution have fostered this behavior? Alcohol-induced inebriation is widespread among animals. That doesn’t mean it has adaptive value but it does raise the possibility.
In humans, alcohol lowers our inhibitions; for worse and for better, we do things that we might not otherwise. Maybe that’s even an useful thing across evolutionary time, inspiring acts of creativity and boldness that in aggregate outweigh the clumsiness and other problems—“there is research showing that male fruit flies can develop alcohol dependency after failing to mate with females,” noted Suzuki—alcohol causes.
There’s no way of knowing. Still, it’s interesting to consider. And it’s heartening to think that, somewhere out there on this cold winter night, a spider is warming himself up.
Happy Merry Everything, people! May the holiday season and the coming year be joyful and full of love.
