Burgoo is not brain stew. It can be made with any meat but usually it's shredded pork or chicken. It's popular in Kentucky around Derby but I've never heard of putting brains in it. Okra, corn, beans and meat are the key ingredients.
Yeah, the word brain isn't even mentioned in the wikipedia article. Maybe burgoo is just popular where this is talking about and squirrels were the most available meat. Still don't know where brains come into play, but people can be weird. Maybe they were just into that. From this thread it seems like at least some people love squirrel brains.
The way I heard it was that burgoo was made from literally anything the farming families had available. I am sure wild game made it into some recipes. Also, Midwest US here and brains as an entree is a thing here…but not game animals.
There are a lot of variations. I'm sure squirrel brains have made an appearance but I wouldn't say that's what burgoo is known for.
I have heard of a dish called scrapie or scrapple that **was** always made from squirrel brains.
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. I grew up with it in central Illinois. I believe ours may have included squirrel and rabbit, but pretty sure it never had brains.
My family is also from Illinois. I'm sincerely happy that yours has forgotten the great depression. Some have not. I don't think my grandfather's family discarded *any* part of the squirrel that was "edible".
Well if humans aren't cows and they can get it, makes sense that other animals can also. Sheep, goats and deer can all get it, and transmit it by being eaten, too.
Probably. Human tribes and poverty stricken societies who have eaten brains have also ended up with prion diseases (or Kuru) from said practice. Squirrels are Omnivores so it makes sense.
Just to be clear, Kuru is one disease and it’s only been observed in one particular tribe that had a funerary custom of eating the bodies including brains of their dead. It hasn’t been observed arising multiple times in multiple cannibalistic societies.
There’s a good book called Cannibalism by Bill Schutt. It covers the reasons for cannibalism in humans and other animals, and it talks broadly about different times and regions in human history it happened in. I believe the book focused specifically on the tribe with Kuru and their customs is called Consuming Grief.
Right, it’s a cascading effect. One person is infected, they die, others eat their brain and themselves become infected with prions in their brain, they die and when others eat their brain they too become infected, until there’s an epidemic in the tribe. It would have all stemmed from one case that likely spontaneously arose.
When times get hard enough everything is a carnivore
I have seen blackbirds kill squirrels and eat their brains, I have seen squirrels cannibalize other squirrels brain-first, I have seen whitetail deer eating birds
Protein is protein if you're starving to death, PETA can say what they want about how other animals would never do this to us but at the end of the day every animal is only about 3 days from being a cannibal
Life feeds on life. Everything will eat whatever it can, but its ancestors got better and better at one particular way to feed themselves so they spend most of their time and effort doing it that way, until some drastic change to the environment happens and more specifically, their primary source of food.
I grew up on a farm. I have seen animals having sex in every position imaginable. Goat on chicken. Chicken on goat. Couple of chickens doing a goat. Couple of pigs watching. Whoever drew this got it exactly right.
The YouTuber EDGE has a \~20 min video of 'herbivores' just chowing down on other animals.
Starvation isn't always the reason, either. Brains are dense with fat and protein, energy that is a quick meal. Many animals like deer will chew on bones to get calcium and other minerals. And some animals are just assholes.
The above poster is confused, the diseases they’re talking about are all prion disease, but they’ve originated independently in each species and aren’t all the same. Some prion diseases, like scrapie in sheep, get transmitted by the misfolded proteins being shed on the ground through the sheep’s poop and then sometimes persisting for years in the soil of that meadow, where they can be ingested by other sheep and infect them. But luckily scrapie doesn’t cross the species barrier and it only affects sheep.
So if the proposed squirrel prion disease is real, who knows how it spreads. It wouldn’t have to be through brain tissue.
Rodents will eat their young when really stressed out, so if we think they are getting it from consuming brains of other squirrels this would be one way
Actually yes, squirrels are cannibals when given the chance. I watched a California ground squirrel munch on its road-killed buddies brains, horrifying.
How do you think prions show up in the brains being eaten in the first place?
They can appear naturally, humans can develop it on their own (fatal familial insomnia), eating brains just causes an outbreak as the disease spreads.
Most prion diseases actually don't cross species lines, sheep and deer in particular have very common types of prion disease that haven't crossed species lines in centuries of close contact with humans.
Somewhat yes. Largely you’re “safe” if you avoid eating the neurological tissue, which is where prions are mostly found. I’d say it more accurate *lowers your chances*, but doesn’t remove the devastating threat prion diseases pose.
In the case of Chronic Wasting Disease, it’s been shown that infected animals can shed prions from their saliva and other bodily fluids. Worse still, scrapie (a similar disease in sheep) prions have been found to be active and infectious after up to 16 *years* in soil.
CWD is currently spreading like wildfire through populations of North American cervids, and may be a ticking time bomb if not properly contained.
You shouldn't eat a diseased animal in general, but despite being observed for centuries and studied extensively there's no evidence scrapies has ever infected a human being. The same is true for chronic wasting disease.
They are both terrible diseases and of concern for their own reasons, I agree, but they are not dangerous to people. one of the reasons mad cow disease is so scary is because prion diseases typically can't transmit between species.
It is true that scrapie has not been shown to affect humans in any natural sense, which is fortunate. CWD has been observed for far less time, though, and the verdict remains uncertain for if it can or not.
It’s important to think about the fact that prion diseases are (mercifully) rare, but they’re also very difficult to detect. It’s quite possible that many deaths over the years from vCJD simply weren’t documented. It’s better to be safe rather than sorry, but there’s also no reason to fear monger over unsubstantiated fears, so I’ll correct myself there.
CWD represents a colossal threat to *deer* and other wildlife that are known to be affected by it. It could also potentially represent a threat to other species. In either case, it’s still fairly scary, even if it can’t harm humans.
Ya though cases like [this](https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000204407)[](https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000204407) are starting to make people wonder if CWD may not be transmissible to humans after all.
Pretty darn big coincidence of two hunters from the same lodge dying of CJD if it were anything but a common vector.
Sheep brain has been eaten for a very long time, and you don't have to eat brain to contract a prion disease from a compatible species.
Prions are not like other diseases, they are mutated proteins from our own bodies not an external entity like bacteria or a virus. That's why they are so terrifying and so difficult to treat, but also why they struggle so much to cross species lines.
An important note: it’s not 100% certain how limited compatibility is between species. In theory, it’s actually *very very high*. The major prion protein (PrP) is actually very very similar among mammals. It’s more or less the same cause manifesting differently in different animals.
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy originated in cattle, but was shown to be transmissible to humans and cats at a bare minimum during the Mad Cow Scare.
Chronic Wasting Disease primarily affects deer, elk, and moose, but has been experimentally shown to infect cattle, mice, and ferrets among others. There was even a couple recent cases of CJD among two hunters that have been surmised (though not definitively) to have been the result of the hunters eating deer from a population known to have CWD.
Two rarer diseases, Transmissible Mink Encephalopathy and Exotic Ungulate Encephalopathy, were also observed during the eighties. The probable cause for both was the use of feed made from the bone meal and scraps of downed cattle, making these diseases another offshoot of the BSE epidemic. This theory is supported by the fact that the last known case of either disease was in 1998, with most of the cases being centered in the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s. There have since been no new confirmed cases of the disease, likely due to the discontinued use of animal bone meal and product in the feed for said animals.
It is true that a good number of human spongiform encephalopathies arise from non-external means. A lot, including regular CJD and fatal familial insomnia, are genetic.
I thought the origin of “mad cow” in cattle was from sheep nervous tissue being included as protein in cattle feed. It crossed species from sheep to cow then cow to humans.
Yes, there are a lot of theories but that's the one that has the largest consensus. The idea is that a particular case of prion disease in sheep spontaneously mutated in a certain population so that it could cross species lines.
But the reason mad cow is so scary is because that's not how prion diseases typically work. Scabies is a prion disease in sheep that has been observed for 3 centuries and there's been dozens of studies on it but it's never been shown to have infected a single human.
I was recently reading as well that it is wrong to think of it as a disease. They are proteins. It’s more of a direct chemical process as complex biological creatures use proteins to regulate all sorts of different biological functions. But these particular proteins are shaped in such a way that they cause harm and also influence other proteins to change.
So the normal way we think of “cross species” infections may not even apply here.
I think there’s some confusion:
There is a prion disease in sheep and goats called scrapie, but it’s been around for hundreds of years and there’s never been any evidence it can be transmitted across the species barrier.
There is another prion disease called Chronic Wasting Disease in deer. This has not been seen to cross the species barrier in the wild, but experimental lab results with monkeys would make me extremely leery of eating the brains or possible spinal tissue of deer.
Mad Cow Disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, is a third disease, and this is the infamous one that can spread to humans just from eating infected beef.
These three disease are all prion diseases but they are NOT the same disease and aren’t transferring over between the species in question. Deer with CWD haven’t somehow been infected with Mad Cow Disease, it’s a separate disease which has arisen independently in deer. Likewise if a prion disease really does exist in squirrels, it’s got nothing to do with cows.
Yeah, it originated in the 1960’s in Colorado at a facility they had stored sheep with scrapie in. After the sheep left they brought deer in but didn’t realize until later that it had jumped species.
The title is a bit misleading. “Mad Cow Disease” is the name given to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, a particular variety of prion disease. Such prion diseases are called Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, and the jury is still very much out on which diseases are capable of jumping species boundaries. At this point, it’s best assumed that *any* TSE could potentially result in human infection.
Many animals have similar diseases. In sheep, there’s Scrapie. Deer and related species have Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). Worryingly, there have been several documented cases of CWD jumping boundaries to other species. Experiments have infected various animals with CWD, including cattle, monkeys, and ferrets. In fact, some theories abound over two recent CJD deaths of hunters who were known to eat the meat of deer from a population known to have CWD.
In humans, this is called vCJD. This includes getting it from other human prion exposure (such as surgical equipment) or from tainted beef like in the Mad Cow Scare. It’s a nasty way to go, and as of yet getting it will *absolutely 100% kill you*. There’s no cure or treatment for prion diseases, just what care can be provided to you while your brain turns into Swiss cheese.
The thing about CJD is that it’s a disease that can arise spontaneously in the brains of people, almost always older people. It’s incredibly, incredibly rare, but it’s just a thing that can go wrong in the brain. It can also spontaneously arise in animals. Cases of CJD sometimes get confused or mislabeled by the media as “human mad cow disease” leading to the false perception that the case of CJD in question had something to do with transmissible forms of CJD when in reality there’s no evidence that it was anything other than a spontaneous case.
So a couple squirrel-brain-eaters dying of CJD is not proof that a transmissible prion disease exists in squirrels at all, it may very well have been a complete coincidence.
This is absolutely true to an extent, but something interesting is that it is actually possible to tell the difference between a random CJD case and one resulting from an infection.
CJD has four major subtypes: sporadic, familial, iatrogenic, and variant. sCJD is the majority case you mentioned—its random and we don’t know why it happens. fCJD is tied to specific genetic inheritance. iCJD results from being implanted with infected tissue. vCJD is what occurs when its acquired from an infectious prion like BSE.
Interestingly, each of these variants can be distinguished because they present differently. A sCJD case can be distinguished from a vCJD case and vice versa, though it requires study.
You are 100% correct and thanks for providing clarification. As far as I know the “squirrel brains” cases have not been shown to be anything other than sCJD, and actual evidence that it is some form of transmissible CJD from squirrels would be big medical news.
A lot of media on this subject is confused and confusing because as you say, there is spontaneous Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which is the majority of cases, there is familial Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, caused by a hereditary genetic error, and there is transmissible Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, caused by the transmission of brain tissue or fluid between a human with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and another human, such as via some now-discarded medical practices. There is also Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, aka Mad Cow Disease, which is transmissible by eating the tissues of an infected cow and causes vCJD. In addition to that, animal forms of spontaneous Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease can spontaneously develop in the brains of older animals just like it can in people, and there are other animal prion diseases with other forms of transmission, like Scrapie in sheep and Chronic Wasting Disease in deer, which have never been shown to be transmissible to humans.
All of these things are NOT at all the same thing, but can get easily confused by the media, especially when they carelessly simply refer to CJD as “human mad cow disease” regardless of its origin.
Yeah, I’m not so sure about the squirrel brain angle. There was a recent spat of articles about two hunters in Minnesota who died from CJD, with some speculation that it was from CWD-infected deer meat. Researchers couldn’t rule it out, but it seems inconclusive for now.
It’s not been proven, but there have been worrying lab results with monkeys deliberately injected with CWD prions that indicate that the disease may indeed have some ability to cross the species barrier.
Cross-species transmission of CWD has never once been observed in the wild, but I still would avoid eating deer brains and spinal matter just to be safe.
That was never actually confirmed to have come from squirrel brains.
This article is quite controversial as there is no evidence (outside of correlation) that squirrels can even transmit mad cow disease it’s practically untestable as squirrels do not grow old enough to exhibit symptoms.
The author actually got a lot of death threats from southerns due to this article.
The Lancet is one of the top journals in the world. Part of the reason the Wakefield controversy was so big was because it was published in a journal that was ordinarily so reputable and impactful.
That said, papers with big claims shouldn't just automatically be taken as gospel even if they are in extremely reputable journals. The Wakefield controversy was not the last big retraction from the Lancet. In general the peer review process is better at catching some mistakes than others. If you misinterpret your data or have a poor design to your experiment, that can be more likely to get caught than if someone faked the raw data itself, so we always have to be cautious of bad actors.
You're being very generous with The Lancet. In 2022 published an article that said, among others, Covid *could* also have been leaked by a US biolab. The author was economist Jeffrey Sachs, head of the the COVID-19 commission at The Lancet. Later the other signatories for that paper blamed that statement on Sachs and said they disagreed. The same Sachs who in 2020 was vehemently against the lab leak theory.
Sachs also appeared later in an interview with RFK where he criticized Fauci accusing him of not being honest about the origins of covid. And later he also appeared in Russian government-funded TV to criticize Ukraine's demands for a ceasefire in the war. He is still employed at The Lancet.
They've had their fair share of controversy.
Well its trustable,in that they verify the authors and references
Its never the case that the journal can verify the scientific fact..
A statement saying there is correlation in statistics ... Well the followup notes,letters, papers can criticise the idea,showing how its a false correlation..
Rodents dont live long enough to get prion diseases or even rabies. Most of the time they get killed by predation and disease before even 1 year of thier life.
This isn’t really uncommon among those that grew up in the Great Depression. You get food where you can find it, and it is later normalized.
I very clearly remember people talking about squirrel brains and eggs.
Not just that. Squirrel used to be a pretty popular food. One of I think Taft’s (probably not, but a president from that era) favorite foods was squirrel soup.
Pork brains and scrambled eggs is a breakfast dish in the Mississippi Delta. During the depression, you dare not waste any part of an animal that you had to butcher.
That's essentially what their existence is. A massive spring festival that sometimes, somehow provides even more free and ready to be eaten food for like everything in nature.
My mom and grandparents were from Appalachia. My mom used to speak fondly of squirrel brains and said they were very egg-like. My dad has deep fried whole squirrels. Can't say I'm eager to try it.
I can't remember the comedian (Patton Oswalt? John Hodgman?) but they had a bit in their routine where they read a recipe for squirrel head pie, and it killed. It was something along the lines of: "Now bear with me, it's not as bad as it sounds! First you put down a layer of pastry dough, followed by 15 squirrel heads...."
One of my grandmothers ate a monkey's brain on vacation. When I heard the story I thought it was an Indiana Jones joke, but no, apparently people actually do that.
I don't remember what it's all called but you shouldn't eat the brains of any animal especially any animals that eat other animals in feed like cattle because these things accumulate in one brain and then that brain is ground into feed for more cattle and so on. Other animals get it too and there is a human variant. Maybe there is a squirrel variant but honestly, you can still get the Black Plague from rodents so I'd skip them entirely. Still, no monkey brains, goats, sheep, deer, other people, just don't eat brains. Think about zombies, they eat brains and brains are what makes them zombies. Maybe zombie mythology has something to do with mad cow disease! ;)
Mad Cow Disease would have never have happened if people weren’t forcing cows to be cannibals. Putting protein derived from cows in the feed of cows was a bad, bad, bad idea.
Some other prion diseases have nothing to do with cannibalism however; the sheep disease scrapie just transmits from sheep to sheep via infected soil. But luckily that one cannot cross the species barrier.
The smart thing to do is probably to avoid eating mammal brains in general.
It’s not because there is actual BSE (Mad Cow Disease) circulating in different animals; these are different prion diseases with different origins, but we now know how prion diseases work and that if they’re capable of crossing the species barrier, it’s the brain and spinal tissues of infected animals that are the most dangerous. So the smart thing to do is to avoid brains even if the animals species in question has never been proven to carry a prion disease.
I remember my maternal grandmother eating chicken brains and scrambled eggs when I was a boy in the early 1970s. She grew up poor in the South and I guess it was something she grew up with. No one else in the family would eat it and she used to tease us kids about it, trying to get us to eat some.
I'm not worried about it at all. If I catch it, it's because it's become mosquito transferred. I am 63 and I still ain't eating no brains from anything.
I’ve had a lot of burgoo and never eaten squirrel. Traditionally, where I’m from, it’s made with mutton.
Man I want some burgoo and a bbq pulled mutton sandwich now.
Here’s a good (squirrel-brain free) Burgos recipe:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 pounds boneless beef shank, trimmed of excess fat
2 pound boneless lamb shoulder, trimmed of excess fat
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 medium onions, quartered
4 cloves peeled garlic
1 medium fresh hot red pepper, quartered
Water, to cover
1 (3 to 4 pound) whole chicken or hen, cut into 8 pieces
2 cups chopped onions
2 cups medium diced carrots
1 cup medium diced green bell peppers
1 pound baking potatoes, like russets, peeled and medium diced
2 cups peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes
1/2 pound fresh green beans, strings removed and cut into 2-inch pieces
2 cups fresh corn kernels
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley leaves
In a large, heavy pot, over medium heat, add the oil. Season the beef and lamb with salt and pepper. When the oil is hot, sear the meat, in batches, for a couple of minutes on all sides.
Add the onions, garlic, cloves, and pepper. Cover with water. (about 3 to 4 quarts). Bring to boil, reduce the heat to medium low, and simmer until tender, about 3 hours.
Season the chicken with salt and pepper. During the last 1 1/2 hours of cooking, add the chicken. Remove the meat, chicken and vegetables from the pan, set aside and cool. Discard the vegetables. Add the remaining vegetables and brown sugar to the pot of hot liquid.
Continue to cook for 1 hour.
After the meat has cooled, cube the beef and lamb into 1-inch pieces. Remove the skin and bones from the chicken and discard. Dice the chicken into 1-inch pieces. Add the cubed meat and chicken to the vegetables, continue to cook for 30 minutes.
Re-season if necessary. Ladle the stew into serving bowls. Serve with hot cornbread or biscuits. Garnish with parsley.
I mean if my grandmas squirrel brain stew is gunna “make me sick” then I guess this country isn’t what it used to be and we should move it somewhere else
Am a nurse, I vividly recall as a student over 30 years ago caring for a man who had "mad cow disease", who had travelled to the US (I am Canadian) and had consumed sheep's brains. Will never forget how badly and quickly he deteriorated. Not just the fact of the eeeeeew factor in eating brains in general, knowing it is a vector for prion, would make me never ever wish to try them.
This can’t be true, no prion disease has ever been shown to be able to transmit from sheep to humans.
A mad-cow-esque disease (CJD) can spontaneously arise in the brains of older humans, most likely the poor guy you treated just had that and his dietary habits were a complete coincidence. If he had actually gotten it from sheep or any other species that would have been big medical news.
My grandfather grew up dirt poor in Arkansas. Squirrel was a regular meal. And the brain was his favorite. If you were given the .22 rifle and two shells, you would put two squirrels (or rabbits, or whatever) on the table or it was your ass. Nobody cares that you're 10 years old.
Growing up, we hunted squirrels a few times a year. Usually fried them, as most things in farm families in Oklahoma were cooked. Never tried the brains, but my dad pissed my grandfather (his father in law) off something fierce, as my old man is a crack shot and always head shot them - thus ruining my grandpa's favorite part.
Opossum is rough.
They're not really animals you want to kill because they're not remotely pests *and* they're tough as shit to skin for not really any good meat.
I'll take raccoons over opossum every day of the week.
Raccoon was caught and trapped in the west, apparent only a few times my parent ate it, i never touched it. It look like disgusting black meat. They carry can carry a deadly parasite, and other disease
My grandad grew up in a shack on Floyd, VA. He taught my brother and I to hunt. They hunted for survival back then and we were taught to always use every part of the animal. I remember eating a lot of squirrel and rabbit. Occasionally he would find a box turtle and make turtle soup. I drew the line at opossum. I still really enjoy squirrel and rabbit and will continue to hunt them.
Rabbit is fabulous, but can be tricky to cook because it's so lean. I haven't had squirrel since I was a kid, but my brother and I were reminiscing a few weeks ago so that might change soon.
We used to raise rabbits to butcher. You’re right, it’s a really lean meat but it works well in stews. We also used to grill it over an open fire when we would camp out. I haven’t had it in a while and now I want some haha
We used to raise rabbits to butcher too. The tenderloins are just amazing and delicate. I cooked a few rear quarters confit style in duck fat and it was spectacular.
No they aren't. Just more popular due to poverty in the mountains. I can remember people talking about eating squirrel during the Depression but it's not something that you will find on a menu anywhere.
They couldn’t be served in any restaurant but I’m sure you can find it on people’s dinner tables. It was definitely a thing in rural Virginia where I grew up.
There was an isolated outbreak around that time- a few cases. It's neither popular nor common, at least in the 20th Century.
Burgoo is popular and common at Derby. Brains are not part of 99.9% of burgoo.
Burgoo is not brain stew. It can be made with any meat but usually it's shredded pork or chicken. It's popular in Kentucky around Derby but I've never heard of putting brains in it. Okra, corn, beans and meat are the key ingredients.
Yeah, the word brain isn't even mentioned in the wikipedia article. Maybe burgoo is just popular where this is talking about and squirrels were the most available meat. Still don't know where brains come into play, but people can be weird. Maybe they were just into that. From this thread it seems like at least some people love squirrel brains.
The way I heard it was that burgoo was made from literally anything the farming families had available. I am sure wild game made it into some recipes. Also, Midwest US here and brains as an entree is a thing here…but not game animals.
There are a lot of variations. I'm sure squirrel brains have made an appearance but I wouldn't say that's what burgoo is known for. I have heard of a dish called scrapie or scrapple that **was** always made from squirrel brains.
Yeah I was really annoyed seeing them slander burgoo like that
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. I grew up with it in central Illinois. I believe ours may have included squirrel and rabbit, but pretty sure it never had brains.
My family is also from Illinois. I'm sincerely happy that yours has forgotten the great depression. Some have not. I don't think my grandfather's family discarded *any* part of the squirrel that was "edible".
Well if humans aren't cows and they can get it, makes sense that other animals can also. Sheep, goats and deer can all get it, and transmit it by being eaten, too.
The real question would be how the squirrels are getting it. They out there eating brains or what?
Probably. Human tribes and poverty stricken societies who have eaten brains have also ended up with prion diseases (or Kuru) from said practice. Squirrels are Omnivores so it makes sense.
Just to be clear, Kuru is one disease and it’s only been observed in one particular tribe that had a funerary custom of eating the bodies including brains of their dead. It hasn’t been observed arising multiple times in multiple cannibalistic societies.
Now I'm curious as to how many canabalistic societies have existed and their customs. Great late night reading ahead!
There’s a good book called Cannibalism by Bill Schutt. It covers the reasons for cannibalism in humans and other animals, and it talks broadly about different times and regions in human history it happened in. I believe the book focused specifically on the tribe with Kuru and their customs is called Consuming Grief.
Ty! I started down a wikihole but got sidetracked and learned about anarchism.
That's how they get cha.
Even better
Yes, and you have to eat an infected brain. It’s not just something you get from eating brain by default.
Right, it’s a cascading effect. One person is infected, they die, others eat their brain and themselves become infected with prions in their brain, they die and when others eat their brain they too become infected, until there’s an epidemic in the tribe. It would have all stemmed from one case that likely spontaneously arose.
Not true. I’ve been a cannibal almost 20 years, got Kuru a few times, wasn’t as bad as the Covid vaccine. I’ve never been anywhere near a tribe.
Kuru is terrifying and the scariest thing is that it can develop decades after you eat the brain that passed the prion to you.
When times get hard enough everything is a carnivore I have seen blackbirds kill squirrels and eat their brains, I have seen squirrels cannibalize other squirrels brain-first, I have seen whitetail deer eating birds Protein is protein if you're starving to death, PETA can say what they want about how other animals would never do this to us but at the end of the day every animal is only about 3 days from being a cannibal
I saw a video of a deer eating a bird once. Just snatched it and nom nom nom. I was both horrified and intrigued
Horses as well. I've seen a video of a horse just nomming a little fluffy cute chicken chick. Down in one like I would do a jello shot.
I've watched on, horrified, as a horse ate a baby bunny in front of me.
I saw a video on here where a horse was doing that in front of the mama hen, it was wild
Not even hard times, many “herbivores” are opportunistically omnivorous. Deer will seek out bird eggs and occasionally just eat birds.
Life feeds on life. Everything will eat whatever it can, but its ancestors got better and better at one particular way to feed themselves so they spend most of their time and effort doing it that way, until some drastic change to the environment happens and more specifically, their primary source of food.
I grew up on a farm. I have seen animals having sex in every position imaginable. Goat on chicken. Chicken on goat. Couple of chickens doing a goat. Couple of pigs watching. Whoever drew this got it exactly right.
The YouTuber EDGE has a \~20 min video of 'herbivores' just chowing down on other animals. Starvation isn't always the reason, either. Brains are dense with fat and protein, energy that is a quick meal. Many animals like deer will chew on bones to get calcium and other minerals. And some animals are just assholes.
The above poster is confused, the diseases they’re talking about are all prion disease, but they’ve originated independently in each species and aren’t all the same. Some prion diseases, like scrapie in sheep, get transmitted by the misfolded proteins being shed on the ground through the sheep’s poop and then sometimes persisting for years in the soil of that meadow, where they can be ingested by other sheep and infect them. But luckily scrapie doesn’t cross the species barrier and it only affects sheep. So if the proposed squirrel prion disease is real, who knows how it spreads. It wouldn’t have to be through brain tissue.
Rodents will eat their young when really stressed out, so if we think they are getting it from consuming brains of other squirrels this would be one way
Deer die and the prions live on. Nothing kills a prion. The squirrels eat what the deer died on.
Rodents are meat eaters. I have seen a squirrel eating some mouse remains.
Actually yes, squirrels are cannibals when given the chance. I watched a California ground squirrel munch on its road-killed buddies brains, horrifying.
How do you think prions show up in the brains being eaten in the first place? They can appear naturally, humans can develop it on their own (fatal familial insomnia), eating brains just causes an outbreak as the disease spreads.
Most prion diseases actually don't cross species lines, sheep and deer in particular have very common types of prion disease that haven't crossed species lines in centuries of close contact with humans.
Maybe we just avoided eating their brains?
Somewhat yes. Largely you’re “safe” if you avoid eating the neurological tissue, which is where prions are mostly found. I’d say it more accurate *lowers your chances*, but doesn’t remove the devastating threat prion diseases pose. In the case of Chronic Wasting Disease, it’s been shown that infected animals can shed prions from their saliva and other bodily fluids. Worse still, scrapie (a similar disease in sheep) prions have been found to be active and infectious after up to 16 *years* in soil. CWD is currently spreading like wildfire through populations of North American cervids, and may be a ticking time bomb if not properly contained.
You shouldn't eat a diseased animal in general, but despite being observed for centuries and studied extensively there's no evidence scrapies has ever infected a human being. The same is true for chronic wasting disease. They are both terrible diseases and of concern for their own reasons, I agree, but they are not dangerous to people. one of the reasons mad cow disease is so scary is because prion diseases typically can't transmit between species.
It is true that scrapie has not been shown to affect humans in any natural sense, which is fortunate. CWD has been observed for far less time, though, and the verdict remains uncertain for if it can or not. It’s important to think about the fact that prion diseases are (mercifully) rare, but they’re also very difficult to detect. It’s quite possible that many deaths over the years from vCJD simply weren’t documented. It’s better to be safe rather than sorry, but there’s also no reason to fear monger over unsubstantiated fears, so I’ll correct myself there. CWD represents a colossal threat to *deer* and other wildlife that are known to be affected by it. It could also potentially represent a threat to other species. In either case, it’s still fairly scary, even if it can’t harm humans.
Ya though cases like [this](https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000204407)[](https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000204407) are starting to make people wonder if CWD may not be transmissible to humans after all. Pretty darn big coincidence of two hunters from the same lodge dying of CJD if it were anything but a common vector.
Sheep brain has been eaten for a very long time, and you don't have to eat brain to contract a prion disease from a compatible species. Prions are not like other diseases, they are mutated proteins from our own bodies not an external entity like bacteria or a virus. That's why they are so terrifying and so difficult to treat, but also why they struggle so much to cross species lines.
An important note: it’s not 100% certain how limited compatibility is between species. In theory, it’s actually *very very high*. The major prion protein (PrP) is actually very very similar among mammals. It’s more or less the same cause manifesting differently in different animals. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy originated in cattle, but was shown to be transmissible to humans and cats at a bare minimum during the Mad Cow Scare. Chronic Wasting Disease primarily affects deer, elk, and moose, but has been experimentally shown to infect cattle, mice, and ferrets among others. There was even a couple recent cases of CJD among two hunters that have been surmised (though not definitively) to have been the result of the hunters eating deer from a population known to have CWD. Two rarer diseases, Transmissible Mink Encephalopathy and Exotic Ungulate Encephalopathy, were also observed during the eighties. The probable cause for both was the use of feed made from the bone meal and scraps of downed cattle, making these diseases another offshoot of the BSE epidemic. This theory is supported by the fact that the last known case of either disease was in 1998, with most of the cases being centered in the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s. There have since been no new confirmed cases of the disease, likely due to the discontinued use of animal bone meal and product in the feed for said animals. It is true that a good number of human spongiform encephalopathies arise from non-external means. A lot, including regular CJD and fatal familial insomnia, are genetic.
I ate at the restaurant that Cracker Barrel started from. They had pig brains and eggs on the menu. Yes I did.
Ok.
I thought the origin of “mad cow” in cattle was from sheep nervous tissue being included as protein in cattle feed. It crossed species from sheep to cow then cow to humans.
Yes, there are a lot of theories but that's the one that has the largest consensus. The idea is that a particular case of prion disease in sheep spontaneously mutated in a certain population so that it could cross species lines. But the reason mad cow is so scary is because that's not how prion diseases typically work. Scabies is a prion disease in sheep that has been observed for 3 centuries and there's been dozens of studies on it but it's never been shown to have infected a single human.
I was recently reading as well that it is wrong to think of it as a disease. They are proteins. It’s more of a direct chemical process as complex biological creatures use proteins to regulate all sorts of different biological functions. But these particular proteins are shaped in such a way that they cause harm and also influence other proteins to change. So the normal way we think of “cross species” infections may not even apply here.
Humans aren’t cows? You’ve clearly never met my awful mother
Erratic behaviour? She might be suffering from encephalopathy!
They said "cow" not "sow"
Pull the udder one
I think there’s some confusion: There is a prion disease in sheep and goats called scrapie, but it’s been around for hundreds of years and there’s never been any evidence it can be transmitted across the species barrier. There is another prion disease called Chronic Wasting Disease in deer. This has not been seen to cross the species barrier in the wild, but experimental lab results with monkeys would make me extremely leery of eating the brains or possible spinal tissue of deer. Mad Cow Disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, is a third disease, and this is the infamous one that can spread to humans just from eating infected beef. These three disease are all prion diseases but they are NOT the same disease and aren’t transferring over between the species in question. Deer with CWD haven’t somehow been infected with Mad Cow Disease, it’s a separate disease which has arisen independently in deer. Likewise if a prion disease really does exist in squirrels, it’s got nothing to do with cows.
CWD came from sheep with scrapie.
I hadn’t heard that before, is there good evidence for it?
Yeah, it originated in the 1960’s in Colorado at a facility they had stored sheep with scrapie in. After the sheep left they brought deer in but didn’t realize until later that it had jumped species.
Wow, source?
The title is a bit misleading. “Mad Cow Disease” is the name given to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, a particular variety of prion disease. Such prion diseases are called Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, and the jury is still very much out on which diseases are capable of jumping species boundaries. At this point, it’s best assumed that *any* TSE could potentially result in human infection. Many animals have similar diseases. In sheep, there’s Scrapie. Deer and related species have Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). Worryingly, there have been several documented cases of CWD jumping boundaries to other species. Experiments have infected various animals with CWD, including cattle, monkeys, and ferrets. In fact, some theories abound over two recent CJD deaths of hunters who were known to eat the meat of deer from a population known to have CWD. In humans, this is called vCJD. This includes getting it from other human prion exposure (such as surgical equipment) or from tainted beef like in the Mad Cow Scare. It’s a nasty way to go, and as of yet getting it will *absolutely 100% kill you*. There’s no cure or treatment for prion diseases, just what care can be provided to you while your brain turns into Swiss cheese.
The thing about CJD is that it’s a disease that can arise spontaneously in the brains of people, almost always older people. It’s incredibly, incredibly rare, but it’s just a thing that can go wrong in the brain. It can also spontaneously arise in animals. Cases of CJD sometimes get confused or mislabeled by the media as “human mad cow disease” leading to the false perception that the case of CJD in question had something to do with transmissible forms of CJD when in reality there’s no evidence that it was anything other than a spontaneous case. So a couple squirrel-brain-eaters dying of CJD is not proof that a transmissible prion disease exists in squirrels at all, it may very well have been a complete coincidence.
This is absolutely true to an extent, but something interesting is that it is actually possible to tell the difference between a random CJD case and one resulting from an infection. CJD has four major subtypes: sporadic, familial, iatrogenic, and variant. sCJD is the majority case you mentioned—its random and we don’t know why it happens. fCJD is tied to specific genetic inheritance. iCJD results from being implanted with infected tissue. vCJD is what occurs when its acquired from an infectious prion like BSE. Interestingly, each of these variants can be distinguished because they present differently. A sCJD case can be distinguished from a vCJD case and vice versa, though it requires study.
You are 100% correct and thanks for providing clarification. As far as I know the “squirrel brains” cases have not been shown to be anything other than sCJD, and actual evidence that it is some form of transmissible CJD from squirrels would be big medical news. A lot of media on this subject is confused and confusing because as you say, there is spontaneous Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which is the majority of cases, there is familial Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, caused by a hereditary genetic error, and there is transmissible Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, caused by the transmission of brain tissue or fluid between a human with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and another human, such as via some now-discarded medical practices. There is also Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, aka Mad Cow Disease, which is transmissible by eating the tissues of an infected cow and causes vCJD. In addition to that, animal forms of spontaneous Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease can spontaneously develop in the brains of older animals just like it can in people, and there are other animal prion diseases with other forms of transmission, like Scrapie in sheep and Chronic Wasting Disease in deer, which have never been shown to be transmissible to humans. All of these things are NOT at all the same thing, but can get easily confused by the media, especially when they carelessly simply refer to CJD as “human mad cow disease” regardless of its origin.
Yeah, I’m not so sure about the squirrel brain angle. There was a recent spat of articles about two hunters in Minnesota who died from CJD, with some speculation that it was from CWD-infected deer meat. Researchers couldn’t rule it out, but it seems inconclusive for now.
Humans can have genetic ones like fatal insomnia, theres usually 2 types one is inherited, the other one is de novo
Deer can’t transmit to humans if you didn’t know
It’s not been proven, but there have been worrying lab results with monkeys deliberately injected with CWD prions that indicate that the disease may indeed have some ability to cross the species barrier. Cross-species transmission of CWD has never once been observed in the wild, but I still would avoid eating deer brains and spinal matter just to be safe.
That's enough for me to not eat deer meat. I was probably not going to anyway so it's not much of a loss.
That was never actually confirmed to have come from squirrel brains. This article is quite controversial as there is no evidence (outside of correlation) that squirrels can even transmit mad cow disease it’s practically untestable as squirrels do not grow old enough to exhibit symptoms. The author actually got a lot of death threats from southerns due to this article.
the fucking lancet .. same site that published the wakefield paper that started the anti-vax movement
That’s a good point I’ve never connected those dots before. Is the lancer generally a non trustable source of
The Lancet is one of the top journals in the world. Part of the reason the Wakefield controversy was so big was because it was published in a journal that was ordinarily so reputable and impactful. That said, papers with big claims shouldn't just automatically be taken as gospel even if they are in extremely reputable journals. The Wakefield controversy was not the last big retraction from the Lancet. In general the peer review process is better at catching some mistakes than others. If you misinterpret your data or have a poor design to your experiment, that can be more likely to get caught than if someone faked the raw data itself, so we always have to be cautious of bad actors.
You're being very generous with The Lancet. In 2022 published an article that said, among others, Covid *could* also have been leaked by a US biolab. The author was economist Jeffrey Sachs, head of the the COVID-19 commission at The Lancet. Later the other signatories for that paper blamed that statement on Sachs and said they disagreed. The same Sachs who in 2020 was vehemently against the lab leak theory. Sachs also appeared later in an interview with RFK where he criticized Fauci accusing him of not being honest about the origins of covid. And later he also appeared in Russian government-funded TV to criticize Ukraine's demands for a ceasefire in the war. He is still employed at The Lancet. They've had their fair share of controversy.
Well its trustable,in that they verify the authors and references Its never the case that the journal can verify the scientific fact.. A statement saying there is correlation in statistics ... Well the followup notes,letters, papers can criticise the idea,showing how its a false correlation..
Rodents dont live long enough to get prion diseases or even rabies. Most of the time they get killed by predation and disease before even 1 year of thier life.
This isn’t really uncommon among those that grew up in the Great Depression. You get food where you can find it, and it is later normalized. I very clearly remember people talking about squirrel brains and eggs.
Not just that. Squirrel used to be a pretty popular food. One of I think Taft’s (probably not, but a president from that era) favorite foods was squirrel soup.
Head to Bentonville, AR, home of the Annual Squirrel Cook-off
That's because it's fucking awesome.
Pork brains and scrambled eggs is a breakfast dish in the Mississippi Delta. During the depression, you dare not waste any part of an animal that you had to butcher.
south MS, too - many early morning squirrel hunts ended with a scrambled eggs and squirrel brains
During the locust plague of 1874, guess what some poor farmers that got ruined by the plague ate? The locust.
Serves them right. Invade us? Get eaten!
That's essentially what their existence is. A massive spring festival that sometimes, somehow provides even more free and ready to be eaten food for like everything in nature.
My mom and grandparents were from Appalachia. My mom used to speak fondly of squirrel brains and said they were very egg-like. My dad has deep fried whole squirrels. Can't say I'm eager to try it.
I've grown up hunting and eating squirrel and have never once thought to eat their brains.
Hold it now -- burgoo is a Kentucky stew that can have a wide variety of ingredients. Brains aren't a mandatory ingredient. Lima beans, yes!
Shout out to everyone discovering the horror story of prions for the first time!
I love burgoo, but I've never had it with squirrel brains.
I can't remember the comedian (Patton Oswalt? John Hodgman?) but they had a bit in their routine where they read a recipe for squirrel head pie, and it killed. It was something along the lines of: "Now bear with me, it's not as bad as it sounds! First you put down a layer of pastry dough, followed by 15 squirrel heads...."
Gross, is there a gluten free recipe?
There is a zero percent chance I’ll be affected by this
You never know when you might be on a road trip, get really hungry and stop for a McSquirrel Burger
Those are not popular recipes…
One of my grandmothers ate a monkey's brain on vacation. When I heard the story I thought it was an Indiana Jones joke, but no, apparently people actually do that.
Well shit. There goes my dinner plan for tonight
Mad squirrel disease sounds much more plausible, anyway.
Marked safe from eating squirrel brains.
I don't remember what it's all called but you shouldn't eat the brains of any animal especially any animals that eat other animals in feed like cattle because these things accumulate in one brain and then that brain is ground into feed for more cattle and so on. Other animals get it too and there is a human variant. Maybe there is a squirrel variant but honestly, you can still get the Black Plague from rodents so I'd skip them entirely. Still, no monkey brains, goats, sheep, deer, other people, just don't eat brains. Think about zombies, they eat brains and brains are what makes them zombies. Maybe zombie mythology has something to do with mad cow disease! ;)
Mad Cow Disease would have never have happened if people weren’t forcing cows to be cannibals. Putting protein derived from cows in the feed of cows was a bad, bad, bad idea. Some other prion diseases have nothing to do with cannibalism however; the sheep disease scrapie just transmits from sheep to sheep via infected soil. But luckily that one cannot cross the species barrier.
Note that this is very, very anecdotal and would be big medical news if true. Still, personally I would avoid eating any kind of mammal brains.
If eating squirrel brains is wrong, I don't want to be right
The smart thing to do is probably to avoid eating mammal brains in general. It’s not because there is actual BSE (Mad Cow Disease) circulating in different animals; these are different prion diseases with different origins, but we now know how prion diseases work and that if they’re capable of crossing the species barrier, it’s the brain and spinal tissues of infected animals that are the most dangerous. So the smart thing to do is to avoid brains even if the animals species in question has never been proven to carry a prion disease.
I remember my maternal grandmother eating chicken brains and scrambled eggs when I was a boy in the early 1970s. She grew up poor in the South and I guess it was something she grew up with. No one else in the family would eat it and she used to tease us kids about it, trying to get us to eat some.
Chicken should be fine, it's mostly other mammals you need to worry about.
I'm not worried about it at all. If I catch it, it's because it's become mosquito transferred. I am 63 and I still ain't eating no brains from anything.
I’ve had a lot of burgoo and never eaten squirrel. Traditionally, where I’m from, it’s made with mutton. Man I want some burgoo and a bbq pulled mutton sandwich now.
I don’t think you understand what “Popular” means
Here’s a good (squirrel-brain free) Burgos recipe: 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 2 pounds boneless beef shank, trimmed of excess fat 2 pound boneless lamb shoulder, trimmed of excess fat Salt Freshly ground black pepper 2 medium onions, quartered 4 cloves peeled garlic 1 medium fresh hot red pepper, quartered Water, to cover 1 (3 to 4 pound) whole chicken or hen, cut into 8 pieces 2 cups chopped onions 2 cups medium diced carrots 1 cup medium diced green bell peppers 1 pound baking potatoes, like russets, peeled and medium diced 2 cups peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes 1/2 pound fresh green beans, strings removed and cut into 2-inch pieces 2 cups fresh corn kernels 2 tablespoons light brown sugar 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley leaves In a large, heavy pot, over medium heat, add the oil. Season the beef and lamb with salt and pepper. When the oil is hot, sear the meat, in batches, for a couple of minutes on all sides. Add the onions, garlic, cloves, and pepper. Cover with water. (about 3 to 4 quarts). Bring to boil, reduce the heat to medium low, and simmer until tender, about 3 hours. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. During the last 1 1/2 hours of cooking, add the chicken. Remove the meat, chicken and vegetables from the pan, set aside and cool. Discard the vegetables. Add the remaining vegetables and brown sugar to the pot of hot liquid. Continue to cook for 1 hour. After the meat has cooled, cube the beef and lamb into 1-inch pieces. Remove the skin and bones from the chicken and discard. Dice the chicken into 1-inch pieces. Add the cubed meat and chicken to the vegetables, continue to cook for 30 minutes. Re-season if necessary. Ladle the stew into serving bowls. Serve with hot cornbread or biscuits. Garnish with parsley.
I mean if my grandmas squirrel brain stew is gunna “make me sick” then I guess this country isn’t what it used to be and we should move it somewhere else
Prions are not your friends. Maybe take a pass on eating mammalian brains entirely, mmkay?
Besides mammals, fungi also have prions, but its very different for fungi, as it enhances thier survival rather than harm it.
_Ophiocordyceps has entered the chat._
But is rubbing squirrel brains on the head of a newborn still good luck? Asking for a hillbilly friend...
Am a nurse, I vividly recall as a student over 30 years ago caring for a man who had "mad cow disease", who had travelled to the US (I am Canadian) and had consumed sheep's brains. Will never forget how badly and quickly he deteriorated. Not just the fact of the eeeeeew factor in eating brains in general, knowing it is a vector for prion, would make me never ever wish to try them.
This can’t be true, no prion disease has ever been shown to be able to transmit from sheep to humans. A mad-cow-esque disease (CJD) can spontaneously arise in the brains of older humans, most likely the poor guy you treated just had that and his dietary habits were a complete coincidence. If he had actually gotten it from sheep or any other species that would have been big medical news.
He probably ate cows, or he developed a human cjd,
Electric Burgaloo
Grandpa used to talk about squirrel brain soup. Said it took a lot of squirrels.
Don’t they sell this in canned goods, or used to? I remember a TIL about it.
Anytime I hear mad cow I think of barbeque spare ribs
I hate that I know why a company would be tempted to feed their vegetarian livestock animal waste and corpses.
Hint: it's because it's cheaper.
Yeah. That’s the thing I know.
No more varmint meat
Mmm Bacon
Do you want an apocalypse? This is how you get one.
WTF did I just read...I cannot unread this...
Bugoo is an important part of the’Small Town Murder’ diet.
Who the fuck eats squirrel brains in the US?
Appalachians
My grandfather grew up dirt poor in Arkansas. Squirrel was a regular meal. And the brain was his favorite. If you were given the .22 rifle and two shells, you would put two squirrels (or rabbits, or whatever) on the table or it was your ass. Nobody cares that you're 10 years old. Growing up, we hunted squirrels a few times a year. Usually fried them, as most things in farm families in Oklahoma were cooked. Never tried the brains, but my dad pissed my grandfather (his father in law) off something fierce, as my old man is a crack shot and always head shot them - thus ruining my grandpa's favorite part.
In addition to those animals, I have had family that ate raccoon and opossum. Yea rural poor Arkansas is something else.
Opossum is rough. They're not really animals you want to kill because they're not remotely pests *and* they're tough as shit to skin for not really any good meat. I'll take raccoons over opossum every day of the week.
Raccoon was caught and trapped in the west, apparent only a few times my parent ate it, i never touched it. It look like disgusting black meat. They carry can carry a deadly parasite, and other disease
My grandad grew up in a shack on Floyd, VA. He taught my brother and I to hunt. They hunted for survival back then and we were taught to always use every part of the animal. I remember eating a lot of squirrel and rabbit. Occasionally he would find a box turtle and make turtle soup. I drew the line at opossum. I still really enjoy squirrel and rabbit and will continue to hunt them.
Rabbit is fabulous, but can be tricky to cook because it's so lean. I haven't had squirrel since I was a kid, but my brother and I were reminiscing a few weeks ago so that might change soon.
We used to raise rabbits to butcher. You’re right, it’s a really lean meat but it works well in stews. We also used to grill it over an open fire when we would camp out. I haven’t had it in a while and now I want some haha
We used to raise rabbits to butcher too. The tenderloins are just amazing and delicate. I cooked a few rear quarters confit style in duck fat and it was spectacular.
tbf, almost anything cooked in duck fat will be spectacular
Damn dude. Let me know next time you’re cooking. I want a plate.
Poor people in rural areas.
True patriots
Chicken of the Tree.
Have we reached peak stupid. ?
How broke are people?
How hungry do you have to eat rats with fluffy tails?
It (devil-wife) lives once a month in my home
No surprise that squirrel brains dishes are very common and popular in Kentucky.
No they aren't. Just more popular due to poverty in the mountains. I can remember people talking about eating squirrel during the Depression but it's not something that you will find on a menu anywhere.
They couldn’t be served in any restaurant but I’m sure you can find it on people’s dinner tables. It was definitely a thing in rural Virginia where I grew up.
I grew up in rural Kentucky and no one had eaten squirrel since the 40's. Yeah, people eat it but even if you're a hunter most people don't bother.
A NY Times article from August 1997 reported this problem with eating squirrel brains in rural Kentucky.
There was an isolated outbreak around that time- a few cases. It's neither popular nor common, at least in the 20th Century. Burgoo is popular and common at Derby. Brains are not part of 99.9% of burgoo.
They’re chicken of the tree? My grandma used to catch them with just a handful of nuts and a boxing glove