Regina G. Barber

Well, that's where this mystery comes in, right?

Like Michael was seeing posts on social media where people were guessing it could be a squirrel because it was next to a tree.

And he thought.

Science is amazing, right?

So they collected pictures of the rat hole from the Internet since the actual imprint was actually removed last year.

And using these pictures, they took a bunch of like body measurements and they compared these measurements to taxidermied animals from the American Museum of Natural History.

From rats and squirrels to mice and muskrats.

And they ran a bunch of statistics and they found.

It was a squirrel.

Yeah, there is science.

There's something to take away here.

So other scientists we talked to say it's like a really clever way of highlighting how science is done.

And Michael hopes it will encourage more people to explore the natural world.

Yes.

And we love when you come on the show.

It's true.

I'll come back anytime.

You can hear more of Mary Louise Kelly on Consider This, NPR's afternoon podcast about what the news means for you.

This episode was produced by Kai McNamee and Burleigh McCoy.

It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Christopher Intagliata.