A man who describes himself as an “animal stuck inside a human body” has decided to abandon his wife and children to live the life of a squirrel in the woods.

Alan Meyers, an electrician and father of two from Dyersburg in Tennessee, has always described himself as a squirrel stuck in a man’s body and has been for years a militant of the transspecies movement.

Mr. Meyers was diagnosed with a condition called clinical lycanthropy, a rare psychiatric syndrome that involves a delusion that the affected person can transform into, has transformed into, or is a non-human animal.