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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert.

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Speaker 2: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday, so

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Speaker 2: we're going into the vault for an older episode of

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Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one originally published May eighteenth,

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, and it is part one of our

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Speaker 2: series on the beaver, a truly remarkable animal, far more

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Speaker 2: strange and amazing than you might imagine.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so have you skipped it the first time around,

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Speaker 1: thinking I don't want to hear about beavers. Beavers are boring. Well,

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Speaker 1: you were wrong. Beavers are exciting and allow us to

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Speaker 1: prove this to you in this episode and the following.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. We've covered numerous

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Speaker 1: examples of this before, but obviously, in days before photography

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Speaker 1: and videography, one had to depend on illustrations and written

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Speaker 1: descriptions to convey the reality of an organism, you know,

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Speaker 1: be it a bird or a fish, what have you.

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Speaker 1: But this is especially true for creatures that lived in

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Speaker 1: lands beyond your direct experience. You know, what are the

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Speaker 1: what are the mammals, what are the birds? Like on

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Speaker 1: another continent. Well, you have to send people out in

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Speaker 1: the world. They can, you know, to a certain extent.

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Speaker 1: They can bring specimens back. Certainly, they can bring parts

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Speaker 1: of specimens back, but it's those ill in some cases,

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Speaker 1: but it's those illustrations that really bring things alive. Now,

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Speaker 1: certainly there are some fine examples of naturalist illustration out there,

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Speaker 1: especially from recent centuries. I mean there's some gorgeous, like

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Speaker 1: you say, like Audubond illustrations and paintings that sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: But there are also countless examples, and we've touched on

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Speaker 1: these before in the show of rough or drawings, drawings

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Speaker 1: that feel like, you know, there's been a game of

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Speaker 1: telephone at play. And this is especially the case for

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Speaker 1: examples found in various bestiaries and medieval manuscripts, among other places.

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Speaker 1: And when we think of such misconstrued animals, you know,

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Speaker 1: what do we tend to think about? You know, we

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Speaker 1: think about the rhino, We think about the lion, the whale,

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Speaker 1: the elephant, you know, great animals, apex, predators, and megafauna.

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Speaker 1: But in this episode, in the next episode, at the

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Speaker 1: very least, we're going to get into another creature that

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Speaker 1: has also experienced extreme inaccuracy in historic illustration, and that

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Speaker 1: is the common beaver. Based on just some of the

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Speaker 1: images we've been looking at, a beaver might well be

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Speaker 1: a kind of strange dog or a pig with a

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Speaker 1: with perhaps a fish tail on its body, you know,

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Speaker 1: a real hybrid feeling like it is, almost like it's

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Speaker 1: a strange like dog mermaid. It might be in almost

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Speaker 1: all respects a deer, like a creature with long legs

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Speaker 1: and hooves. And it may also look like a strange

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Speaker 1: and confused rodent with a great button seam running down

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Speaker 1: its chest. It may even look like a weirdly serpentine lion.

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Speaker 2: So Rob has been sharing medieval and Renaissance illustrations of

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Speaker 2: beavers with me for a couple of days now, and

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Speaker 2: I really do love all of them. But I do

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Speaker 2: think the one I like the most is the one

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Speaker 2: that's just straight up a deer with hooves, except it

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Speaker 2: has razor blades for teeth, just like the rectangular razor blades.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this one. I had to go deep around

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Speaker 1: this one because I was It initially came up in

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Speaker 1: an image search and you know, I think it was

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Speaker 1: maybe on a pinterest or something. I was like, I

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Speaker 1: can't trust this. But I eventually looked it up in

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Speaker 1: the catalog of illuminated manuscripts and it is a Northern

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Speaker 1: Italian illustration from somewhere around the year fourteen forty. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: it just looks like a It is labeled as a beaver,

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Speaker 1: but it is in all respects a deer. So I

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Speaker 1: was just really astounded, like here, especially as an image,

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Speaker 1: that it not only gets the form wrong regarding the

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Speaker 1: target organism, it gets everything about like the energy of

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Speaker 1: the creature wrong, you know, because it's it's one thing

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Speaker 1: if you have a depiction of a rhino that okay,

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Speaker 1: it's like a big armor plated thing with four legs.

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Speaker 1: It's like, all right, I mean that's it's an extravagant

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Speaker 1: version of the truth. But this, it's like, how wrong

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Speaker 1: did this game of telephone go?

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Speaker 2: Right? With the right? You like, with deerors rhinoceros, you

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Speaker 2: can see that beginning as a rhinoceros, but with embellishments, yes,

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Speaker 2: But with the beaver, it's like, oh, I'm sorry, did

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Speaker 2: you say beaver? I thought you asked for a depiction

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Speaker 2: of a of a lion with a snake neck biting

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Speaker 2: its own genitals.

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Speaker 1: That's right, because and this is this is something we'll

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Speaker 1: probably get into mostly in the next episode, But there

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Speaker 1: is this pervasive myth that existed for a very long

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Speaker 1: time that when pursued by hunters, a male beaver would

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Speaker 1: chew off its own testicles. And so many of these images.

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Speaker 1: Be your creature more dog or catlike, or or actually

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Speaker 1: just a deer with razor sharp teeth, it is often

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Speaker 1: depicted nine at its testicles. That at least we have

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Speaker 1: some answers for in the next episode where that idea

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Speaker 1: comes from and why it's so pervasive.

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Speaker 2: Right, So you've got to stick around for next time

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Speaker 2: to hear that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's start with what we know. Let's start

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Speaker 1: with the reality. We're gonna start by talking about just

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Speaker 1: basic beaver anatomy and behavior. And I probably don't have

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Speaker 1: to tell most listeners out there what a beaver looks like.

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Speaker 1: I mean, for starters, like, we have images all over

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Speaker 1: the place of them, we have documentary footage. Many of

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Speaker 1: you can go and see a live beaver at least

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Speaker 1: in some sort of like a zoo environment, or you

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Speaker 1: have seen them in the past. But on the other

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Speaker 1: side of the coin, it's, like I said, still kind

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Speaker 1: of have to tell you what a beaver looks like

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Speaker 1: because the beaver is kind of in the same category

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Speaker 1: as the spouting whale, as we discussed in some of

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Speaker 1: our recent whale episodes, those particularly the ones on spouting

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Speaker 1: and spouts. Because despite all this access to actual, solid

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Speaker 1: documentary footage of the beaver, we still have this rich

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Speaker 1: history of cartoon depictions of beavers that inevitably cloud our

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Speaker 1: understanding of the creatures.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I think you get a fairly accurate mental

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Speaker 2: picture if you just cross a squirrel with a grizzly bear.

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Speaker 2: You know, you mash those two up your most of

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Speaker 2: the way there. But while that does get you sort

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Speaker 2: of the shape the outline, right, that does not tell

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Speaker 2: you everything you need to know about beavers. Beavers are

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Speaker 2: much stranger and more beautiful than I realized.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of weird and wonderful aspects

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Speaker 1: to their morphology, to their behavior, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: this is stuff that our popular conceptions of the beaver

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Speaker 1: don't get into. I mean, you know, they do get

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Speaker 1: some of the things right, you know, the basic shape

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Speaker 1: of the beaver is far better in cartoon than it

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Speaker 1: is in many of these eliminated manuscripts. You know, some

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Speaker 1: things hold up. Obviously, beavers are not going to sell

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Speaker 1: you out to the White Witch. That's absolutely true.

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Speaker 2: So C. S.

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Speaker 1: Lewis was right on that count, even if he got

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Speaker 1: the whole diet of the beaver wrong, because in Narnia,

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Speaker 1: apparently beavers like to eat fish and chips. That's not

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Speaker 1: happening in the actual natural world.

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Speaker 2: On the other hand, I will say, there is the

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Speaker 2: kind of food and organism usually seeks out to eat

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Speaker 2: in its environment, versus what an animal will eat if

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Speaker 2: given the opportunity. I kind of wonder. I feel like

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Speaker 2: if you gave a beaver a basket of chips and

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Speaker 2: some malt vinegar, I don't know they might get into that.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's start with the basics here. So

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Speaker 1: beavers are rodents, and are in fact the second largest

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Speaker 1: extent rodent, surpassed only by the mighty capybara. Beavers can

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Speaker 1: weigh up to fifty kilograms or one hundred and ten pounds.

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Speaker 1: There are two extant species of beaver. There's the North

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Speaker 1: American beaver or castor canadensis and the Eurasian beaver caste

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Speaker 1: or fiber. But the Castoridae family includes some impressive extinct

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Speaker 1: species as well. In fact, there were giant beavers that

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Speaker 1: lived during the Pleistocene, reaching weights of up to one

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Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five kilograms or two hundred and seventy

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Speaker 1: six pounds, So that is more than twice as big

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Speaker 1: as extant beavers. Though I was reading they seem to

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Speaker 1: have had smaller brains, among other morphological differences. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: so they were bigger, and you know, maybe to some

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Speaker 1: extent they didn't have to or had not yet developed

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Speaker 1: these very impressive behaviors and abilities that we'll get into

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Speaker 1: concerning modern beavers. Now, one note on these guys. They

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Speaker 1: were still smaller than the fifteen hundred kilogram or thirty

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Speaker 1: three hundred pound giant pacaranas of South America. Extant pacaranas

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Speaker 1: only get up to light thirty three pounds or fifteen kilograms,

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Speaker 1: and they can still be found in the western Amazonian

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Speaker 1: River basin. But the giant ones, they were pretty massive.

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Speaker 1: A lot of rodents of unusual size in freehistory, all.

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Speaker 2: Right, So no beavers today in that territory, but beavers

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Speaker 2: can still get pretty chunky.

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Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, they're pretty big, And this is like

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Speaker 1: a fact. I frequently forget that they're the second biggest rodent.

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Speaker 1: The kappy bear is easy to remember, but it's sometimes

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Speaker 1: it's easy to forget who's coming in second. Now, it's

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Speaker 1: extremely important to note that beavers are semi aquatic, having

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Speaker 1: evolved to thrive in various freshwater habitats, so a number

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Speaker 1: of the things we're going to be discussing about them

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Speaker 1: line up with their habitat. For instance, they can hold

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Speaker 1: their breath for fifteen minutes. They have transparent third eyelids

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Speaker 1: called nicitating membranes to aid them in their swims, much

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Speaker 1: like manatees. They also famously have long, flat black tails.

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Speaker 1: We know this from the cartoons obviously, and these aid

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Speaker 1: them in their swimming, but they can also use them

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Speaker 1: to sound an alarm by slapping the water slapping the

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Speaker 1: surface of the water, and they also use them to

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Speaker 1: balance when they're carrying wood or other loads across the ground.

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Speaker 1: For any of you out there who watch a lot

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Speaker 1: of animal videos on Instagram and so forth, you may

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Speaker 1: have seen videos of adorable beavers carrying carrots around and

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Speaker 1: if you're not looking closely enough, you might think they're

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Speaker 1: dragging their tails, But if you will look closely, you

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Speaker 1: can see that the tail is off the ground and

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Speaker 1: it's helping them balance.

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Speaker 2: One of the things I've noticed about watching beavers try

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Speaker 2: to move objects around is how much more gracefully they

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Speaker 2: do it in the water than on the land. So

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Speaker 2: these are semi aquatic mammals, but I don't know, it

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Speaker 2: seems to me that the water is where they're really

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Speaker 2: in their element. They can swim fast and gracefully, even

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Speaker 2: carrying like an unwieldy branch that's kind of unbalanced or something.

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Speaker 2: They do that all quite well in the water, and

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Speaker 2: then once you see them sort of toddling along across

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Speaker 2: the dry land that it looks much more comical and awkward.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is going to be important to keep

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Speaker 1: in mind when we talk about the amazing ways that

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Speaker 1: they transform an environment to better fit their needs and desires.

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Speaker 1: Oh but before we get into that, we of course

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Speaker 1: have to talk about the teeth of the beaver. This

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Speaker 1: is something that is generally an important part of cartoon

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Speaker 1: imagery concerning the beaver. A lot of times cartoon beavers

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Speaker 1: will speak with a kind of whistle in their voice.

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Speaker 1: But we also tend to get it quite wrong.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so I'm trying to picture the cartoon beaver. I

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Speaker 2: think what we always see is an overbite with two

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Speaker 2: kind of square shaped teeth grouped right together in the middle,

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Speaker 2: like a person's front two teeth, but large and overlapping

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Speaker 2: the bottom lip. Is that about it?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, pretty much.

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Speaker 2: The truth is much more shocking.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they have these. You know, if you look

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Speaker 1: at a skull of a beaver, it's pretty markable because

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Speaker 1: it's like this, the really kind of exaggerated rodent skull

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Speaker 1: with just incredible incisors, you know, with these these two

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Speaker 1: big shovel like teeth coming down from the top, two

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Speaker 1: big shovel like teeth coming up from the bottom, and

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Speaker 1: then the rest of the the back teeth or much

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Speaker 1: further back, you know, giving them some ample room to

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Speaker 1: do the kind of woodwork that they need to do

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Speaker 1: with those chompers.

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Speaker 2: The skull is a powerful bone hinge, and it's like

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Speaker 2: it's like a kind of alien biotechnological set of bolt cutters,

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Speaker 2: except the bolt cutters are orange teeth.

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Speaker 1: That's right, The orange is key. This is something I

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Speaker 1: almost never see in like a cute c illustration or

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Speaker 1: a cartoon depiction of a beaver. So, yeah, these teeth

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Speaker 1: have thick layers of enamel, which has this orange colorization

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Speaker 1: because while other rodents boast magnesium enriched tooth enamel, beavers

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Speaker 1: have iron enriched enamel. They're like, I mean, it's it's

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Speaker 1: like something out of a comic book, right. The iron

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Speaker 1: makes their teeth stronger against this the pure mechanical stress

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Speaker 1: that they put them through. We should also note that

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Speaker 1: these teeth continue to grow throughout their lives, to the

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Speaker 1: point where they have to gnaw them down on trees

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Speaker 1: to keep them down. But yeah, they're just super resilient,

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Speaker 1: always growing, and they're also more resilient to acid as

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Speaker 1: well based on their composition.

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Speaker 2: Just some tough, rusty looking teeth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the orange is really quite shyy okay. Another

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Speaker 1: essential biological aspect of the beaver before getting into their behavior,

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Speaker 1: is that they have a cloaca. So most mammals do

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Speaker 1: not have a cloeca. There are some exceptions, you know,

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Speaker 1: you look at the monotremes, golden moles, marsupial moles, ten

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Speaker 1: rex just a few examples, but mammals have most lost

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Speaker 1: these general purpose openings over the course of their evolution,

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Speaker 1: but in beaver's they seem to be present as a

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Speaker 1: case of secondary evolution, perhaps as an adaptation I've read against.

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Speaker 1: It may have to do with the watery environments they

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Speaker 1: find themselves in, protecting themselves against infections that might occur

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Speaker 1: due to the state of that water. But it's also

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Speaker 1: something and this will become important, I believe in the

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Speaker 1: next episode as well. It can make it difficult to

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Speaker 1: sex a beaver, as males and females look pretty much

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Speaker 1: the same, unless the female happens to be pregnant or

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Speaker 1: nursing at the time that you're trying to sex them.

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Speaker 1: And when I say you, I of course mean people

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Speaker 1: who have authority and expertise to be out in the

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Speaker 1: wild trying to sex a beaver. You know, leave it

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Speaker 1: to the professional biologists.

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Speaker 2: Leave it to beaver scientists. Yes, so these.

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Speaker 1: Various features aid the beaver in its primary enterprise of

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Speaker 1: ecosystem engineering. We all know that beavers build dams, you know,

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Speaker 1: this is, of course is true of the cartoons. But

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Speaker 1: what does that really mean? Why? Why are beavers building dams?

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Speaker 1: What are they accomplishing, So they actively alter their ecosystem

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Speaker 1: via the blockage of rivers and streams with structures of

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Speaker 1: like you know, sticks, mud, chunks of trees, that sort

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Speaker 1: of thing, all cobbled together to dam up the water,

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Speaker 1: and this allows them to create new lakes, new ponds,

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Speaker 1: whole floodplains. Meanwhile, the lodges they construct for themselves are

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Speaker 1: also made out of this kind of stuff, branches and

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Speaker 1: mud and so forth, and they can only be accessed

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Speaker 1: from underwater entrances in their constructed ponds.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is something I don't know if I

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Speaker 2: realized before. I think a lot of people assume that

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Speaker 2: beavers live in their dams, but I think the better

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Speaker 2: way to think about it is beavers construct dams in

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Speaker 2: order to block waterways, which causes the area upstream of

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Speaker 2: the dams to deepen and have a more lake like

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Speaker 2: environment rather than a flowing river or stream. And then

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Speaker 2: in that flooded area that is where they build the

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Speaker 2: lodge they live in. So they sort of create a

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Speaker 2: flooded area which can it can serve multiple purposes, one

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Speaker 2: to house the lodge, but then also they can sort

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Speaker 2: of dig out from there. I think you're about to

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Speaker 2: mention something about this.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they're a lot like humans. Human beings do this

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Speaker 1: with their modern technology. They come to say a dry

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Speaker 1: desert environment or a swamp environment, and they're like, you know,

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Speaker 1: what would go great here? What I would like for

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Speaker 1: my purposes of living here. I'd love it to be

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Speaker 1: just like a nice little park with some nice grass,

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Speaker 1: you know, and maybe a few trees. I'm going to

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Speaker 1: change everything so that it fits my needs. So the

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Speaker 1: primary purpose for the beaver dam is to create a

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Speaker 1: protective body of water for that lodge, making it even

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Speaker 1: more difficult for predators to get at them. And even

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Speaker 1: if predators were to get to them, they have that

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Speaker 1: underwater escape route in the event of an attack. That's

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Speaker 1: the that's the only way in and out now. It's

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Speaker 1: worth noting, however, that especially in parts of Eurasia, beavers

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Speaker 1: don't always have the same predator threat they once did.

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Speaker 1: But they build anyway because no one told them not to.

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Speaker 1: And also, more seriously, like, even though they are not

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Speaker 1: predators now, I mean that's you know, any kind of

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Speaker 1: evolutionary change would occur over a much vaster period of

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Speaker 1: time than the removal of their predators.

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Speaker 2: Amounts to right, So an environment full of say like

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Speaker 2: gray wolves and bears may have shaped them. And even

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Speaker 2: if there are many fewer of these predators than there

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Speaker 2: once was, that they are still the animal made by

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Speaker 2: that world.

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Speaker 1: Right. For instance, they're still certainly nocturnal creatures. I mean

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Speaker 1: they're also active, you know, dusk and dawn a little bit,

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Speaker 1: but during the day proper, they're inside, they're resting, and

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Speaker 1: part of that is to avoid predators. Now you mentioned earlier,

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Speaker 1: Joe that you even just looking at videos, you can

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Speaker 1: tell that they're more awkward on land than they are

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Speaker 1: in the water. And that's of course another big important

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Speaker 1: aspect of their damming of waterways, creating this sort of

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Speaker 1: vast flood plain, like turning a stream going through a

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Speaker 1: forest or something to this effect into kind of a

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Speaker 1: flooded forest environment. This opens up speedy water routes back

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Speaker 1: to their lodge. From perspective, feeding grounds.

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Speaker 2: Yes, sort of the same way. You can imagine it

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Speaker 2: like humans creating roads, like paved roads between say the

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Speaker 2: farms that they work during the day and the houses

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Speaker 2: they live in. But beavers would do this by instead

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Speaker 2: creating flooded areas. Especially they can sort of like dig

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Speaker 2: out channels along the bottom that the water from these

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Speaker 2: flooded areas can run into, allowing them to have a

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Speaker 2: sort of canals like roads made of water where they

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Speaker 2: can move quickly, where they can move submerged, which is

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Speaker 2: safer and better for them than trying to move awkwardly

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Speaker 2: over land.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, in doing this, of course, they alter the

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Speaker 1: ecosystem local ecosystem in a major way, opens up opportunities

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Speaker 1: for various other organisms as well, and also discuss some

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Speaker 1: of the potential downsides at least for some organisms in

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Speaker 1: a bit. But at any rate, this cements the beaver's

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Speaker 1: place as a keystone species. Beaver's just just completely change

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Speaker 1: the immediate environment, produces more open water, higher water tables.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, it's this entire system they have going for

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Speaker 1: them here. It's just so fascinating. You can if you

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Speaker 1: look online, you can find some some side profiles, some

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Speaker 1: cutaways of what the lodge looks like, and it's pretty ingenious.

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Speaker 1: It also serves as a place for them to store

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Speaker 1: food and even provides refuge during frozen months. They don't

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Speaker 1: hibernate properly, but they can hold up in there.

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Speaker 2: One of the things I've read about is that they

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Speaker 2: often can store lots of food, so they're vegetarians that

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Speaker 2: eat actually like you know, parts of trees, vegetation from

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Speaker 2: all around them, which they can keep stored in the

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Speaker 2: world water underneath the pond created by their dams, and

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Speaker 2: that's an interesting thing. They can raise the water level

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Speaker 2: in order to help protect areas of food storage in

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Speaker 2: the water for the winter, because by raising the water level,

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Speaker 2: they create more area underneath that won't freeze over when

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Speaker 2: the weather gets cold.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and these lodges and dams that they can even

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Speaker 1: though the beavers themselves tend to only live about I

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Speaker 1: think eight years max, a single lodge and dam can

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Speaker 1: be maintained over generations, so the lodges may end up

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Speaker 1: with like several stories to them, and the dams can

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Speaker 1: get quite massive. There's an Alberta area dam that was

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Speaker 1: built apparently in the nineteen seventies. Initially wasn't discovered till

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Speaker 1: around two thousand and seven because it's just out in

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Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. It's not like in downtown Alberta.

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Speaker 1: It's like out in the boonies and it's thought to

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Speaker 1: be the world's largest beaver dam known beaver Dam anyway,

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Speaker 1: covering a good half mile. There's actually an Alice Obscure

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Speaker 1: article about it. If anyone's interested. Just look up world's

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Speaker 1: largest beaver dam and you can see some like aerial photographs.

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Speaker 2: You know, something interesting I was reading about was the

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Speaker 2: role of beavers in maintaining ecosystem health by allowing for

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Speaker 2: a greater diversity of different types of plant life to thrive.

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Speaker 2: I think sort of in the same way that forest

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Speaker 2: fires you might think of them as purely destructive. Of

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Speaker 2: course they are destructive, but you know, forest fires occur

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Speaker 2: naturally all the time, and when a forest burns, that

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Speaker 2: creates sort of new opportunities for new types of plants

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Speaker 2: and other life forms to thrive in a place that

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Speaker 2: was once covered up by you know, a lot of

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Speaker 2: tree canopy. So in the areas around beaver dams and lodges,

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Speaker 2: they will clear out lots of the trees. They literally

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Speaker 2: chew them down and they'll fall, and you know, the

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Speaker 2: beavers will do what they will with them. But this

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Speaker 2: creates all kinds of opportunities for other plants and other

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Speaker 2: life forms that wouldn't normally thrive in the forest to

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Speaker 2: have a shot.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the paper that I came across was talking

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Speaker 1: about sort of like the pros and cons. I have

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Speaker 1: another one I'll get into about some of the potential benefits,

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Speaker 1: but just to give you a full idea of sort

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Speaker 1: of the rodent altered landscape we're talking about here, I

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Speaker 1: was looking at a twenty fifteen paper published in IOP

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Speaker 1: conference series, or presented in the IOP conference series Earth

401
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Speaker 1: and Environmental Science. This one is This was by Raskova

402
00:22:28,960 --> 00:22:31,840
Speaker 1: to Mina at All, and they talk about some of

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Speaker 1: the positive and negative consequences, at least initially stressing some

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00:22:35,520 --> 00:22:39,120
Speaker 1: of the negatives maybe that are not at least instantly

405
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Speaker 1: discussed as much. But you get soil overwetting obviously, because

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Speaker 1: you're getting flooding occurrently it occurs. You also can have

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Speaker 1: water stagnation that results in lack of oxygen, high carbon concentration,

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Speaker 1: and the death of many aquatic organisms. And then the

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Speaker 1: flooding can also cause vegetation death. But at the same time,

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Speaker 1: the authors who are stressed that it can result in

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Speaker 1: a rise in the biodiversity of water organisms. So you know,

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Speaker 1: they're changing everything. They're changing the balance of the local ecosystem,

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Speaker 1: and it's creating a lot of opportunities for new things,

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Speaker 1: but it is also cutting things short for things that

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Speaker 1: we're living there already. Now, a really interesting study that

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Speaker 1: I came across this was a twenty twenty two Stanford

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Speaker 1: study by Dewey at All published in Nature Communications, And

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Speaker 1: in this paper they point out that beaver habitat ranges

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Speaker 1: in the US are going to continue to widen with

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Speaker 1: warming temperatures driven by climate change, but the benefits of

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Speaker 1: their dam building will actually quote overshadow climate extremesquote. So

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Speaker 1: this is not to say beaver dams will cancel out

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Speaker 1: climate change or anything like that, but in some respects

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Speaker 1: it kind of lessens the blow. Specifically as far as

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Speaker 1: water quality in mountain watersheds are concerned. Dams can raise

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Speaker 1: water levels upstream and divert water into soil and surrounding waterways,

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Speaker 1: and this ends up sort of, this ends up like

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Speaker 1: creating a robust filter system, a filtration system for excess

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00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:20,000
Speaker 1: nutrients and contaminants for the water before it passes on downstream.

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Speaker 1: So today beaver's in North American eur Asia are both

431
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:27,400
Speaker 1: doing great. They have bounced back from near extinction due

432
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:29,719
Speaker 1: to hunting, and we may touch on some of that

433
00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:34,320
Speaker 1: a little bit more in the next episode, but because

434
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:36,400
Speaker 1: there are a few different reasons that have driven beaver

435
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:41,320
Speaker 1: hunting over the years. But to go back to speaking

436
00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:45,359
Speaker 1: of their construction of dams and their changing of the environment,

437
00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:49,560
Speaker 1: there's another great illustration I came across by Nicholas de

438
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:53,360
Speaker 1: Fer who lives sixteen forty six through seventeen twenty, and

439
00:24:53,680 --> 00:24:56,160
Speaker 1: this is just a small scene from a larger map.

440
00:24:56,160 --> 00:25:01,199
Speaker 1: He was a French cartographer, so this is just you know,

441
00:25:01,240 --> 00:25:03,480
Speaker 1: filling in some of the blank spaces, like we've discussed

442
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:06,639
Speaker 1: before on some of these older maps. But this illustration

443
00:25:06,800 --> 00:25:11,680
Speaker 1: shows beavers at work. They are downing trees and they

444
00:25:11,720 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 1: are dragging off the wood to build things. There are

445
00:25:15,600 --> 00:25:19,680
Speaker 1: the beavers themselves look largely accurate. There may be a

446
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:24,240
Speaker 1: little more bear like, but the basic morphology is there.

447
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 1: The main problems here are that, first of all, there's like,

448
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:31,399
Speaker 1: you know, one hundred beavers in this in this one image,

449
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:34,639
Speaker 1: like they're working as an army. And then also like

450
00:25:34,800 --> 00:25:37,680
Speaker 1: clearly there wasn't a lot of detail on how they

451
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: carry the wood, because the central beaver that you see

452
00:25:41,600 --> 00:25:45,520
Speaker 1: is standing up in a bipedal posture with an armload

453
00:25:45,520 --> 00:25:48,520
Speaker 1: of wood. Thrown over his shoulder like a human being.

454
00:25:48,800 --> 00:25:52,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like a Paul Bunyan carrying an axe.

455
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:56,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. But I like the spirit of industry that they

456
00:25:56,160 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 1: captured here, despite some of the ridiculous details, and again

457
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 1: a huge improvement over some illustrations from previous centuries.

458
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:07,359
Speaker 2: I wonder, is this one of the maps we looked

459
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:09,960
Speaker 2: at in our horror Vakay episodes where we were talking

460
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 2: about maps with excessive illustrations.

461
00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:15,879
Speaker 1: I don't believe it is. I looked at a bigger

462
00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:17,720
Speaker 1: version of the map and I almost included it in

463
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:20,159
Speaker 1: our notes, and I don't think I had seen it before.

464
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:23,920
Speaker 1: It was a map that it's known as the beaver

465
00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:27,479
Speaker 1: map and has to do with the locations of beavers

466
00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:29,600
Speaker 1: because it has to do with the hunting of beavers,

467
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:33,240
Speaker 1: which again was quite a big industry for a while there,

468
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:36,520
Speaker 1: so big that it just about wiped them out. So

469
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: the large semi aquatic rodents have come to flood the

470
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:44,679
Speaker 1: world and to remake it according to their designs. But

471
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 1: the weirdness and the complexity doesn't stop there. Joe tell

472
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:54,119
Speaker 1: us a little bit about beaver society and about beaver

473
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:55,000
Speaker 1: tool use.

474
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, Rob, I think you found one of these papers first,

475
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:01,280
Speaker 2: and that's what started this whole. But I got lost

476
00:27:01,400 --> 00:27:04,480
Speaker 2: on a going down a rabbit hole or maybe a

477
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:10,360
Speaker 2: beaver canal, trying to search out examples of possible tool

478
00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:14,680
Speaker 2: use documented in beavers, and in fact, there are a

479
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:18,720
Speaker 2: few very interesting different observations corresponding to each of the

480
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:23,399
Speaker 2: extant species. Beavers clearly are an interesting type of animal

481
00:27:23,440 --> 00:27:26,399
Speaker 2: to look at for signs of tool using intelligence, since

482
00:27:26,440 --> 00:27:30,479
Speaker 2: they are masters of manipulating their environment through the dams

483
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 2: and the lodges they build. Though I think it's interesting

484
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:37,639
Speaker 2: that nest building is often not typically thought of or

485
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:40,159
Speaker 2: not sort of front of mind as an example of

486
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 2: tool use. And there are different examples that different zoologists

487
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 2: or animal behavior experts will use to try to define

488
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:50,919
Speaker 2: tool use. So in the papers I was looking at,

489
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:55,240
Speaker 2: a few different standards were cited. One is a definition

490
00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 2: of tool use by a researcher named Alcock, who says

491
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 2: it is quote the manipulation of an inanimate object that

492
00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:06,919
Speaker 2: improves the organism's efficiency in altering the position or form

493
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:11,080
Speaker 2: of some other object. So, you know, using an inanimate

494
00:28:11,119 --> 00:28:15,440
Speaker 2: object from the environment to better alter the former position

495
00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:19,560
Speaker 2: of something else. Another definition I've found cited. This is

496
00:28:19,600 --> 00:28:24,199
Speaker 2: from Beck in nineteen eighty quote the external employment of

497
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:29,440
Speaker 2: an unattached environmental object to alter more efficiently the form, position,

498
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:34,480
Speaker 2: or condition of another object, another organism, or the user itself,

499
00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 2: when the user holds or carries the tool during or

500
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 2: just prior to use, and is responsible for the proper

501
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 2: and effective orientation of the tool. Now, I appreciate all

502
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 2: of the conditions on that, because I think it is

503
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 2: important for people to be specific about what they're talking

504
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 2: about when they look for examples of tool use. But

505
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:57,760
Speaker 2: I also wonder, once you're specifying that many conditions, is

506
00:28:57,920 --> 00:29:01,000
Speaker 2: the category of tool use becoming more or like a

507
00:29:01,040 --> 00:29:05,240
Speaker 2: function of the definition you lay out than than a

508
00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 2: fundamentally different type of activity itself than some other activity

509
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 2: that that wouldn't quite fit this definition.

510
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:13,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and sometimes we can almost get too

511
00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:16,040
Speaker 1: hung up, I think, on the on the the idea

512
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:17,880
Speaker 1: of tool use and the definition of tool use, because

513
00:29:17,880 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 1: we'll look at the most complicated burden, nest or bower

514
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:23,640
Speaker 1: that you can imagine and will be like, well, it's intricate,

515
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:27,480
Speaker 1: it's amazing, it's beautiful. But have you seen this monkey

516
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:31,680
Speaker 1: stabbing a smaller monkey with a stick. You know, it's

517
00:29:32,120 --> 00:29:35,480
Speaker 1: you know, you know, it can almost you can almost

518
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 1: set it up as this this thing that is the

519
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:40,040
Speaker 1: thing that we do. You know, that is a very

520
00:29:40,080 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 1: there's something very human about tool use, and you know,

521
00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: obviously a huge, huge aspect of human life and human development.

522
00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:50,880
Speaker 1: But but yeah, it's it seems like at times a

523
00:29:50,920 --> 00:29:54,120
Speaker 1: lot of extra mental gymnastics is it has to be,

524
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 1: it has to be utilized in order to even discuss it.

525
00:29:57,120 --> 00:29:59,000
Speaker 2: So I'm not going to get super hung up on

526
00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:02,280
Speaker 2: definition of tool use or what really counts as tool

527
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 2: use today. We've talked about some of those debates in

528
00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:08,440
Speaker 2: plenty of episodes in the past. Instead, I'm just going

529
00:30:08,520 --> 00:30:12,120
Speaker 2: to talk about some studies describing specific behaviors, and you

530
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 2: can make up your own mind about whether it seems

531
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 2: like tool use to you. So the first thing I

532
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:19,960
Speaker 2: want to talk about is an older observation. It's older

533
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 2: than either of the two papers that I'm going to

534
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:24,320
Speaker 2: discuss here, but it's cited in the first of them,

535
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 2: and I'll get to that paper itself in a second.

536
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 2: But the observation is that a researcher named Georgio Pilleri

537
00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:37,000
Speaker 2: observed something interesting while studying two captive beavers at the

538
00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 2: Burn Brain Anatomy Institute in nineteen eighty three. So the

539
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 2: beavers were living in a concrete pool that was supplied

540
00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:49,600
Speaker 2: with a constant flow of fresh water, and overflow of

541
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:52,400
Speaker 2: this pool was routed away through a series of three

542
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:56,840
Speaker 2: drain holes, each zero point eight centimeters in diameters, so

543
00:30:56,960 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 2: little holes in. The beavers had been given a supply

544
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:03,600
Speaker 2: of sticks and twigs to do what they wanted with,

545
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:07,920
Speaker 2: and for some reason, what they did is they selected

546
00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:12,360
Speaker 2: and cut three sticks from their supply to the exact

547
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 2: dimensions needed to plug the tiny drain holes that where

548
00:31:16,560 --> 00:31:20,200
Speaker 2: water drained away from their pool. And this completely stopped

549
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:23,920
Speaker 2: the flow of water away from the pool. Now what's

550
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 2: going on here? At first, it was kind of hard

551
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 2: for me to believe this would be fully intentional behavior,

552
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:32,400
Speaker 2: as in, like the beavers understood that they were plugging

553
00:31:32,440 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 2: the drains to stop the flow of water from their enclosure.

554
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 2: But then I thought, you know, I guess I wouldn't

555
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:42,920
Speaker 2: be surprised if beavers have like a sense for detecting

556
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:46,240
Speaker 2: gaps in dams and plugging them, Like maybe they're good

557
00:31:46,240 --> 00:31:49,640
Speaker 2: at sensing. My first instinct was maybe they sense like

558
00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 2: the delta pee. You know, the difference in pressure, like

559
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 2: when water from a large pool is flowing out of

560
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:57,040
Speaker 2: a small piper hole and you could feel that pressure

561
00:31:57,320 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 2: that would like get your hands stuck to the hole

562
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:02,000
Speaker 2: if you held it there, or which in larger scenarios

563
00:32:02,040 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 2: can be of a great danger to divers. You know,

564
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:07,000
Speaker 2: you don't want to go near like the intake hole

565
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:10,240
Speaker 2: at a dam, if you're diving near it. I thought

566
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:14,520
Speaker 2: maybe they sense the delta pee, and so they sense

567
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:17,120
Speaker 2: that and they naturally want to plug it up, But

568
00:32:17,280 --> 00:32:20,760
Speaker 2: I didn't know. However, I then sort of came across

569
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 2: an answer. So I was watching a segment on North

570
00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 2: American beavers from BBC Earth narrated by David Attenborough, and

571
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 2: this documentary segment captured a scene of beavers finding a

572
00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:37,920
Speaker 2: leak in their dam and then getting right to work

573
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 2: retrieving wood, vegetation and clumps of sediment down from the

574
00:32:41,320 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 2: bottom of the pond to plug up the leak in

575
00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:47,160
Speaker 2: the dam where water was running over the top. And Attenborough,

576
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 2: in this documentary segment narrates that beavers are thought to

577
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:55,640
Speaker 2: detect these leaks by hearing the sound of trickling water

578
00:32:56,280 --> 00:32:59,640
Speaker 2: and when they do, they begin repair work almost immediately.

579
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:04,560
Speaker 2: It seems to be fastidious, almost compulsive. This compulsive desire

580
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:07,960
Speaker 2: to fix the holes when they hear the water trickling,

581
00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 2: and this would make the drain plugging behavior in the

582
00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 2: concrete enclosure in the eighties make a lot more sense.

583
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 2: So I decided to look into this further to see

584
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 2: if this was indeed true to some degree. It seems

585
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 2: it is, and so I didn't have time. This was

586
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 2: soon before we started recording. I didn't have time to

587
00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 2: find the primary reference on this, but I did find

588
00:33:30,160 --> 00:33:34,040
Speaker 2: a good twenty fifteen Gizmoto blog post by Esther inglis

589
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:39,200
Speaker 2: Arkell writing up summarizing the research of a Swedish zoologist

590
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:43,280
Speaker 2: named Lars Wilson who studied beavers back in the nineteen sixties,

591
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 2: and according to the summary, Lars Wilson found that dam

592
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:51,200
Speaker 2: building was instinctual rather than learned, and the way Wilson

593
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:54,320
Speaker 2: identified with this was that if you took young beavers

594
00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:57,640
Speaker 2: and you separated them from their parents at birth, they

595
00:33:57,680 --> 00:34:00,960
Speaker 2: would still build dams basically the same way, using the

596
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 2: same techniques as their parents, even though they were clearly

597
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:06,120
Speaker 2: not having the opportunity to be taught to do that.

598
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:08,400
Speaker 2: So it seems based on that at least this is

599
00:34:08,400 --> 00:34:11,920
Speaker 2: probably a routine behavior. It's based on beaver DNA. They

600
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:15,359
Speaker 2: don't have to be taught. But Wilson also found that

601
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 2: beavers didn't always build dams. In environments with still water

602
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:24,360
Speaker 2: or only very gently moving water, dam building was not

603
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:26,480
Speaker 2: a priority. The beavers would just maybe they like dig

604
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:28,600
Speaker 2: a hole in the mud and just chill there, you know,

605
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 2: they just wouldn't build. And so by manipulating different variables,

606
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 2: Wilson identified the sound of trickling water as the primary

607
00:34:37,200 --> 00:34:39,799
Speaker 2: trigger for dam building, even to the point of a

608
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:42,480
Speaker 2: discovery that this was the part I found most fascinating.

609
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:46,399
Speaker 2: If you put a speaker in the beaver's enclosure and

610
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:50,400
Speaker 2: you played the sound of trickling water through it, the

611
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:53,560
Speaker 2: beavers would go to the speaker and start building on

612
00:34:53,640 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 2: top of it. They would start piling up sticks and

613
00:34:56,239 --> 00:35:00,960
Speaker 2: mud and branches over the speaker playing the sounds. They

614
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:04,520
Speaker 2: were trying to plug the speaker to make it stop leaking.

615
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:06,120
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.

616
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:09,839
Speaker 2: Wilson also found that if outflow pipes, so you had

617
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:13,680
Speaker 2: a place where there was actually water leading away from

618
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:17,440
Speaker 2: the pool, but you carefully designed the pipe so that

619
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 2: they made no noise, the beavers would not be able

620
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:22,440
Speaker 2: to find and cover them. So this might lead you

621
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:25,480
Speaker 2: to think, okay, so like the louder the rushing of

622
00:35:25,520 --> 00:35:28,239
Speaker 2: the water, the more beavers want to make a damn there.

623
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 2: But it also seems like it's not quite that simple,

624
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:34,440
Speaker 2: because I was reading a news article from the Harvard

625
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:37,759
Speaker 2: Graduate School of the Arts and Sciences called Damned If

626
00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:42,280
Speaker 2: They Do by Paul Massari. This article profiles the research

627
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:46,359
Speaker 2: of an environmental engineer named Jordan Kennedy who has done

628
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:50,160
Speaker 2: research on beavers and their dam building practices and the

629
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:55,520
Speaker 2: environmental effects thereof. And Kennedy says that it can't just

630
00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:58,919
Speaker 2: be about the like the magnitude of sound of moving water,

631
00:35:59,120 --> 00:36:02,280
Speaker 2: or beavers would be trying to build dams across Niagara Falls,

632
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:05,720
Speaker 2: you know, just like loud, violent, rushing waters where building

633
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:08,560
Speaker 2: would be totally impractical. So instead, there's got to be

634
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:12,480
Speaker 2: a kind of Goldilocks zone for dam construction, something that

635
00:36:12,520 --> 00:36:15,880
Speaker 2: the beavers naturally detect that allows them to know, Okay,

636
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:18,879
Speaker 2: this is about the right amount of flow to try

637
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:19,640
Speaker 2: to dam up.

638
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, damming up Niagara Falls, like obviously, that would

639
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:26,400
Speaker 1: be great like, that's kind of like the beaver fan fiction.

640
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:30,120
Speaker 1: That's the pipe drain, But is it practical. No, you

641
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:32,960
Speaker 1: need to have that just the right environment that can

642
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:37,240
Speaker 1: then be manipulated to make the ideal environment for the beaver.

643
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:41,160
Speaker 2: Right, So, the author of this article writes, quote, the

644
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:43,960
Speaker 2: water in a beaver's habitat needs to be a certain depth,

645
00:36:44,080 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 2: for instance, to keep a food cache from freezing to

646
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 2: the bottom in winter and to enable them to evade predators.

647
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:54,200
Speaker 2: The plants that beavers prefer to eat flourish best when

648
00:36:54,280 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 2: water flows at a certain velocity. So you're looking for

649
00:36:58,360 --> 00:37:02,080
Speaker 2: this goldilocks zone, an area of a certain amount of

650
00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:04,800
Speaker 2: water flow, maybe a certain narrowness of the channel or

651
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 2: certain depth of the channel, and that's the place where

652
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 2: you want to dam it up. And beavers apparently they

653
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:15,640
Speaker 2: locate that. A big part of the sense data informing

654
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:18,680
Speaker 2: them of that area appears to be sound. Maybe maybe

655
00:37:18,719 --> 00:37:20,839
Speaker 2: the overwhelming part of it is sound, but there may

656
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:24,279
Speaker 2: be other cues as well, and so I don't know.

657
00:37:24,320 --> 00:37:26,200
Speaker 2: I thought this was so interesting, and I'm just trying

658
00:37:26,239 --> 00:37:29,160
Speaker 2: to imagine what it's like to be a beaver, to

659
00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:35,200
Speaker 2: have this powerful instinctual drive to plug leaks. So imagine

660
00:37:35,239 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 2: the same kind of base level instinctual drive that humans

661
00:37:38,719 --> 00:37:42,799
Speaker 2: might have for sex, or for food, or to care

662
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:46,400
Speaker 2: for children, all the like the most powerful drives in

663
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:49,839
Speaker 2: our brains. But there's a drive like that to hunt

664
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:52,840
Speaker 2: down the source of anything that sounds like trickling water

665
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:57,239
Speaker 2: and to just plug it with junk. You know, I

666
00:37:57,280 --> 00:37:59,520
Speaker 2: don't know. That's like, that's another that's another type of

667
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:02,560
Speaker 2: mind experience, a relationship to the environment.

668
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 1: Wow wow, yeah, Like what would yeah, how would like

669
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 1: we can't help but extrapolate that into like a human

670
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:13,320
Speaker 1: like intellect and human like culture, Like what would advance

671
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:17,440
Speaker 1: beaver civilization be? Like would they actually go after like

672
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:23,240
Speaker 1: complete inundation, like a complete flooding situation, the destruction of

673
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 1: all naturally occurring waterfalls, or would they just kind of

674
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:29,239
Speaker 1: dream about it? Or what would their TV shows be?

675
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 1: Would it just be like countless channels of leak plugging

676
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:34,520
Speaker 1: and so forth.

677
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:37,480
Speaker 2: The speaver thought she had it all, but then she

678
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 2: heard the trickle and couldn't find it searching, Like all

679
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 2: dramas begin with the conflict of hearing a trickle.

680
00:38:45,520 --> 00:38:46,919
Speaker 1: That's the call to adventure.

681
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, but anyway, all that stuff I just read about

682
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:02,359
Speaker 2: got kicked off because I was reading that anecdote about

683
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:06,399
Speaker 2: the findings of Giorgio Pillari in nineteen eighty three, which

684
00:39:06,520 --> 00:39:09,840
Speaker 2: was cited in a paper by D. M. Barnes called

685
00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:13,600
Speaker 2: possible tool use by beavers cast Or canadensis in a

686
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 2: Northern Ontario watershed published in the Canadian Field Naturalist in

687
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 2: two thousand and five. So this is one of the

688
00:39:20,080 --> 00:39:23,560
Speaker 2: main two papers I was looking at about possible cases

689
00:39:23,560 --> 00:39:26,800
Speaker 2: of tool use in beaver's Barnes says that this report

690
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:29,600
Speaker 2: is based on evidence relating to the North American beaver

691
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:33,440
Speaker 2: that's Castor canadensis at a remote damn site in the

692
00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 2: Chapleaux Crown Game Preserve in northern Ontario. The author says,

693
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 2: at this location they found a clump of willow stems,

694
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:45,239
Speaker 2: so like little small tree trunks that had been cut

695
00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 2: by beavers. But the fascinating thing was they were cut

696
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:54,120
Speaker 2: at the extraordinary height of approximately one meter off the ground.

697
00:39:55,520 --> 00:39:58,759
Speaker 2: Beavers are not that tall normally, these beavers cut at

698
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:03,280
Speaker 2: an average height of about thirty centimeters, so the beavers

699
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,960
Speaker 2: were chomping off these willow trees at three times the

700
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:11,440
Speaker 2: normal height they could reach with their teeth. Barnes writes, quote,

701
00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:14,799
Speaker 2: I made a careful examination of the area and found

702
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:17,480
Speaker 2: that there was no apparent way the beavers could have

703
00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:20,480
Speaker 2: cut the stems at such a height. When I studied

704
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:22,800
Speaker 2: the willow clump more closely, I noted that there was

705
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:27,000
Speaker 2: a freshly cut willow stem approximately twelve centimeters in diameter,

706
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 2: leaning against the main stem of the willow clump. Its

707
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:35,800
Speaker 2: approximate angle was forty five degrees. In addition, I observed

708
00:40:35,800 --> 00:40:39,840
Speaker 2: cutting at both ends of the leaning willow segment, and

709
00:40:39,880 --> 00:40:41,960
Speaker 2: then there was a There was a photo accompanying this

710
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:45,320
Speaker 2: in the article. Now, at first the author thought that, okay,

711
00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 2: so this is a log propped up forty five degrees

712
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:51,719
Speaker 2: against the tree that is cut off very tall. The

713
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:57,040
Speaker 2: author thought maybe this log there had simply fallen that way.

714
00:40:57,080 --> 00:40:58,920
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's something that the beaver cut and

715
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:02,800
Speaker 2: then it fell. But that's impossible on further examination, because

716
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:05,719
Speaker 2: the log was clearly from a different tree than the

717
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:08,359
Speaker 2: stem it was leaning against, like there was different bark

718
00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:13,200
Speaker 2: texture and color and so forth, and its position just

719
00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:15,840
Speaker 2: did not seem plausible if it had fallen from above.

720
00:41:16,600 --> 00:41:20,320
Speaker 2: Another possibility the author considered was that these willow trunks

721
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:23,520
Speaker 2: had been foraged while there was heavy snow on the

722
00:41:23,560 --> 00:41:25,959
Speaker 2: ground in the winter. So maybe the beavers were able

723
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:29,160
Speaker 2: to reach a meter up the trunks of these trees

724
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:34,400
Speaker 2: by crawling around on top of the snow. Okay, but

725
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 2: the author things that's really unlikely. Given the position of

726
00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 2: the willow clump relative to the beaver dam and lodge

727
00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:44,640
Speaker 2: and its entrance and exit. It seems it would have

728
00:41:44,680 --> 00:41:49,279
Speaker 2: required a major overland journey by the beavers on the

729
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:52,239
Speaker 2: top of the snow in the winter at a time

730
00:41:52,400 --> 00:41:56,480
Speaker 2: where this just would not fit with their normal behavior. Instead,

731
00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:59,520
Speaker 2: the author suggests that maybe what happened here is the

732
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:03,480
Speaker 2: beaver used a prop. The beaver used a piece of

733
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:05,960
Speaker 2: a log that it had cut off at both ends

734
00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:08,920
Speaker 2: and propped it up against the base of the trees,

735
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:11,799
Speaker 2: and then climbed up that and was able to chew

736
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:15,560
Speaker 2: off the willow stems at an upper level rather than

737
00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:18,400
Speaker 2: a lower level. Now, why would this even be beneficial?

738
00:42:18,920 --> 00:42:23,200
Speaker 2: The author says this would be probably to reduce foraging time.

739
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:26,800
Speaker 2: So the longer you forage number one, the more thermal

740
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:30,920
Speaker 2: stress you're exposed to not being the right temperature. But

741
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:34,840
Speaker 2: more importantly, the longer you are exposed to predation. Apparently

742
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:37,240
Speaker 2: beavers do not like to spend a lot of time

743
00:42:37,520 --> 00:42:40,680
Speaker 2: out on the ground out of the water, so they

744
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:43,520
Speaker 2: are trying to hustle as fast as they can whenever

745
00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:47,040
Speaker 2: they're out there cutting, and in this case, apparently using

746
00:42:47,120 --> 00:42:50,880
Speaker 2: a cut stem to climb up the willow trunks to

747
00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:54,120
Speaker 2: access a higher up part of the tree to chew

748
00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:56,920
Speaker 2: through would have meant that they had to spend less

749
00:42:56,960 --> 00:42:59,799
Speaker 2: time chewing and less time cutting all right.

750
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:03,280
Speaker 1: Like a little bit higher they just it's gonna be less,

751
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:05,840
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a narrow or bit of wood to

752
00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:06,359
Speaker 1: shoot through.

753
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:10,160
Speaker 2: That's what I assumed. It didn't specify exactly why cutting

754
00:43:10,239 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 2: higher up was reduced foraging time, but that was my interpretation.

755
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:17,040
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, and that's why they potentially could

756
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:21,919
Speaker 1: be using essentially a beaver ladder, a beaver bit of scaffolding.

757
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 2: Right, But we don't know. This is just one observation.

758
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:27,200
Speaker 2: And also they didn't see them doing it. They just

759
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 2: found this strange piece of scaffolding there later.

760
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:33,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, more mysteries related to I mean, I guess this

761
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 1: is kind of cutting into some of the mysteries involved

762
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:39,560
Speaker 1: in these wildly inaccurate depictions of beavers is that these

763
00:43:39,560 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 1: are creatures that live often in very rural situations, far

764
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:48,920
Speaker 1: from human activity. They're probably doing it at night, and

765
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:52,279
Speaker 1: they're spending as a little time necessary doing it out

766
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:54,239
Speaker 1: where other eyes could see them.

767
00:43:54,760 --> 00:43:58,919
Speaker 2: Right, okay. Second paper I came across alleging possible tool

768
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:02,600
Speaker 2: use behaviors by This is called tool use in a

769
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:06,880
Speaker 2: display behavior by Eurasian beavers or castor fiber in the

770
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:10,120
Speaker 2: journal Animal Cognition by Thompson at All in two thousand

771
00:44:10,120 --> 00:44:13,080
Speaker 2: and seven. So here the authors write that documentation of

772
00:44:13,120 --> 00:44:17,400
Speaker 2: tool use is relatively rare in rodents, and prior to

773
00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:20,880
Speaker 2: this paper there were no documented cases they knew of

774
00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:23,960
Speaker 2: of tools being used by rodents in what are called

775
00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 2: agonistic displays. Now, agonistic is a word used in the

776
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:32,319
Speaker 2: study of animal behavior to describe conflict or fighting. So

777
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 2: an agonistic behavior is not necessarily fighting itself, but also

778
00:44:37,160 --> 00:44:41,359
Speaker 2: could include social behaviors related to fighting. So these would

779
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:45,040
Speaker 2: include threat displays trying to, you know, look big or

780
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 2: otherwise intimidate another animal, displays of aggression, as well as

781
00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 2: things like submission or retreat behavior. The authors of this

782
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:56,640
Speaker 2: paper say that in their field observations of the Eurasian beaver.

783
00:44:57,080 --> 00:45:00,800
Speaker 2: They witnessed the behavior that they call stick display, which

784
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:05,480
Speaker 2: they interpreted as an agonistic display behavior. And what this

785
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 2: consisted of is beaver would go pick up an object,

786
00:45:09,160 --> 00:45:12,200
Speaker 2: usually a stick, whenever a stick was available, and then

787
00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:15,239
Speaker 2: it would rise up on its hind legs and then

788
00:45:15,640 --> 00:45:19,320
Speaker 2: move the upper body rapidly up and down while holding

789
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:22,640
Speaker 2: the stick or other object in its mouth and front paws.

790
00:45:23,280 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 2: And Rabbi attached a picture for you to look at.

791
00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:27,680
Speaker 2: They had a photo of this. In this photo of

792
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:30,680
Speaker 2: the beaver is in the shallow part of a waterway.

793
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 2: It's standing up on its back legs. It's kind of

794
00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:36,160
Speaker 2: I don't know how to just it's kind of like

795
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:38,880
Speaker 2: roaring posture. But it's got a big old stick in

796
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:41,279
Speaker 2: its mouth, and it's gripping the stick with its two

797
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:44,799
Speaker 2: four paws, and the water is splashing all around as

798
00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:46,959
Speaker 2: the stick I guess, rapidly dips in and out.

799
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:52,520
Speaker 1: It's impressive and it's frankly a little intimidating, this beaver saying, behold,

800
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:55,799
Speaker 1: look at the feats of strength. I am capable of.

801
00:45:56,239 --> 00:45:59,279
Speaker 2: So several observations about this behavior. First of all, they say,

802
00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:02,880
Speaker 2: beaver's only picked up these display sticks or other objects

803
00:46:03,239 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 2: at the same location where they were used, and they

804
00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:09,279
Speaker 2: were never seen modifying the objects, so it wouldn't It

805
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:12,040
Speaker 2: wasn't like they would carry a stick around and then

806
00:46:12,200 --> 00:46:15,680
Speaker 2: use it in a different location or modify the stick

807
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:16,280
Speaker 2: in any way.

808
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:19,080
Speaker 1: So, for instance, compare it to like human tool use

809
00:46:19,120 --> 00:46:23,120
Speaker 1: that we've discussed in the past rocks. This would not

810
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:26,160
Speaker 1: be on the level of picking out favored rocks for

811
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:30,799
Speaker 1: throwing at other humans, polishing them, changing them, etc. This

812
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:33,360
Speaker 1: would be more on the level of when threatened, you

813
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:35,839
Speaker 1: might look down, grab a rock and use it. Though

814
00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:37,520
Speaker 1: of course, in this case, the beavers are not hitting

815
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:40,840
Speaker 1: each other with the sticks allegedly, the hypothesis here is

816
00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:43,600
Speaker 1: that they're using them as a pure defensive display.

817
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:48,120
Speaker 2: Right. Second thing, This often happened in shallow water, so

818
00:46:48,239 --> 00:46:50,799
Speaker 2: the shaking of the stick would cause splashing in the

819
00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:54,480
Speaker 2: surrounding water, but occasionally it also took place on dry land,

820
00:46:54,600 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 2: such as in weeds, where there was no significant sound produced.

821
00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:00,800
Speaker 2: So the authors think because it took place in both

822
00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:03,640
Speaker 2: scenarios and when it was on dry land it didn't

823
00:47:03,640 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 2: really make a noise, they think it is primarily a

824
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:09,640
Speaker 2: visual signal. An important bit of context is that Eurasian

825
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:14,320
Speaker 2: beavers are territorial. They live in family groups with usually

826
00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:17,880
Speaker 2: a dominant breeding pair and then assorted offspring of that

827
00:47:17,960 --> 00:47:21,560
Speaker 2: breeding pair. And they defend the borders of their territory

828
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:25,799
Speaker 2: from encroachment by other beavers. So they mark their territory

829
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:29,440
Speaker 2: by scent. This is done with secretions from the anal

830
00:47:29,560 --> 00:47:33,879
Speaker 2: glands or castorium. Which castorium, I believe, we'll talk about

831
00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:37,160
Speaker 2: more later in the series in part two allegedly smells

832
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:41,279
Speaker 2: like vanilla, but we'll come back. When rival beavers come

833
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:44,479
Speaker 2: into a family group's territory, the home turf beavers will

834
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:47,680
Speaker 2: react first of all with tail slapping. Rob you mentioned this.

835
00:47:47,680 --> 00:47:50,880
Speaker 2: This is a loud signal that beavers make by repeatedly

836
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:53,920
Speaker 2: smacking the water surface with their tails. This is also

837
00:47:54,000 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 2: used to alert members of the family group when a

838
00:47:56,560 --> 00:48:01,319
Speaker 2: predator is cited. They also respond to unwelcome presence by

839
00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:05,320
Speaker 2: visual displays or sometimes with actual fighting, though physical fights

840
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:08,600
Speaker 2: are relatively rare. The observations carried out in this study

841
00:48:08,640 --> 00:48:14,120
Speaker 2: were conducted on wild Eurasian beavers in southeast Telemark, Norway. Overall,

842
00:48:14,520 --> 00:48:18,440
Speaker 2: the researchers observed one hundred and thirty one cases of

843
00:48:18,560 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 2: stick display behavior that met the criteria for inclusion in

844
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:25,359
Speaker 2: their study by four adult males, two adult females, and

845
00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 2: five unidentified animals. However, it seems that some individual beavers

846
00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:35,520
Speaker 2: engaged in stick displays far more than the others.

847
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:36,280
Speaker 1: Quote.

848
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:40,359
Speaker 2: It was clear from our observations that one female beer

849
00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:44,719
Speaker 2: Git and one male Froda were the main performers, with

850
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:47,720
Speaker 2: a contribution of fifty one point nine percent and thirty

851
00:48:47,719 --> 00:48:51,239
Speaker 2: five point nine percent, respectively, of the total number of

852
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:54,160
Speaker 2: stick displays observed. So what does that add up to.

853
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:56,960
Speaker 2: It's like eighty seven percent of stick displays were from

854
00:48:56,960 --> 00:48:57,880
Speaker 2: two beavers.

855
00:48:58,360 --> 00:48:59,960
Speaker 1: Wow, go Froda.

856
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:02,439
Speaker 2: The real champion is beer Get here. She's got more

857
00:49:02,480 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 2: than half of them just under her belt.

858
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:07,120
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean really, beer Get needs to get

859
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:10,600
Speaker 1: get most of the credit here from Froda doing pretty

860
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 1: well as well.

861
00:49:11,440 --> 00:49:14,480
Speaker 2: So they say, stick displays happened almost exclusively at the

862
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:19,160
Speaker 2: borders of beaver family group territory, and most displays appeared

863
00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:23,040
Speaker 2: to be directed at rivals. The displays were often preceded

864
00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:26,760
Speaker 2: by scent marking, so this kind of suggests it probably

865
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:30,840
Speaker 2: is being used as an agonistic display. However, this behavior,

866
00:49:30,960 --> 00:49:34,520
Speaker 2: while common in the groups observed in this study, is

867
00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:38,840
Speaker 2: not necessarily generalizable to the total world population of these beavers.

868
00:49:38,840 --> 00:49:42,320
Speaker 2: It has not really been observed in beaver's generally across

869
00:49:42,360 --> 00:49:46,680
Speaker 2: the full range, suggesting it may be specific to certain populations.

870
00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:51,560
Speaker 1: Wow, like even like some sort of like localized beaver culture.

871
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:55,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe apparently something. At the time of the study,

872
00:49:55,400 --> 00:49:59,080
Speaker 2: the author said there were some isolated reports of similar

873
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:03,040
Speaker 2: behavior in a few North American beavers, but not most,

874
00:50:03,080 --> 00:50:06,319
Speaker 2: and it was not found in all Eurasian beavers either.

875
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:10,160
Speaker 2: So the authors argue that stick displays might be especially

876
00:50:10,200 --> 00:50:14,320
Speaker 2: favored in high pressure situations. From reading their description of

877
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:17,440
Speaker 2: the area, it seems like the groups observed in this

878
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:22,680
Speaker 2: study might be in especially crowded beaver territory, where like,

879
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:27,360
Speaker 2: you know, the areas around different family dams and lodge

880
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:30,000
Speaker 2: sites are sort of all butting up against one another.

881
00:50:31,080 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 2: They also observed higher rates of stick displays in springtime,

882
00:50:34,239 --> 00:50:37,560
Speaker 2: meaning it's possible it could have some association with breeding.

883
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:42,960
Speaker 2: But if the stick shaking is a genuine agonistic display behavior,

884
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:47,920
Speaker 2: the evolutionary purpose would probably be to convey honest information

885
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:50,919
Speaker 2: about the beaver's size and strength, so it's like, I'm

886
00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:53,520
Speaker 2: big and strong. Look at how I can shake this stick.

887
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 2: You don't want to bother actually getting into a fight

888
00:50:56,239 --> 00:50:57,640
Speaker 2: with me, right, we don't have to do this.

889
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:01,439
Speaker 1: I like these sort of levels of communication that seem

890
00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:04,799
Speaker 1: to exist between beaver groups here. You know, it's like,

891
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:07,879
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, all beavers really want

892
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:11,319
Speaker 1: to do is build things and plug holes. Uh. You

893
00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:13,800
Speaker 1: know they have they have a lot of hole plugging

894
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:16,439
Speaker 1: to do. They have they have a lot of work

895
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:18,520
Speaker 1: to accomplish. They don't really have time to get into

896
00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:21,359
Speaker 1: these fights. These fights are just would be destructive. Uh

897
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:24,600
Speaker 1: So instead, let's just make sure that we're very clear

898
00:51:24,600 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 1: about how everyone feels about these these border scenarios, and uh,

899
00:51:29,239 --> 00:51:31,840
Speaker 1: if need be, let me just show you, give you

900
00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:34,279
Speaker 1: a taste of what could happen. Just look at this

901
00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:35,759
Speaker 1: stick lifting ability here.

902
00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:39,720
Speaker 2: The neighbors are getting nosy and beerget shakes a branch

903
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:42,879
Speaker 2: and it's like, no, don't make me do it. Don't

904
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:44,640
Speaker 2: make me do it. And it seems most of the

905
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:48,600
Speaker 2: time they're like, Okay, I won't make you do it. Bergeit, man.

906
00:51:48,640 --> 00:51:50,279
Speaker 2: I think we've got to be out of time for

907
00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:52,879
Speaker 2: for part one of Beaver's here right, But there will

908
00:51:52,920 --> 00:51:53,320
Speaker 2: be more.

909
00:51:53,960 --> 00:51:56,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the next episode, we're gonna we're gonna get

910
00:51:56,280 --> 00:51:59,840
Speaker 1: back to that idea, that that false idea of beaver

911
00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:03,520
Speaker 1: whilst being hunted deciding to chew their own testicles off

912
00:52:04,520 --> 00:52:08,400
Speaker 1: again that you see various examples of, particularly from like

913
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:11,920
Speaker 1: illuminated manuscripts and so forth and bestiaries. We'll come back

914
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:14,479
Speaker 1: and to discuss that, plus who knows what else we'll

915
00:52:14,520 --> 00:52:18,560
Speaker 1: uncover about beavers in our research. In the meantime, we'd

916
00:52:18,560 --> 00:52:20,120
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there if you have

917
00:52:20,200 --> 00:52:23,000
Speaker 1: any especially since a lot of times we do these

918
00:52:23,000 --> 00:52:25,080
Speaker 1: Tuesdays to Thursday. This one's going to be a Thursday

919
00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:26,719
Speaker 1: to Tuesday, so who knows, you might be able to

920
00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:31,520
Speaker 1: get some really core beaver facts and beaver experiences into

921
00:52:31,640 --> 00:52:35,279
Speaker 1: us before we record the next episode. You know something

922
00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:37,520
Speaker 1: you've picked up somewhere or just you know, accounts of

923
00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:41,120
Speaker 1: observing beavers in the wild. I'd love to hear about that. So,

924
00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:44,839
Speaker 1: whatever your feedback, whatever your thoughts, share them with us.

925
00:52:44,920 --> 00:52:47,440
Speaker 1: We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder

926
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:49,880
Speaker 1: that Stuffed to Blow Your Mind is a science podcast

927
00:52:49,960 --> 00:52:53,520
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, So look for

928
00:52:53,520 --> 00:52:55,399
Speaker 1: those in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed

929
00:52:55,400 --> 00:52:57,880
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. On Mondays we do a

930
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:01,240
Speaker 1: listener mail episode. On Wednesday's do a short form artifact

931
00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:04,360
Speaker 1: or monster fact episode. I know sometimes people say I

932
00:53:04,400 --> 00:53:07,520
Speaker 1: wish they were longer. Well, they're short. That's part of

933
00:53:07,800 --> 00:53:11,200
Speaker 1: how it works. But occasionally we're gonna put out We're

934
00:53:11,239 --> 00:53:14,200
Speaker 1: going to continue to experiment, experiment with putting out omnibus

935
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:18,160
Speaker 1: episodes that may take up like multiple related monster facts

936
00:53:18,239 --> 00:53:21,239
Speaker 1: or artifacts, and put them out so periodically you'll get

937
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:24,480
Speaker 1: a longer one in there as well. So yeah, let

938
00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:26,560
Speaker 1: us know if you're liking that, and we can keep

939
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 1: doing it. Oh and then on Fridays we set aside

940
00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:31,240
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie

941
00:53:31,440 --> 00:53:32,520
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema.

942
00:53:32,640 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you

943
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:38,279
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

944
00:53:38,320 --> 00:53:40,840
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic

945
00:53:40,840 --> 00:53:42,839
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can

946
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:45,800
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

947
00:53:45,920 --> 00:53:53,879
Speaker 2: dot com.

948
00:53:53,960 --> 00:53:56,880
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

949
00:53:56,960 --> 00:53:59,760
Speaker 3: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app

950
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:15,160
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows,