Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature Future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, Beavers. That's it,
Speaker 1: That's what we're talking about. Just beavers, straight up beavers,
Speaker 1: whole time, A hundred percent beavers a hundred percent of
Speaker 1: the time. Present Beavers, Beavers Part one, Beavers, Part two, Beavers,
Speaker 1: Part three, More Beavers. It's all about beavers, our favorite
Speaker 1: architect of the world. We're going to discover that not
Speaker 1: only are they incredible animals just how they are constructed,
Speaker 1: but how they construct the world around them and shape
Speaker 1: the ecology and the environment, and they have had a
Speaker 1: surprisingly large impact on human history. Discover this more as
Speaker 1: we answer the age old question will God get mad
Speaker 1: at you for eating beaver tails? Joining me today is
Speaker 1: writer for American Dad and co host of Quick Question
Speaker 1: with Soren and Daniel, Sore and Booie. Welcome, Hello, Hello, Katie.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. The way that you were
Speaker 1: describing this episode, it made me feel like I was
Speaker 1: walking down the street in nineties seventies New York and
Speaker 1: just all these smut stores around me that are just
Speaker 1: like beavers Part one. Beavers, Beavers everywhere, Beavers all the time.
Speaker 1: That must have been what it was seven all beavers,
Speaker 1: no questions, asked, Well, I'm talking about beavers because you
Speaker 1: requested it. You asked for beavers. Yeah, I did. This
Speaker 1: is uh, this is like I got I don't know
Speaker 1: when it happened, but at some point my eyes were
Speaker 1: open to the beaver and I was like, this is
Speaker 1: the most important species in North America. I wouldn't and
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about it, and I had no
Speaker 1: opportunity because no one wants to hear about beavers outside
Speaker 1: of like these very specific circumstances. So I jumped at
Speaker 1: the opportunity. When you gave me, you gave me an
Speaker 1: animal to choose. Yes, this is the place for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: beavers are surprisingly important, and I think that they're maybe
Speaker 1: like I don't know if goofy would be the right
Speaker 1: word for it, but they're just very affable looking. They
Speaker 1: don't look like, you know, it's not like a jaguire
Speaker 1: or a lion where you're like, oh, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: keystone species right there. But here they are sitting with
Speaker 1: their little paddle tails and buck teeth nibbling on some twigs,
Speaker 1: and you're like, you're You're just a beaver, what's the
Speaker 1: big deal? They wait, they walk is very funny. They
Speaker 1: kind of lumber around and they did their tails too
Speaker 1: heavy to even pick up. They got to drag it
Speaker 1: when they swim. They're kind of silly looking because they
Speaker 1: only swim with their back legs. They're real fun. There's
Speaker 1: nothing elegant about a beaver. They're kind of scary. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen one in person? No? I haven't. I've
Speaker 1: seen one. I used to work on golf courses when
Speaker 1: I was younger, and golf courses are like well, beavers
Speaker 1: are the bane of a golf course because they can
Speaker 1: flood areas of it, and also they build a lot
Speaker 1: of the golf courses in like these lowlands, these like
Speaker 1: the low flat areas at the beginning of the bottom
Speaker 1: of like glacier ruins. But um, they they are huge,
Speaker 1: like they're much bigger than you expect. And they're terrifying
Speaker 1: looking because their teeth are like this bright bright orange. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are not the cartoon beaver with the chubby cheeks
Speaker 1: in the bright white teeth who looks small and cuddly
Speaker 1: they're huge. They are hefty, and they have bright orange,
Speaker 1: sharp chisel like teeth, which are as terrifying as they sound.
Speaker 1: To be frank, like, you were right to be afraid
Speaker 1: of the beavers. Don't let anyone shame you for being
Speaker 1: afraid of a beaver. There's been at least one fatality
Speaker 1: from a beaver. A beaver, I believe, bit a man
Speaker 1: so deep it severed his femoral artery and he died.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I think you're gonna tell me that
Speaker 1: a beaver laid some sort of mccaullay colkinton with a
Speaker 1: had a tree right right right, a sort of Rube
Speaker 1: Goldberg device of trees and twigs and a pine cone,
Speaker 1: and then just like a big boulder. Yeah. No, he
Speaker 1: just bait him real good and he died from being
Speaker 1: bit so bad. Yeah. I don't don't remember home alone entirely,
Speaker 1: so to be fair, still could be that could have happened.
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I definitely don't mean to make light
Speaker 1: of anyone's death. Every death is a tragedy. But God,
Speaker 1: that must have been awkward, you know. It's like it's
Speaker 1: not the most noble of death, like I was talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, you get eaten by a jaguar or a
Speaker 1: lion and you're like, he was malled to death by
Speaker 1: a line. It's like, wow, okay, what a way to
Speaker 1: go out, malled to death by a beaver. But you know,
Speaker 1: they are a keystone species, so maybe that's a consolation prize.
Speaker 1: Probably not. Probably not. Uh So, beavers are giant rodents.
Speaker 1: They are the second largest rodents in the world, beat
Speaker 1: out only by the cappy bara. So yeah, they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they are rodents. They kind of maybe tricky a
Speaker 1: little bit with the flat tail instead of the long,
Speaker 1: thin tail, but they're absolutely rodents and gross when you
Speaker 1: say rodents, I don't Yeah, I guess that's not. Like
Speaker 1: that's not my favorite aspect of the beaver, that they're
Speaker 1: part of that family. But I mean, I'm willing to
Speaker 1: live with it. But cappy barras are rodents and they're
Speaker 1: adorable and sweet. I don't know, I kind of get
Speaker 1: creeped out by cappy bars. It look really strange to me.
Speaker 1: I do like that, like other animals seem so um
Speaker 1: disarmed by them that you always see like a bunch
Speaker 1: of other animals around them, just like, yeah, I love
Speaker 1: this thing, big stuffed animals, But I don't know. They're
Speaker 1: all of them look like they're like a Civil War general.
Speaker 1: To me, Yeah, well, coonel looks like I'm going to
Speaker 1: eat some alfalfa. Ah. That's what they would say all
Speaker 1: the time you were You were a kid, and you're
Speaker 1: a great Improbably this watering hole is full of gatas
Speaker 1: doesn't bother me none. So uh. There are two species
Speaker 1: of living beavers, the North American beaver and the Eurasian
Speaker 1: beaver the North America. The North American beaver lives in
Speaker 1: North America. The Eurasian beaver lives in Eurasia. So the
Speaker 1: North American beaver is longer with a wider tail, and
Speaker 1: the Eurasian beaver has a thinner tail and a longer snout.
Speaker 1: I can't really tell them apart, so they all look
Speaker 1: like beavers. I was pretty excited when I suggested this,
Speaker 1: to think, Oh, I wonder if there's I bet the
Speaker 1: accounts from when they first came to the United States.
Speaker 1: And I was assuming at this point that because I
Speaker 1: live in the United States, there are no beavers anywhere
Speaker 1: else in the world. And I was like, I wonder
Speaker 1: what it was like for them to first encounter beavers,
Speaker 1: and so I was like, I'll look up to listen
Speaker 1: Clark and see like their accounting of it. And then
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, no, they all knew what beavers were.
Speaker 1: Everybody knew what beavers were for centuries because they're everywhere.
Speaker 1: But maybe, uh, something that you might like to hear
Speaker 1: is that, certainly monks that would be scribes, they didn't
Speaker 1: know what beavers were and their interpretation of the beavers
Speaker 1: were extremely funny. Uh, yes, I would like to hear. Yes,
Speaker 1: we we will talk about that later in the show. Um,
Speaker 1: but just a teaser. Monks didn't know how to draw beavers.
Speaker 1: They really, they gave it a they gave it the
Speaker 1: good old college try, the good old monastery tribe. But no, no,
Speaker 1: didn't know what a beaver was, didn't didn't really grasp
Speaker 1: sort of the critical aspects of the beaver and how
Speaker 1: you would represent what a beaver is. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there were there are definitely accounts of people who didn't
Speaker 1: know what the beaver was and what to make of it.
Speaker 1: Just some quick fun beaver facts. Beavers in the wild
Speaker 1: lived to be about twelve years old, but they can
Speaker 1: live to be almost twenty in captivity. Most adult beavers
Speaker 1: weigh around forty to seventy pounds, that's sevent they're they're
Speaker 1: they're big guys. You know, they're hefty. Uh. They can
Speaker 1: reach up to around four ft or one point two
Speaker 1: meters long. So yeah, it is correct to fear the beaver.
Speaker 1: They're big. They're really and like their their body is
Speaker 1: just like a big mound too. So when you see them,
Speaker 1: obviously the tail gives them some extra length and that's
Speaker 1: a little unnerving to see a big leathery thing behind them.
Speaker 1: But like, they they're pretty tall when they get old enough,
Speaker 1: like they're as tall as a little as like a
Speaker 1: moderate moderately sized dog. Yeah. Yeah, In fact, old fat
Speaker 1: beavers because they keep they can keep just growing almost
Speaker 1: until they die. They can weigh up to a hundred
Speaker 1: pounds or so. Yeah, I'm just I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but I just because beavers actually formed these like cohesive
Speaker 1: family units where they're they're um um monogama. What am
Speaker 1: I trying to say? Monogamous? Yeah, and they will have
Speaker 1: like these you know, sometimes live with their extended families.
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining this like old like beaver patriarch with
Speaker 1: like a Stogie sitting on the front porch of the
Speaker 1: beaver lodge. Just this massive mound of beaver. It's like
Speaker 1: lift up, pep PEPs tale like left a log under
Speaker 1: there to chew on and I can't reach it. That's
Speaker 1: a good little beaver. But speaking of large beavers, an
Speaker 1: extinct species of be he was the giant beaver, which
Speaker 1: was a bare sized beaver that lived in North America
Speaker 1: during the Oh Boy pleased a scene around three million
Speaker 1: years ago and went extinct around twelve thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: So we definitely coincided with a giant, bare sized beaver. Uh,
Speaker 1: which you know, you're it's fair to say you're maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit cautious around normal sized beavers. Imagine a
Speaker 1: bare sized beaver with the teeth and the tail and
Speaker 1: just the beaver energy, but sized up, you know, to bear.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm looking at the skeleton of it and it's scary.
Speaker 1: This is great. I want these now, this thing is Oh,
Speaker 1: here's a woman posing next to a statue of one,
Speaker 1: so I can get some real context here there. Uh
Speaker 1: her their teeth are about this, like one of their
Speaker 1: teeth is about the size of her face. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean have you ever seen like a beaver with
Speaker 1: just like a little twig that they sort of snap
Speaker 1: in half and easily chew through and get all the green,
Speaker 1: nice lipping tissue out of. Imagine that, but it's instead
Speaker 1: of a twig, it's you. You a person. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: thing could bite with through my legs easy easy. It
Speaker 1: could like flosce its teeth with your entire body, no problem.
Speaker 1: Weirdly enough, it turns out humans survived rather than the beaver,
Speaker 1: so when it was giant bare sized beaver versus humans,
Speaker 1: we came out on top, which seems improbable given that
Speaker 1: the bare sized beavers were around six ft long or
Speaker 1: almost two meters, and could weigh up to two pounds
Speaker 1: or so. They're also semi aquatic, just like their modern relatives.
Speaker 1: They could take a massive amount of oxygen and main
Speaker 1: underwater for extended periods of time. So you could be
Speaker 1: an ancient human living in North America just bathing in
Speaker 1: a river and then just a massive bear beaver comes
Speaker 1: up out of the water and looks at you with
Speaker 1: its bright orange teeth and beady little roading eyes. I mean,
Speaker 1: given how family oriented beavers are and how like they
Speaker 1: need that sense of affection. You could steal one of
Speaker 1: those baby beavers. I guarantee at some point ancient man
Speaker 1: tried to domesticate and then ride one tried to mount
Speaker 1: the beaver. Yeah, that probably happened. Surely they would. There's
Speaker 1: no other reason to domesticate. I don't think other than
Speaker 1: maybe you could train, just train it. I am trying
Speaker 1: to think of like riding the beaver though it's like
Speaker 1: hi hoo, beaver, and then it's just sort of wattles,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I guess I don't know how fast
Speaker 1: these are not they probably can't cover much ground. Not
Speaker 1: too fast, no, um, but you know you could like
Speaker 1: put your that would be if you don't need to
Speaker 1: go too fast. You could ride the beaver and like
Speaker 1: set your kid up on its tail. Whole family to
Speaker 1: sitting on the tail you're on the beaver. You know,
Speaker 1: it's about the experience. You don't get a beaver to
Speaker 1: go from a to beat. I mean, you get a
Speaker 1: You get a beaver because that's like your fun ride.
Speaker 1: That's when you take out for like a real spit
Speaker 1: right exactly exactly. And they don't have like the upkeep
Speaker 1: of like a giant sloth, So you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a good option for for a small family. I think, um,
Speaker 1: can I get you in one of these bad boys today? Sore?
Speaker 1: And you know what what do I have to do
Speaker 1: to get you onto one of these bad boys right now? Uh?
Speaker 1: So Yeah, it's brain was smaller proportionally to its body
Speaker 1: compared to today's beaver, so it was a lot dumber.
Speaker 1: So maybe that's why it died out. Uh. Humans might
Speaker 1: have hunted it to extinction. I can't imagine like wanting
Speaker 1: to face a beaver in combat, but it's possible. There's
Speaker 1: not really evidence of that. Uh, but somehow they were there,
Speaker 1: big and beavery and now they're gone, so who knows.
Speaker 1: It is sad that the savor two tigers got him,
Speaker 1: I mean, but I don't think they could because it's
Speaker 1: sure saber tooth tigers they got the big teeth, but
Speaker 1: beavers they got even bigger teeth and just like they
Speaker 1: do rattling their teeth together like sabers. That'd be fun
Speaker 1: to watch them. Fascinating thing. So we go to the
Speaker 1: Libra tarpits is here in l A and I go
Speaker 1: there frequently with my child, and uh, I learned a
Speaker 1: fascinating detail about sabre tooth tigers. That is obviously tangential
Speaker 1: to this, but I think could help inform how the
Speaker 1: sabre two tiger might have killed the beaver, which was
Speaker 1: they didn't grab their prayer around the neck because like
Speaker 1: wily mamison stuff, had so much fur and overything around
Speaker 1: their necks that they weren't choking out there the same
Speaker 1: way like a tiger or lion. Now, just like the
Speaker 1: easiest way to kill something is just cut off in socks,
Speaker 1: so like they just bite hard enough to do that.
Speaker 1: But the say too tigre couldn't do that because everything
Speaker 1: in the ice age was so furry, like thick with
Speaker 1: with fat. So they would just jump on its back
Speaker 1: whatever it was, it's ground sloth or whatever, and they
Speaker 1: would dig their teeth in as far as they could
Speaker 1: and then just follow the animal as it bled out.
Speaker 1: So it's like like a capri son, you just punch,
Speaker 1: punch a little hole in it, suck out juice, that's right,
Speaker 1: and you just wait. Yeah, well, maybe maybe a savor
Speaker 1: tooth tiger could just kind of do a Capri son
Speaker 1: on a giant beaver. I don't know. I wasn't there
Speaker 1: speaking speaking of giant teeth though. Beavers have some of
Speaker 1: the most interesting impressive teeth in the natural world, and
Speaker 1: I'm talking about present day beavers. Beaver teeth constantly grow
Speaker 1: because they do, indeed eat trees. This is one of
Speaker 1: those things that like as a kid, I was like,
Speaker 1: they eat trees, And then when I was like a
Speaker 1: young adult, I was like, there's no way beavers eat trees.
Speaker 1: That's got to be a myth. And then now it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they eat trees, you know. Uh, So like they do
Speaker 1: tree bark um. They are herbivores. They eat a bunch
Speaker 1: of different types of plants, like aquatic plants, lily pads, cattails, rushes,
Speaker 1: They'll eat roots, leaves, ferns, human legs. Uh. They eat
Speaker 1: tree bark and camb um, which is a fleshy layer
Speaker 1: just under the bark. It's full of sugars um. They
Speaker 1: use trees not just in their diet but in their
Speaker 1: construction project, which we're gonna talk a little more after
Speaker 1: the break that's coming up. But um, before we talk
Speaker 1: about that, the teeth, the teeth that allows them to
Speaker 1: cut through all this would they are amazing. Their teeth
Speaker 1: are constantly growing because of all the heavy duty and
Speaker 1: chewing they have to do. If they your teeth didn't
Speaker 1: constantly grow, they'd wear their teeth down to useless nubs
Speaker 1: and like a month. I feel very um connected to
Speaker 1: beavers because I actually clench and grind my teeth. It's
Speaker 1: like I have broxi is um So I'm just like
Speaker 1: constantly clenching, and every time I go to the dentist,
Speaker 1: they're like, you're just gonna have like nubs for teeth
Speaker 1: if we don't do something about this soon. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm a little jealous of all the I think
Speaker 1: like rats are the same way, where their teeth just
Speaker 1: keep growing. Uh, And that sounds great, I mean, because
Speaker 1: I'm constantly having terrifying dreams about shattering my teeth or
Speaker 1: my teeth falling out more and more tooth. Behind all
Speaker 1: of that, I feel so much better. I mean, just
Speaker 1: the prospect of chipping a tooth now it seems like
Speaker 1: your screw you won't survive, you can't eat anymore. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I mean that it is a problem for a lot
Speaker 1: of animals if there's a problem with your teeth as
Speaker 1: a carnivore or a nerb of I mean basically anything
Speaker 1: that needs to use their teeth to eat, which is
Speaker 1: most animals. If your teeth go wrong, then you just
Speaker 1: you die because you don't have any method of eating.
Speaker 1: So with beavers, actually, if they are unable to wear
Speaker 1: their teeth down, they can also die because if their
Speaker 1: teeth are misaligned and they don't get that constant where
Speaker 1: their teeth still grow. And so what happens is their
Speaker 1: teeth just grow and grow and grow. And you know,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen pictures of like gross really long nails,
Speaker 1: and how like when nails get long enough they start
Speaker 1: to curl. It's the same thing that happens with their teeth.
Speaker 1: It just they grow until they start to curl and
Speaker 1: they can actually grow up from their mouth and curl
Speaker 1: around and like puncture their own skull, which is horrible assome.
Speaker 1: And so I I so I gave you a picture
Speaker 1: of it. Okay, let's say it. Oh God, oh he's
Speaker 1: not long for this world. That will just go right
Speaker 1: into his brain, right, I mean it depends where it
Speaker 1: hits him in the skull, but probably yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this one that kind of looks like it's getting him
Speaker 1: getting him in the eye a little bit, which is
Speaker 1: not great. Uh, there's no, it's also like once that's happened,
Speaker 1: it's not very easy to eat or probably think with
Speaker 1: tooth in your skull. So if tooth in the school
Speaker 1: doesn't get him, probably the inability to eat well. So
Speaker 1: not not a great uh, not a good thing. This
Speaker 1: happens to uh any beaver that has a condition known
Speaker 1: as malclusion. So yeah, beaver retainers would potentially save beaver lives,
Speaker 1: But for a healthy beaver, their teeth will be worn
Speaker 1: down into a perfect tree cutting chisel shape because, like
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, sore and their teeth are bright orange,
Speaker 1: and that is because they are so rich in iron
Speaker 1: that they have this discoloration. So their enamel on the
Speaker 1: front of their tooth is packed with iron, and on
Speaker 1: the other side of the tooth it's softer, just made
Speaker 1: of denting. So as they chew, it causes uneven wearing
Speaker 1: because the front wears slower than the back, and that
Speaker 1: causes an angle to form, and then that way, their
Speaker 1: teeth are actually shaped like chisels, and that chisel shape
Speaker 1: is much better at getting into wood and cutting into
Speaker 1: it like an axe. That's really cool. So it's they're
Speaker 1: just basically you're creating a sharp edge every single time
Speaker 1: they they self sharpened, they self sharpened. They're constantly growing
Speaker 1: and self sharpening. It's I mean, I wish I had
Speaker 1: kitchen knives, but it was just a beaver. I guess
Speaker 1: that would be really good because then you wouldn't need
Speaker 1: to sharpen them. You just uh, you know, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: need to get a new new beaver when it wears down.
Speaker 1: I guess you would need to get a new beaver
Speaker 1: like in twenty years when it dies. But no, that'd
Speaker 1: be great. Could you imagine how fast a beaver could
Speaker 1: like Julian a carrot perfect? Oh man, it would be
Speaker 1: so quick. Yeah. I So there's a documentary I think
Speaker 1: it's on PBS. It's on Nature, uh where they that's
Speaker 1: the one where that maybe fall in love with beavers?
Speaker 1: And in it they're talking about how, uh, every single night,
Speaker 1: like a beaver can chop down tons of trees. And
Speaker 1: I thought I thought it took a beaver very very
Speaker 1: long time to chop down a single tree, Like you
Speaker 1: think about the diameter of like a a birch or
Speaker 1: something that's maybe a foot or twelve inches, And it
Speaker 1: turns out that they could do that in like four hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing to them. Yeah, if it's a small enough tree,
Speaker 1: they can sometimes fell like a more slender tree in
Speaker 1: just like fifty minutes. It's crazy. Uh yeah, and they
Speaker 1: they will. The fact that each individual beaver can bring
Speaker 1: down a tree so quickly means that they will have huge,
Speaker 1: huge impacts in their environment. You know, you imagine just
Speaker 1: one beaver being able to take out multiple trees in
Speaker 1: a day, and then you increase that number two millions
Speaker 1: of beavers. They have just a massive, massive impact on
Speaker 1: the local ecosystem in what I considered to be a
Speaker 1: positive way. Maybe golf courses don't consider it to be
Speaker 1: a good thing, but yeah, we will talk about the
Speaker 1: way that beavers are one of the world's most impressive
Speaker 1: environmental engineers. Right after, were so excited, so excited. I
Speaker 1: so we we got a cat recently, a little kitten,
Speaker 1: and uh I for the first time. Put I haven't
Speaker 1: had a cat since I was a child. And I
Speaker 1: had to put fleet stuff on. Yeah, yeah, like just
Speaker 1: these little drops. So I like push as she's eating
Speaker 1: and very calm, I pushed this the fur up, I
Speaker 1: put squirre it on and they're like, be careful not
Speaker 1: to get this in your cat's eyes. Dude, it's very
Speaker 1: bad if you get this in your cat's eyes. So
Speaker 1: I squired it on there and I'm like, good done,
Speaker 1: and I put pull my hands away and she feels
Speaker 1: something wet on her neck, so she immediately shakes and
Speaker 1: it goes right in my eye. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh God. So I run to the to the sink
Speaker 1: and I'm just splashing water in there and trying to
Speaker 1: get as much as I can in there. And then
Speaker 1: I read the instructions again. It was like, if you
Speaker 1: get this in your eyes, hold the eye open and
Speaker 1: wash it for fifteen to twenty minutes. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: the eyes gone. Then there's no way I could do
Speaker 1: this for fifteen or twenty minutes. And it stung and
Speaker 1: it didn't feel great the rest of the night. And
Speaker 1: then I went to sleep and I woke up in
Speaker 1: the morning and my eye was crusted shut, like to
Speaker 1: the point where I like pull out of my eyelashes.
Speaker 1: Finally got it open and it was finding, but I
Speaker 1: was like, there was a perilous moment where I thought,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's it from my eye. At least you
Speaker 1: don't at least you don't have to worry about getting
Speaker 1: fleas in your eye though. That's that's a really nice
Speaker 1: silver lining. Complicated, yes, so so. And you know how
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is always talking about how he's going to
Speaker 1: terraform this, and he's going to terraform that. You know, No,
Speaker 1: but that seems like something he would say. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: just terraform Mars. We're gonna terraform, you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do some light terraform and over here, Uh, screw Alon Musk.
Speaker 1: The real terraform ers of the world are beavers. Uh.
Speaker 1: They have a complex social system and build structures that
Speaker 1: not only help them survive but shape the world around them. So,
Speaker 1: as we all know, I think I think I can
Speaker 1: comfortably say, as everyone knows, beavers build dams the kind
Speaker 1: of they're defining characteristic um other than the weird tails
Speaker 1: in the big teeth. And they also build lodges, which
Speaker 1: are where the beavers live. The beavers don't really live
Speaker 1: in the dams. The dams are just to make their
Speaker 1: area of the water more comfortable for them. So uh,
Speaker 1: usually they will build in a freshwater area. Rivers, streams, ponds,
Speaker 1: and lakes are all candidates for beaver construction projects. Beavers
Speaker 1: will create a wooden fortress right in the body of
Speaker 1: the water. And this fortress where they sleep and they
Speaker 1: you know, raise their young and uh stay warm in
Speaker 1: the winter, is called a lodge. So the dam is
Speaker 1: basically just they don't like flowing water. One could say
Speaker 1: they hate flowing water. They hate the sound of it.
Speaker 1: The sound of it drives them to start building a dam. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the dam will slow the flow of water such
Speaker 1: that they have a nice serene, uh bucolic uh pond
Speaker 1: for them to build their residence. We talked a lot
Speaker 1: about their incredible memorial artery chomping teeth, and they can
Speaker 1: use these to carefully cut trees at a forty five
Speaker 1: degree angle so that they will fall down efficiently and
Speaker 1: in a predictable fashion. And they use a bunch of
Speaker 1: rocks as the base of their dam, and then they
Speaker 1: use those rocks to way down the logs that they
Speaker 1: stack up, and uh they use muddy grass to patch
Speaker 1: up the wholes. So some real complex construction going on.
Speaker 1: And while it doesn't completely stop the flow of water,
Speaker 1: it slows it down enough that building a lodge is possible.
Speaker 1: So beaver lodges are where they sleep, where they seek shelters.
Speaker 1: Some of them can be fancier as a beaver ages
Speaker 1: and gets more experienced, like more construction experience, their lodges
Speaker 1: and damn building will get better and they might add
Speaker 1: in like a dining room, maybe a foyer, uh you know,
Speaker 1: maybe an al cove. Uh it's a uh. So inside
Speaker 1: the lodge there's a raised floor above water levels, so
Speaker 1: they actually stay nice and dry even though there's no
Speaker 1: entry point outside of the water. So under the lodge
Speaker 1: you'll have usually a couple of entrances, if not more,
Speaker 1: but you have to dive under the water and swim
Speaker 1: up through a tunnel to get into the lodge. And
Speaker 1: inside it's raised up so they're dry, but nobody like
Speaker 1: unless you're aquatic and willing to swim under this construction,
Speaker 1: you cannot get inside at the lodge, so that keeps
Speaker 1: them safe from most predators. And they also will create
Speaker 1: a raft, which is a huge underwater mound of edible
Speaker 1: sticks and logs. It goes so deep underwater most herbivorous
Speaker 1: animals can't get to it. So during the winter, when
Speaker 1: a lot of animals are suffering from malnutrition or lack
Speaker 1: of resources. Beavers are all set up. They have this
Speaker 1: great food supply that they can just kind of quickly
Speaker 1: exit their little lodge, grab, go back in, warm up,
Speaker 1: have a little cute little beaver time where they snack
Speaker 1: on all the logs that they've stored up. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so the only exception is like a novice beaver may
Speaker 1: build a pretty pathetic lodge and damn on their first attempts.
Speaker 1: It's definitely learning process. Usually young beavers will learn from
Speaker 1: the older generations, but it is sometimes a little bit pitiful,
Speaker 1: Like they'll put some sticks together and it immediately gets
Speaker 1: washed away, which well, they don't have to they don't
Speaker 1: always have to start from scratch. I mean, they're like
Speaker 1: they'll find there are a lot of like um, abandoned
Speaker 1: beaver lodges. But then a young beaver can come along
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, this looks like a nice fixer upper,
Speaker 1: and they can. And that's one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: like the beaver so much that I think that home
Speaker 1: renovation and monogamy are cool and that goes against the grid,
Speaker 1: and I think that if we can start telling everybody, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: these are actually cool aspects. These are character traits that
Speaker 1: are really cool, then maybe everyone would think a little
Speaker 1: bit more highly of the beaver. Who are you Tim
Speaker 1: Allen and the popular nineties sitcom Bam Improvement. Does that
Speaker 1: answer your question? Um? Yeah, like they I guess they's
Speaker 1: some of them abandoned ones that they've torn apart, the
Speaker 1: lodges they found wood in there. That's like a thousand
Speaker 1: years like that. They just keep using these places because
Speaker 1: like he's, beavers leave it when they run out of
Speaker 1: food in a particular area. But then the benefit of
Speaker 1: having this huge these like deep canals dug everywhere and
Speaker 1: like these swampy areas is that as soon as a
Speaker 1: beaver leaves, that place just reflourishes with all kinds of
Speaker 1: plants and stuff, and the next beaver can set us,
Speaker 1: set up shop and eat all over again. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: In fact, communal beaver dams and constructions can last for
Speaker 1: many decades. In fact, in Canada's Wood Buffalo National Park,
Speaker 1: beavers have constructed a damn about a half mile long,
Speaker 1: so that's just about under a kilometer and it's so
Speaker 1: large it can be seen from space, which I just
Speaker 1: love that. We're like, oh man, the Great Wall can
Speaker 1: be seen from space. Human constructions and is just like
Speaker 1: beavers are over here going like, hey, us to look
Speaker 1: at what we made? Made this out? Would check this out?
Speaker 1: Humans forget about the beavers. Don't forget about us. You're
Speaker 1: trying to forget about the beavers again. Didn't you try
Speaker 1: to escape on your little spaceships? Not this time. You're
Speaker 1: not helping me make the beaver cool? Just a cool
Speaker 1: war Sure, I've been doing it all wrong. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they have been working on this construction since the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: So this giant damn in would Buffalo National Park, it
Speaker 1: is uh from the nineteen seventies, if not older. And
Speaker 1: given that beavers only live an average of twelve years
Speaker 1: in the wild, this is the work of about four
Speaker 1: generations of beavers. So yeah, just they are absolutely capable
Speaker 1: of these massive, massive construction projects. Sometimes it's multi generational,
Speaker 1: probably passed on from one family to the younger generation.
Speaker 1: Not only can they make huge dams that will cause
Speaker 1: flooding and slow the movement of water, they can also
Speaker 1: create canals to other ponds, rivers, and bodies of water
Speaker 1: like you mentioned earlier. And they do this mostly out
Speaker 1: of laziness because they don't as much as we think
Speaker 1: it's cute to see them waddling on land. They don't
Speaker 1: like to do that, so they will build a canal
Speaker 1: from their pond to another body of water so they
Speaker 1: can easily just like zoom right to another source of food.
Speaker 1: Uh just like a like a like a beaver hyper loop. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, suck on it. Elon the beavers. I just
Speaker 1: love that beavers are such a bane to rich people.
Speaker 1: They're flooding their golf courses, they're ruining their walmarts, their
Speaker 1: constant reminders walmarts. Well they own the walmarts, right, we
Speaker 1: go to the walmarts. They on the walmarts. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like I love that they humiliate Elon Musk because they've
Speaker 1: done everything Elon Musk says he's got to do, but
Speaker 1: can't do. What are they so they they're just not
Speaker 1: great walkers, right, Like, they just don't walk well on lands.
Speaker 1: So is it that they're underwater they're just safer? Is that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're faster, they're safer. Uh, it's easier, takes less you know, effort. So,
Speaker 1: like to pull wood and vegetation from another place, pulling
Speaker 1: it on land is a lot harder, you have course,
Speaker 1: so that makes perfect sense. Yeah, it's way easier to
Speaker 1: carry a whole tree underwater. Yeah, to try drag it
Speaker 1: across the land. Yeah, it's like a beaver interstate or
Speaker 1: I guess like inter inter pond, interpool, yeah, interpol. So
Speaker 1: all these beaver constructions have a massive effect on the ecosystem,
Speaker 1: which makes them a keystone species, which means a species
Speaker 1: of animal that has a disproportion effect on their ecosystem.
Speaker 1: So they are the biggest architects of the environment other
Speaker 1: than humans, which you know, we have a disproportional effect
Speaker 1: on our environment. But unlike the beaver's, uh, we're not
Speaker 1: maybe taking into consideration biodiversity when we're doing it, not
Speaker 1: that the beaver's really like sat down and thought about it,
Speaker 1: like we're going to be environmentally friendly, Like we we
Speaker 1: want to build a dam, and we want to build
Speaker 1: a big pile sticks in the middle of the pond,
Speaker 1: but we're going to do it in a way that's
Speaker 1: like helpful. All I do like that, that's it's almost
Speaker 1: not even fair, Like we are basically this not to
Speaker 1: get too philosophical, but but that we are basically this
Speaker 1: parasite that we treat the earth kind of like a
Speaker 1: host where we just sort of like take, take, take,
Speaker 1: and and the beaver, like the beaver is relentless, like
Speaker 1: it's just it's cutting down trees all night. Face value
Speaker 1: of beaver does the sound great. It's damming up water
Speaker 1: so it keep water can't get to certain areas. It's
Speaker 1: cutting it on a bunch of trees at night. It
Speaker 1: sounds like, oh, yeah, okay, I can relate to that.
Speaker 1: That's what people do too. But no, like what they're
Speaker 1: actually doing is with these damns, they're creating these floodplains,
Speaker 1: and they're creating these areas that now allow tons of
Speaker 1: other life to sustain. Like all these other species now
Speaker 1: are could come to this one area because now it's
Speaker 1: much more lush and green than it ordinarily would have
Speaker 1: been just a straight channel river or stream was like
Speaker 1: flowing through it. And they're so good for the environment
Speaker 1: that they don't even eat the other animals either. They're
Speaker 1: just sitting there eating their sticks and they're content and
Speaker 1: in their big lodges in the middle of winter. They're like, oh, muskrats,
Speaker 1: would you like to come join us in our lodge?
Speaker 1: And the muskrats like, yeah, I don't mind if I
Speaker 1: do well, family of rats, would you like to live
Speaker 1: in here too? And like these other they just these
Speaker 1: they build these boarding houses essentially for other animals. I'm
Speaker 1: just so mad, so mad that well, if it makes
Speaker 1: you feel any better. From the trees perspective, the beaver
Speaker 1: is the world the greatest villain. That's true. That's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: beavers and lumberjacks. So yeah, you're you're absolutely right. They
Speaker 1: create these huge wetlands single handedly, or like single potted
Speaker 1: lee single yeah, single tailededly. It's hard to decide ter
Speaker 1: that job. All terrible puns here, folks, But yeah, so
Speaker 1: they raise the water table, so that means that there's
Speaker 1: more access to fresh water above ground. In addition, their
Speaker 1: dams also filter out pollutants and helps slow the loss
Speaker 1: of soil through erosion, and this can change the environment chemically,
Speaker 1: like raising the levels of nitrogen in the soil, which
Speaker 1: makes it more fertile and increases the biodiversity of plant life.
Speaker 1: So beavers moving change up the water system and suddenly
Speaker 1: you just have all these new speech use of plants
Speaker 1: that are able to live there because the soil is
Speaker 1: much more nutritious, there's more access to water above the ground,
Speaker 1: accessible to plants and it's amazing. They just like make
Speaker 1: it verdant and full of plant life. Um. This also
Speaker 1: increases the number of aquatic life in the area, uh
Speaker 1: that thrives in the calmer waters that beavers construct, So
Speaker 1: things like snails and earthworms, dragonflies, frogs, even muscles, um.
Speaker 1: And then once you get all of these little critters
Speaker 1: into the pond, then that has a cascading effect of
Speaker 1: inviting bigger animals in. So uh it increases like fish
Speaker 1: populations like salmon and trout, lots of birds, especially aquatic
Speaker 1: birds who love to come in and feast upon this
Speaker 1: like little biosphere that these beavers have created. Ah and
Speaker 1: uh it can even have like these really unexpected effects,
Speaker 1: like increasing bat populations because bats like to often feed
Speaker 1: around water, especially where you're gonna have a lot of
Speaker 1: insect activity, and so you'll you'll have this increase in
Speaker 1: bat populations. And it's just it's like kind of a
Speaker 1: jump to get from like beaver cuts down tree, puts
Speaker 1: the tree in water, and now you have more bats.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, what's the problem. How is that hard to understand?
Speaker 1: The beavers make bats beavers? Yeah, yeah, I mean, like
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing right, So like bats like Batman
Speaker 1: is really cool, but really Beaverman would be uh would
Speaker 1: be able to defeat Batman right by the laws of nature. Yeah, Beverman, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess like beaver probably, I guess in this analogy,
Speaker 1: I guess, um, you know what's his name? I was
Speaker 1: gonna say Jeeves, but I know that's not right. Batman's
Speaker 1: but alert Uh Alfred, yeah, Alfred right, yeah, Alfred. He
Speaker 1: would be Bieverman, right, because Alfred is the one who
Speaker 1: fostered uh Batman. Yes, so Batman, Bruce Wade wouldn't be
Speaker 1: here without without without bank Alfred. Sorry, Bieverman. Beverman can't
Speaker 1: believe I keep calling, keep blowing his cover. It would
Speaker 1: be really funny to have Batman like putting on his
Speaker 1: mask era and like putting on his coal and being like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get in the car, and Alfred's like,
Speaker 1: oh true forgetting something, Master Bruce, and he's just dressed
Speaker 1: as a like I don't I don't know, I think
Speaker 1: maybe not tonight. Could you could you at least lose
Speaker 1: the teeth no muster booth that is an integral part
Speaker 1: of my costume, and Batman just doesn't want to go
Speaker 1: out with it, takes him out a couple of times
Speaker 1: just to be like, well, it's like doing your ride
Speaker 1: along with a cop. Like he's going to take him
Speaker 1: out just to let him see the sights and let
Speaker 1: him feel like he's being but like, really, Beaverman just
Speaker 1: kind of gets in the way. I'm the terror who
Speaker 1: slaps in the night. Do you have a warn for this,
Speaker 1: Master Ruse, I told you not to use my name
Speaker 1: most Bruce Batman Batman Master Bruce, I am so sorry,
Speaker 1: but yeah, Beeverman much cooler than Batman. Um. They have
Speaker 1: just an enormous impact on the ecosystem. Uh yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: like anything that has an impact on the ecosystem. They
Speaker 1: can have a negative impact on some species, so uh,
Speaker 1: animals that would prefer a fast moving river to a pond,
Speaker 1: some migratory species of birds that want dense forests rather
Speaker 1: than wetlands. They'll have a negative impact on their populations.
Speaker 1: But in the balance, Beaver's increased biodiversity. So for every
Speaker 1: like species that is not pleased with what they've done
Speaker 1: with the place, there's like five others who are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is great, we love everything. Just being a big
Speaker 1: old swamp there's like when they want to reintroduce wolves
Speaker 1: to an area in the United States, they're like, well,
Speaker 1: are their beavers there, because like they need beavers there
Speaker 1: first before like wolves can be reintroduced. It's it's like
Speaker 1: they're connected to every other species and it's like it's
Speaker 1: like a big game of um seven six degrees with
Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon where they all lead back to the beaver,
Speaker 1: but it just takes a little while to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get there. How many degrees do you think
Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon is from a beaver? I could figure it
Speaker 1: out just one, right, It's just Bacon to beaver directly.
Speaker 1: There's no he's no middleman. Yeah. I think it's probably true.
Speaker 1: Beavers have a direct line to Kevin Bacon and him
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, yeah, they've got it. Was like, you
Speaker 1: are you do you like Kevin Bacon? You like I
Speaker 1: can get you right and ride in with Kevin Bacon.
Speaker 1: I could fite him over. We could could be here
Speaker 1: by two o'clock. He loves swimming. I'll just put some
Speaker 1: put some logs on stoven. He'll come right over. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's there are an amazing example of how
Speaker 1: it is definitely possible to drastically alter the environment without
Speaker 1: causing a total collapse of the ecosystem, which is something
Speaker 1: beavers have done. But humans, you know, m you know,
Speaker 1: we we got we got a few light issues with
Speaker 1: our like punching a hole in the ozone and papers
Speaker 1: are like, oh, you don't want to do that. Actually
Speaker 1: you don't know that beaver. Maybe some more species will
Speaker 1: really like this. No, that's not I'm pretty sure. No.
Speaker 1: Have you thought about maybe just putting some sticks in
Speaker 1: the water. That's pretty nice. We tried and it was
Speaker 1: bull beaver. Well, when we get back right after the break,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk more about the relationship between beavers
Speaker 1: and people, and stay tunned until the end of the
Speaker 1: episode because we will be revealing the answer till last
Speaker 1: week's Mystery Animal Sound contest and giving you a whole
Speaker 1: new mystery sound to ponder over beavers, beavers, and some people. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: beavers have had a very complex relationship with humans, going
Speaker 1: back to ancient times. We have often used beavers towards
Speaker 1: our own twisted ends, or thought of them as pests
Speaker 1: due to the flooding that they can cause, which I
Speaker 1: think it's sad. I like beavers. We hunted almost extinction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's I know it is sad, right, it's
Speaker 1: pretty sad. Uh. If you have listened to some of
Speaker 1: the older episodes of this show, or if you've send
Speaker 1: to Alex Schmidt's great podcast, Secretly incredibly fascinating the episode
Speaker 1: on vanilla um, which I'm biased towards because I was
Speaker 1: actually the gift on that one because he knew how
Speaker 1: much I wanted to talk about beaver butts. You may
Speaker 1: note that beaver anal glands secrete a musk that can
Speaker 1: be used as artificial vanilla flavoring. Yum, yum, yum. Give
Speaker 1: me some of that. But just imagining a farmer waking
Speaker 1: up in the morning, you know, the sun's rising. He
Speaker 1: goes out to the barn. It's filled with beavers. He
Speaker 1: gets out a little tiny pale. It's like, all right, chompers,
Speaker 1: it's your turn just expressing those glands. All right, let
Speaker 1: me just get right in here, chompers. I know, I know,
Speaker 1: it's uh. And they makes such fundl noises to beavers
Speaker 1: do kind of like a Yeah. In medieval times, people
Speaker 1: mistook the beaver's anal glands for their testicles, and because
Speaker 1: in medieval times. Actually, people did want to use that
Speaker 1: anal secretion called castoreum for a variety of things, uh, perfumes,
Speaker 1: vanilla flavoring, probably an aphrodisiac. I actually don't know that.
Speaker 1: It's just most animal parts, most like weird animal parts
Speaker 1: where we're like, let's eat this. It's usually something like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, this, this will set the move some beaver
Speaker 1: anal gland juice. H Is that what castor oil is?
Speaker 1: Then no, castor oil is from castor seed, I believe,
Speaker 1: whereas cast reum is the beaver butt juice. So but yeah,
Speaker 1: in medieval times they thought castoreum came from beaver testicles,
Speaker 1: and so there was a myth about beavers chewing off
Speaker 1: their own testicles so they wouldn't be hunted. And gosh,
Speaker 1: many monks sure tried hard to draw this happening. They
Speaker 1: really did try. Uh. One guy said it like good
Speaker 1: enough for us put in the books. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean so I shared this with you. Sort of course
Speaker 1: it'll be in the show notes. But it is a
Speaker 1: picture of a hunter on a horse, you know, majestic,
Speaker 1: beautiful stallion, and then a beaver. Uh it looks I
Speaker 1: don't know, kind of like a dog. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: is chewing its own testicles off. That's the important part.
Speaker 1: Its tail isn't quite what one would consider a beaver
Speaker 1: tail to be. These kind of long, elegant lap back legs. Uh,
Speaker 1: some kind of like sharp ears and yeah, then like
Speaker 1: a little kind of like a whiff a whiff of
Speaker 1: a tail. Yeah. I guess they're trying to show that
Speaker 1: it's flat. It's not. There's there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: beaver connection I'm seeing to this. And this is a
Speaker 1: theme if you just google like medieval beaver drawing. Uh,
Speaker 1: not many people past the test of you know, is
Speaker 1: this a beaver to the to the credit of the monks,
Speaker 1: I don't think they understand genitals generally, because there's something
Speaker 1: strange going on with the horse as well. And not
Speaker 1: that I'm like that's the first thing, right, kind of
Speaker 1: sounds like it, but you know, go on the horses.
Speaker 1: The horses genitals and this picture are also very confusing.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of like curls. It's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a sort of looks more like a note signature
Speaker 1: or something on a piece of music. It's not really uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and not I'm not you know, not to
Speaker 1: say like I would have preferred them to have lovingly
Speaker 1: crafted a very realistic horse apparatus, but you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they do have an interesting idea because like the
Speaker 1: beaver is chewing off its own testicles, but the position
Speaker 1: of it is like not quite physically speaking, since making
Speaker 1: testicles don't look like they look more like labia major. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It actually, you know what, if you didn't know they
Speaker 1: were testicles, it kind of looks like an attempt to
Speaker 1: draw the big beaver teeth. Yeah, Oh, that's the most
Speaker 1: beaver aspect. You're absolutely right, that's the most beaver aspect
Speaker 1: of this entire picture. Right, But those are in fact
Speaker 1: actually testicles. Maybe that's why maybe they thought their teeth
Speaker 1: were testicles. Man, med medieval guys must have been really
Speaker 1: sick with something, so like it's like, yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: that's what they're looking down. Yeah, that's what a normal
Speaker 1: testicle looks like. That's what how they became monks. They
Speaker 1: realized early on, this can't be right, this can't be right.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go to a monastery. I don't think
Speaker 1: this is right. I'm not gonna put any more thought
Speaker 1: into it. This is just can't be it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: in fact, you know, the not only do beavers not
Speaker 1: chew off their own testicles. Testicles have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with castrium. It is just the anal glands, the musk
Speaker 1: that they use for territorial marking. Nevertheless, people throughout history
Speaker 1: have tried castrium for a number of uses for the
Speaker 1: treatment of ailments such as vertigo, flatulence, epilepsy, sciatica, hiccups,
Speaker 1: and toothaches. Uh. None of these I believe have ever
Speaker 1: been like backed up by any data that it works.
Speaker 1: It was also thought to be useful to treat toxic
Speaker 1: womb syndrome uh and hysteria in women, which were very
Speaker 1: very real diseases and not things doctors just made up
Speaker 1: to explain when like your wife didn't want to cook
Speaker 1: dinner for you every night. Uh. I just love I
Speaker 1: don't know, I love all the weird names we gave
Speaker 1: to like women just generally not being super happy with like,
Speaker 1: you know, just women not like Yeah, get the general
Speaker 1: displeasure of the system that was built for to put
Speaker 1: them in a cage. So I'm saying, oh, I do
Speaker 1: think I might like the right to vote. Sounds like
Speaker 1: you've got a case of womb with legs. The case
Speaker 1: of the flying womb. Yeah, because wandering womb syndrome was
Speaker 1: another one which I don't I guess they thought the
Speaker 1: womb went somewhere where it's not supposed to. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so apparently, uh, beaver anal beaver anal glands good for um,
Speaker 1: the disease that women would get when they were less
Speaker 1: than happy with medieval life. Um. So probably the beaver
Speaker 1: butt juice doesn't help with most of these ailments. But
Speaker 1: it does have a chemical composition that includes solcilic acid,
Speaker 1: which is from their tree bark heavy diet, which does
Speaker 1: make it somewhat chemically similar to aspirin. So maybe there
Speaker 1: were some legit uses for it, but disclaimer, like I
Speaker 1: wouldn't go around huffing beaver butt instead of just going
Speaker 1: to the pharmacy and getting an aspirin. Although the way
Speaker 1: things are going now, I just feel like that's going
Speaker 1: to be the next thing. Right. It's like first horse
Speaker 1: button medicine, now beaver butt medicine for like, you know,
Speaker 1: for just anything, any weird thing we can try to
Speaker 1: put in our bodies. Uh, as long as it doesn't
Speaker 1: come in like, you know, a pharmaceutical bottle. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: long as the Western medicine didn't create it. I think
Speaker 1: that this is good. Good things like put away in
Speaker 1: your brain. If you're ever in a hatchet situation. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're out there in the world and you got
Speaker 1: a headache, beaver, give it a shot. When you survived
Speaker 1: the ordeal, come back and tell us. If a beaver
Speaker 1: choose off your legs and it really hurts, grab that
Speaker 1: beaver and rubb its butt against your face. You know,
Speaker 1: it's only fair beaver causes the problem. Yeah, just like, look,
Speaker 1: you took my legs, now I'm taking your butt. Glance. Um.
Speaker 1: This is just kind of a fun little thing. In
Speaker 1: medieval Europe, beavers were not even really considered mammals given
Speaker 1: their aquatic nature, so their leathery, scaly, fish like tails
Speaker 1: were not considered to be red meat. They thought this
Speaker 1: is probably more like fish. So the Catholic Church allowed
Speaker 1: people to eat beaver tails during Lent. What a weird
Speaker 1: detail that they allowed to stay through history. Someone thought
Speaker 1: to write that down at some point. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can eat beaver tails those that's pretty cool. I
Speaker 1: just love that the Catholic Church just like all these
Speaker 1: parishioners going like, well, What about beaver tails? What do
Speaker 1: you mean what about beaver tails? Well, they're not really
Speaker 1: red meat right there, kind of fish. Yeah, I guess,
Speaker 1: so you can eat beaver tails. What about the fish
Speaker 1: part of the beaver. Yeah, the fish part of the
Speaker 1: beaver is fine, eat that. What about its head? No, no,
Speaker 1: just the tail, that's the mammal part. What about its balls, Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: you can do that. Obviously it's balls. I'm so sick
Speaker 1: of answering these questions. Uh so. Yeah. Beavers were a
Speaker 1: major force in the history of North America, both before
Speaker 1: and after European colonization. Obviously, aside from the fact that
Speaker 1: they created these verdant oasis is of bio diversity that
Speaker 1: was very good for humans to be able to go
Speaker 1: and fish and live off the land. Uh. Beaver meat
Speaker 1: was very popular among many American Indian tribes and nations
Speaker 1: due to the fact that they remain well fed even
Speaker 1: in winter. So uh, you know, they have that larder
Speaker 1: of logs under the water that they have access throughout
Speaker 1: the wind throughout the winter, so they stay nice and fatty,
Speaker 1: whereas other animals might struggle more during the winter. So
Speaker 1: for a hungry human finding a beaver. A nice plump
Speaker 1: beaver during the winter would be a real real windfall. Now,
Speaker 1: after European colonization, the fur trade was a major driver
Speaker 1: of colonization and expansion. In fact, it was so profitable
Speaker 1: and so popular that it was the cause of the
Speaker 1: Beaver Wars also known as the French and Iroquois Wars
Speaker 1: from around sixteen hundred to seventeen hundred. If you're wondering, like, well,
Speaker 1: why were beaver pelts so popular? Were people just going
Speaker 1: around with like furry hats all the time? Uh, you
Speaker 1: could do a lot of modifications to beaver pelts. So
Speaker 1: they would actually make top hats out of beaver pelts
Speaker 1: by removing the guard hairs so it didn't look like
Speaker 1: a fluffy beaver coat. They would, you know, remove all
Speaker 1: the guard hairs and so you'd have this like tough
Speaker 1: but very shiny like material that they could make a
Speaker 1: fancy top hat. And so that's totally worth nearly driving
Speaker 1: a species to extinction and taking over the land of
Speaker 1: people who already lived here. Ah, yeah, to get your
Speaker 1: shiny hats. Kind of what it boiled down to the
Speaker 1: beaver pelt was there are a bunch of different hats
Speaker 1: you can make like, um, the remember the Napoleon's type
Speaker 1: of hat, like that kind of hat like there they
Speaker 1: structurally held up very well, like they'd stick stick up
Speaker 1: off the top of the head very well. And it's
Speaker 1: just kind of like this nice felty material and hats
Speaker 1: were I guess really important. Yeah, it was like we're like,
Speaker 1: we went to war for hats. It's weird. We like,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe this is oversimplifying it, but we drove
Speaker 1: the Native American people from their homes partially because it's like,
Speaker 1: we can make a lot of money out of hats. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw it. When I did look up Little sin Clark,
Speaker 1: I was amazed to see how much there was, how
Speaker 1: much they had written about the beaver, and it turned
Speaker 1: out that, like Jefferson, there's just tons of it. First
Speaker 1: of all, they did eat it a lot. The it
Speaker 1: was like their favorite thing to eat along away. And
Speaker 1: then they also, uh, they talked about it a lot
Speaker 1: because because I guess jeff Jefferson was really interested in
Speaker 1: the fur trade and like that was part of the
Speaker 1: reason they sent them out there through this huge exploration
Speaker 1: not only to see how far the rivers go, to
Speaker 1: see how much land they had a mass but they
Speaker 1: were like, no, we need to set up our own
Speaker 1: fur trade, and so we need to find out how
Speaker 1: many beaver we have. Yeah, this is this is like
Speaker 1: one of the things that is frustrating to me about
Speaker 1: how like American history is taught in schools, because like
Speaker 1: I think, now it's not being whitewashed as much, but
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, when I was a kid, it
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, we we needed to find a place
Speaker 1: to escape religious persecution, and then so that's why we
Speaker 1: all we have America now. And then as you learn
Speaker 1: more about it, it's like we really wanted to kill
Speaker 1: a bunch of beavers and turn them into ass and
Speaker 1: and so we like so we like drove them nearly
Speaker 1: to extinction, like did a genocide just so we could
Speaker 1: have our cool hats. All right, yeah, they're like, we
Speaker 1: want to kill all these beavers, but there's all these
Speaker 1: people in the way. Just move them or kill them,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh yeah, cool, cool, cool history. Love.
Speaker 1: It really really fun than when you're in elementary school
Speaker 1: and you're like, all right, now you're the pilgrims, right,
Speaker 1: fun now fun? Yeah. So yeah, due to the fur trade,
Speaker 1: beavers faced near extinction. In the eighteen hundreds, beavers were
Speaker 1: nearing extinction in North America and in Europe. The Eurasian
Speaker 1: beaver population at one point dwindled to only about one
Speaker 1: thousand individuals, So we were very close to losing the
Speaker 1: best in the world. And I'm not even being sarcastic,
Speaker 1: like without beavers there would be a lot less biodiversity,
Speaker 1: a lot of ecosystems collapsing. So after the fur trade
Speaker 1: became less popular in the nineteen hundreds, beaver populations recovered.
Speaker 1: So now there are over one million beavers in Europe,
Speaker 1: so not they didn't recover completely, but they did improve greatly.
Speaker 1: And in North America there are over fifteen million beavers,
Speaker 1: so that is quite an impressive recovery. Uh. Yeah, ecologists
Speaker 1: know the importance of beavers as architects of biodiverse, fertile areas.
Speaker 1: In uh A Kadian National Park in the US, in Maine,
Speaker 1: the reintroduction of beavers to the area doubled the amount
Speaker 1: of wetlands in only fifty years. So they're just incredible.
Speaker 1: Like when we talk about like, oh, we want to
Speaker 1: tear a form mars, like okay, put a bunch of
Speaker 1: beavers on Mars. Then it always rubs me the wrong
Speaker 1: way when it's like, yeah, we gotta go colonize Mars.
Speaker 1: It's like, could we just like focus on one plan
Speaker 1: at a time, you know, I'm amazed that they also
Speaker 1: areas where they have a lot of drought. Like a
Speaker 1: way that you fix that is you just send beavers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they can fix it. Then they solve the problem
Speaker 1: of drought, which is crazy because you know, you're not
Speaker 1: getting any more rainfall or anything, but because they dig
Speaker 1: such deep canals and and when they raise the water
Speaker 1: table that also helps. It helps. Yeah, so like the
Speaker 1: water sticks around a lot more and it's just love.
Speaker 1: I had too. Beavers are They're pretty cool. I feel
Speaker 1: like we talk a lot about like, oh, we could
Speaker 1: bring back the mammoth or like maybe more reasonably, like
Speaker 1: we could bring back the passenger pigeon, which is not
Speaker 1: as crazy an idea, but it's like maybe we should
Speaker 1: just slow down and start putting beavers in more places,
Speaker 1: you know, like just calm down a little bit, start
Speaker 1: punt beavers. Like before you know, we go to the
Speaker 1: mammoth or the passenger pigeons because one of the problems
Speaker 1: with de extinction is that we got rid of the
Speaker 1: eco system that originally supported passenger pigeons, let alone a mammoth. Like,
Speaker 1: we do not have the same territory for mammoths to
Speaker 1: be able to thrive. I don't know if you've seen
Speaker 1: North America recently, but it's not exactly a mammoth haven.
Speaker 1: Uh So, like we always like these like cool ideas,
Speaker 1: and then if you're like, could we just put more
Speaker 1: beavers everywhere, You're like a boon nerd, you know, but no, seriously,
Speaker 1: we should be putting beavers everywhere. We are still we
Speaker 1: are sort of yeah, we're I mean they're doing some
Speaker 1: of that, that's which is great. Yeah, just the humble beaver.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, Canada doesn't seem as dorky now,
Speaker 1: does it with all their beaver emblems. They really do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're embracing of weird animals like the loon and
Speaker 1: the beaver. Is really inspiring to me. Yeah, because like
Speaker 1: they're willing to look past the silliness of the animal
Speaker 1: be like, look, this animal is important. Can we all
Speaker 1: just be adults about this? Yeah? I wish you know,
Speaker 1: because like in the US were like oh, Paul Beagle,
Speaker 1: that's so metal, and it's like, yeah, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: bald eagles are really cool. I love bald eagles. But yeah,
Speaker 1: probably we should have gone with a beaver, honestly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's I don't I don't know if you are
Speaker 1: you are you planning to talk about the like areas
Speaker 1: that are now flooding and everything because of beavers, like
Speaker 1: residential areas that are flooding. No talk about it. Oh,
Speaker 1: so this is very exciting that beavers are You're excited
Speaker 1: for people being flooded beavers? Yeah, well, because you know
Speaker 1: when we hunted the beaver to almost death, that all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, there are all these new like the
Speaker 1: places where beavers I'll live the most. If you can
Speaker 1: picture like a glacial region where a glacier went through
Speaker 1: an area, there's mountains on both sides and then there's
Speaker 1: a huge like horseshoe valley in the bottom of it,
Speaker 1: and that's like where beavers thrived. And when we killed
Speaker 1: off all the beavers, that just became grasslands, like dried
Speaker 1: out grasslands, and everyone was like, oh, this is the
Speaker 1: perfect place to build a city, This is the perfect
Speaker 1: place to build a town, and and that's where like
Speaker 1: golf courses go, that's where ranches go because there's so
Speaker 1: much fertile and it's all fertile because beavers made it fertile.
Speaker 1: And so then when beavers are reintroduced or beaver numbers
Speaker 1: start coming back, they're building dams and anywhere that they
Speaker 1: hear water. And so when they're doing that, all those
Speaker 1: areas are flooding again. Everyone's like what the the beavers,
Speaker 1: and the beavers will do it in a night to
Speaker 1: like people will go out there. They're like, culverts are
Speaker 1: a big problem underneath roads. Where beavers hear the water
Speaker 1: in the culvert, they damn up the culvert and it
Speaker 1: just floods the road. And so the next day people
Speaker 1: will come and like remove all the dam and overnight
Speaker 1: the beavers will just build it again. Such hard work.
Speaker 1: I love this. I mean, like I feel a little
Speaker 1: sympathy for just like regular people living there. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, this is rad It's the radical change
Speaker 1: that like we need in politics. Uh. I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of arguments of like how
Speaker 1: how do you actually protest capitalism? I think just being
Speaker 1: a beaver, you know, there's a there's a guy in Ontario.
Speaker 1: He's on Ontario. He's just this French Canadian guy who
Speaker 1: his for a long time. His job was basically like,
Speaker 1: you gotta get the beavers out of this one particular
Speaker 1: town or this area. And he was him hunting and
Speaker 1: killing beavers for a while and trapping them, but he
Speaker 1: was trapping other things because it's really hard to trap
Speaker 1: a beaver, end up catching like different herons and things
Speaker 1: like that, and he was getting really depressed by it.
Speaker 1: And then he was like, there's gotta be a way
Speaker 1: to work with the beaver. And he figured out that
Speaker 1: if he any area that was like a potentially could
Speaker 1: become this wetland area and they would end up flooding
Speaker 1: houses and things, he would put in the darts of
Speaker 1: what could be a great beaver dam, but with pipes
Speaker 1: at the bottom of it so that and then he
Speaker 1: would put um noise. He put it anywhere that he
Speaker 1: wanted the dever the beaver to build a damn. He
Speaker 1: just put a CD player that it was playing the
Speaker 1: sound of water. Yeah, because they're they're actually triggered by
Speaker 1: the sound of flowing water to start construction of the dam.
Speaker 1: And then they're triggered but the sound of leaks, so
Speaker 1: like if the dam is leaking, they'll go in and
Speaker 1: locate where the sound is coming from. It's like I
Speaker 1: hear the sound. I hear the sound. I need to
Speaker 1: pack more sticks where the sound is. It's a quote
Speaker 1: of living a house with like a leaky faucet where
Speaker 1: just like I can't stand it. I won't. I won't
Speaker 1: live here having a beaver in the house and just
Speaker 1: just like a leaky faucet and you wake up and
Speaker 1: there's just a bunch of sticks in there. But by
Speaker 1: putting the pipes at the bottom of it, what he
Speaker 1: can do then is that once they build the dam
Speaker 1: in that area, if the water table ever gets too high,
Speaker 1: he just basically opens up the bottom one of these
Speaker 1: pipes and like lets out a bunch of the water
Speaker 1: and you can close it right back. That's perfect bottle
Speaker 1: and sell that nice good beaver water, beaver purified water.
Speaker 1: Just the tiniest bit of beaver piss. Yeah, just the
Speaker 1: little just a little chef's kiss of beaver piss. But
Speaker 1: I love that he's like figured out how to how
Speaker 1: to work with him. No, it's we have to we
Speaker 1: we gotta learn to live with the beaver. That's like,
Speaker 1: it's it's so important to recognize the importance of beavers
Speaker 1: because you know, we we talked about like, oh, it
Speaker 1: increases biodiversity and this is good for the environment. I
Speaker 1: think sometimes people get this perception that we're not really
Speaker 1: part of the environment, so we don't have to you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, it's nice in theory to care about it,
Speaker 1: but you know, we're not. You know, when we're talking
Speaker 1: about biodiversity that doesn't really impact humans, but it does.
Speaker 1: Oh it kind of kids. Yeah, oops, we're kind of
Speaker 1: you know, we're all we're in it. We're in the environment. Uh. Also, yeah,
Speaker 1: now that it has actual like monetary um consequences, people
Speaker 1: are like, oh, maybe beavers aren't so bad that they're
Speaker 1: like these ranches where there are droughts and then they're
Speaker 1: looking for anywhere to put their cattle that actually has water,
Speaker 1: and so like they'll find other ranches where they know
Speaker 1: that beavers have like a presence there, and they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: can we send our cows to here ranch for a
Speaker 1: while to go graze and eat and everything, because they're
Speaker 1: like they're saving these ranches there by creating water tables
Speaker 1: that are a little bit higher and again fighting against drought.
Speaker 1: It is kind of sad though that it comes down to,
Speaker 1: like we have all these droughts and like the sky
Speaker 1: is orange and we're like, maybe we made a mistake
Speaker 1: trying to kill off the beavers. I'm trying to turn
Speaker 1: the beavers into half. It was fun, I'll admit that
Speaker 1: shiny though. They were so shiny. Well before we go, UM,
Speaker 1: I do need to reveal the mystery animal sound from
Speaker 1: last week. So every week for this new season, I've
Speaker 1: been playing a little game with you the listener and
Speaker 1: you the guest, where I play an animal sound and
Speaker 1: you've got a guess who's talking, and if you answer correctly,
Speaker 1: and you write to me at Creature Feature Pod at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com, Creature feature pot on Instagram, or Creature
Speaker 1: feet Pod, that's eight. That's something very different. On Twitter,
Speaker 1: I will read aloud the names of the first three
Speaker 1: people to guess the sound correctly. So, uh, as of
Speaker 1: recording this podcast, actually nobody has guess the right answer
Speaker 1: to last week's mystery animal sound, which is a first. Uh,
Speaker 1: everyone's been pretty good at guessing things. So I raised
Speaker 1: the difficulty level a little bit, and um, maybe raised
Speaker 1: a little too high because it was a tricky one.
Speaker 1: This is a tricky one. Um, I will just before
Speaker 1: releasing this all oh, keep checking so if somebody gisses
Speaker 1: it right, I will answert it. Here. Hello, it's Katie.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking through a robot since I had to add
Speaker 1: this in last minute. Bee bee boop boop. Nobody guess
Speaker 1: the right animal, but good hustle everyone, beep beep, death
Speaker 1: to humans. Just kidding. So just to remind you and
Speaker 1: for you to listen to Soren, here is the sound
Speaker 1: from last week, and the hint was you do not
Speaker 1: want to get in a knife fight with this guy's yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, all right, so that was the sound.
Speaker 1: So do you have any guesses? Yes, it's the frog
Speaker 1: that can, uh can send its own bones through its skin.
Speaker 1: That is so interesting because I had Ben bowling on
Speaker 1: last week and he guessed the same thing, and gosh
Speaker 1: darn ittt but you're both wrong. It sounds like megafauna.
Speaker 1: It sounds like something big. Maybe it is something big,
Speaker 1: but you want to hear what the answer is. You
Speaker 1: got any more guesses? All right? The answer is cassowary.
Speaker 1: So I should have known that. Oh god, I'm an idiot.
Speaker 1: I love the cast wary. I will go to the
Speaker 1: zoo just to see the castle wary because they're so
Speaker 1: piste off all the time. They're angry, angry animals. So.
Speaker 1: Castwaries are large, flightless, blue faced ornerary birds with a
Speaker 1: five inch long dagger like toe claw they can use
Speaker 1: to stab you. They grow up to six ft tall,
Speaker 1: which is about one eight meters, and they wave up
Speaker 1: to one and thirty pounds which is about fifty eight
Speaker 1: You do not want to get into a fight with
Speaker 1: a cassowary. Uh. They are big living dinosaur wars. They
Speaker 1: will destroy you easily. They're the closest thing we have
Speaker 1: to a velociraptor in the modern world. And they have
Speaker 1: this prehistoric plate on the top of their head. It's
Speaker 1: so confusing and weird on the cask. Yes, and they
Speaker 1: are unlike testicles hanging from their neck, which is also
Speaker 1: very strange, like these wattles whatever those are. And they
Speaker 1: are uh, super territorial, so like they're ready to kill anything.
Speaker 1: People get killed by these things in New Guinea all
Speaker 1: the time because at the water to a cassewary's territory,
Speaker 1: they'll just come and eviscerate you with their toe. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they live in a New Guinea. They also, of course
Speaker 1: live in Australia. Australia has always got to have a
Speaker 1: little taste of some of the most dangerous animals. Um
Speaker 1: and they produce the lowest frequency bird call in the world.
Speaker 1: In fact, sometimes they're rumbling. Territorial call is so low
Speaker 1: it's beyond the range of human hearing. Sometimes it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where like young like kids can hear it,
Speaker 1: but adults can't because as we get older, our hearing
Speaker 1: gets worse and worse. So like sometimes like a young
Speaker 1: person will be able to hear the sound better than
Speaker 1: an older person. Uh but yeah, so you know, it
Speaker 1: is of part of the reason that they can produce
Speaker 1: this lot very loud and low frequency. Is that prehistoric
Speaker 1: thinging on your their head that you describe, It's called
Speaker 1: a cask. It is a hard, keratinist, thin like protrusion
Speaker 1: on the top of their heads that is hollow with
Speaker 1: some sort of fibrous tissue on the inside that helps
Speaker 1: amplify these terrifying calls. It's yeah, it is definitely one
Speaker 1: of those things. I mean, birds technically are dinosaurs. We
Speaker 1: don't really think of them as dinosaurs. Um, but when
Speaker 1: you think about like a t rex or a velociraptor
Speaker 1: and you hear a cassaware, you're like, oh yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a dinosaur. Yeah, the relationship is much much clearer.
Speaker 1: You think about like, well, would it really be too
Speaker 1: scary to live in dinosaur times and you come face
Speaker 1: to face with the cassowary and it's like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it'd be bad. It's suck pretty hard. I encourage anyone
Speaker 1: too that knows that they have a zoo nearby with
Speaker 1: the castuary at it is to go see that zoo
Speaker 1: in that cast a wary, because they look like they
Speaker 1: want to murder everybody there. There never at any point
Speaker 1: or they like that's fine, I'm just in this like
Speaker 1: all the other animals come to some sort of resignment
Speaker 1: where they just sort of sit there and they there
Speaker 1: in this cage, not the cast wary. The castwary will
Speaker 1: pace and look at you like it wants to kill you,
Speaker 1: because it does. Heaven forbid, I haven't forbid. You have
Speaker 1: other animals that like are wild? Are the wild at
Speaker 1: the zoo? Like somebody squirrels or peacock's getting these individual cages,
Speaker 1: you will be in luck because the cast wary will
Speaker 1: chase that and try and kill it. It's incredible. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh. They are I think the most murderous uh
Speaker 1: animal in terms of I don't even know if they
Speaker 1: have the highest kill rate. I don't think so. That's
Speaker 1: probably like the small black footed cat or something. But
Speaker 1: they certainly have the intent I think the most. The
Speaker 1: most blood lust of any animal I get just radiating
Speaker 1: off of a cassowary. I've changed my mind. No longer
Speaker 1: the beaver fan. I want a cast a wary. Between
Speaker 1: getting shipped by a cassowary foot and getting my femoral
Speaker 1: artery severed by a beaver tooth, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know what's what would be worse, but so uh,
Speaker 1: we have another mystery sound for you guys to try
Speaker 1: to guess for next week. Here is a hint for
Speaker 1: this one. They may sound like a ringwraith, but these
Speaker 1: passionate fellows have something other than Frodo on the mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, so that's that's nice. That's cozy, relaxing
Speaker 1: nature sound. I love to relax with some nature sounds
Speaker 1: like right, before going to bed. And just so, so
Speaker 1: when you got any guesses for who's talking, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: gotta guess. I'll bleep you out if you get it right,
Speaker 1: So don't hold back. Zebra, it might be a will
Speaker 1: to beat, but I think it's a zebra. It is
Speaker 1: not a zebra. I guess I probably shouldn't have said that,
Speaker 1: but I guess that's another hint it's not a zebra.
Speaker 1: So there you go, but very good guess. Uh uh.
Speaker 1: And of course I will reveal the answer to the
Speaker 1: guests used talking contest next Wednesday on the new episode
Speaker 1: of Creature feature Sore. And thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining me today to talk all about beavers. I feel
Speaker 1: like we could talk for hours about beavers. Just there's
Speaker 1: just so much to say. There's so much to say
Speaker 1: about the noble beaver. But so, where can people find
Speaker 1: you to give you all their beaver takes? You can
Speaker 1: find me. Uh well, First of all, you can listen
Speaker 1: to my podcast with Daniel O'Brien. Um. We talked about
Speaker 1: animals very rarely, so if you're having an animal overdose,
Speaker 1: you can come visit sounds dumb and boring, you can
Speaker 1: visit uh quick question with Soren and Daniel and you
Speaker 1: can also find me on Twitter at sore and Underscore Ltd.
Speaker 1: If you want to send in your guesses, like I
Speaker 1: said earlier, you can write an at Creature feature Pot
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com, Creature feature Pot on Instagram, Creature
Speaker 1: feet pot on Twitter. That's eighteen. That's something very different.
Speaker 1: And if you are in join the show and you
Speaker 1: want to leave a rating or review, I do so
Speaker 1: appreciate it. I read all the reviews and they warmed
Speaker 1: my heart. Uh and yeah, thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: And thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome
Speaker 1: song x Alumina. Freat show features a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey,
Speaker 1: guess what where have you listened to your favorite shows?
Speaker 1: I don't judge, it could be anywhere. I um, that's
Speaker 1: not my place to tell you where to listen to
Speaker 1: your podcast. See you next Wednesday.