Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to.
Speaker 2: Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time to
Speaker 3: go into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 3: This one today is from May eighteenth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: and it's part two of our series on the Beaver,
Speaker 3: a thrilling, strange, wonderful animal far more amazing and bizarre
Speaker 3: than you might have thought. Can your heart stand the
Speaker 3: shocking facts?
Speaker 1: All right, let's dive right in.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we are back
Speaker 3: with part two of our series on the Beaver.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In the last episode, we hopefully gave you a newfound,
Speaker 1: improved and reinvigorated appreciation for the common beaver, the world's
Speaker 1: second largest living rodent and a tireless ecosystem engineer.
Speaker 3: That's right. Last time we focused mainly on the real
Speaker 3: life biology, behavior, and ecological role of the beaver, So
Speaker 3: if you haven't listened to part one, you should probably
Speaker 3: go back and check that one out first. I think
Speaker 3: that will give you a richer understanding of the stuff
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about today. But for a
Speaker 3: very brief recap, Yeah, beavers are large. They're the second
Speaker 3: largest extant rodent after the capybara. Beavers have iron in
Speaker 3: their teeth, perfect for chewing through wood to cut down
Speaker 3: trees and for gnawing off pieces of vegetation. Beavers of
Speaker 3: course eat vegetation their herbivores, and their diet includes foliage
Speaker 3: but also the bark and the outer layers of soft
Speaker 3: wood from tree branches and trunks. Beavers of course build
Speaker 3: amazing structures. They dam waterways to change the characteristics of
Speaker 3: flowing waterways to sort of like create ponds, redirect water flow,
Speaker 3: and so forth to deepen water channels. And they also
Speaker 3: build these essentially impenetrable lodges with underwater entrances and exits
Speaker 3: for their own housing and protection. And these constructions also
Speaker 3: allow underwater storage of caches of vegetation to provide food
Speaker 3: throughout the winter. And then finally, we discussed several studies
Speaker 3: of what might or might not be considered tool use
Speaker 3: in beavers. This was a lot of fun, including we
Speaker 3: had a long digression on the so called stick displays
Speaker 3: where some beavers in particular populations is not common to
Speaker 3: all beavers of either of the extant species, but this
Speaker 3: was documented among some Eurasian beavers in Norway. They would
Speaker 3: pick up a stick and they would shake it, shake
Speaker 3: it up and down while holding it in the mouth
Speaker 3: and forepaws. The researchers believed this was to demonstrate strength
Speaker 3: in order to drive away potential antagonists, maybe other beavers
Speaker 3: encroaching onto their territory. And of course we ended up
Speaker 3: highlighting the most impressed of the stick shaking beaver's a beautiful,
Speaker 3: powerful warrior of the wasteland named Beergit.
Speaker 1: Yes her name, I had to look this up. Her
Speaker 1: name and apparently means power, strength, vigor, and virtue. I
Speaker 1: mean the other beaver in that study that's not as
Speaker 1: as impressive the second place shake. The second place was Froda.
Speaker 1: Frodo's name means clever, learned, and wise. And this is also,
Speaker 1: like I said, this is related to Frodo, Like Frodo
Speaker 1: is like a variation of this name that Tolkien used
Speaker 1: in the Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. Yeah. However, while the real life biology
Speaker 3: of the beaver is truly fascinating. What actually first got
Speaker 3: us interested in this topic was something you came across,
Speaker 3: rob which was the pattern of deeply off the mark
Speaker 3: illustrations of beaver's in medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, just so
Speaker 3: far off the mark in depicting this animal. You wonder
Speaker 3: how it happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got into a little bit and discussed how
Speaker 1: we have to take into account that when we do
Speaker 1: have one variety of beavers in North America and the
Speaker 1: other variety in Eurasia, you know, not everyone would have
Speaker 1: had direct exposure to it. You have that game of
Speaker 1: telephone taking place about these species depending on illustrations and
Speaker 1: second and third hand accounts. Then there's the added fact
Speaker 1: that beavers are largely nocturnal. They live out often in
Speaker 1: very remote circumstances, so the average even observer may not
Speaker 1: get to observe them that closely. And then, as we'll
Speaker 1: discuss in this episode, even more, there are additional elements
Speaker 1: of their physiology that may mystify someone who is observing
Speaker 1: them in the wild or trying to make sense of
Speaker 1: their bodies as the carcass is processed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, another thing, though, is that the Eurasian beaver was
Speaker 3: once hunted near to extinction. Its populations have bounced back
Speaker 3: significantly since then, since the twentieth century, but it came
Speaker 3: kind of close for the Eurasian, like the hunter has
Speaker 3: really got over on them for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah. North American beavers were also in bad shape, and
Speaker 1: two of the main drivers for this. One of them
Speaker 1: is beaver hats in beaver fur. I'm to understand that
Speaker 1: the beaver hat going out of style helped out a lot,
Speaker 1: but there's another major beaver product, beaver derived product we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss in this episode that also threatened these species.
Speaker 1: So yeah, these are going to be important, especially when
Speaker 1: we talk about a particular detail of various bestiaries and
Speaker 1: illuminated manuscripts that show beavers or alleged beavers. Some of
Speaker 1: these are very strange beaver. They look more like a
Speaker 1: deer or a dog, or a lion or you name it.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, the main perplexing detail is that
Speaker 1: they are depicted chewing off their own testicles whilst being
Speaker 1: pursued by a human hunter.
Speaker 3: I thought we should mention and describe a few of
Speaker 3: these actual illustrations and the manuscripts they come from. So
Speaker 3: I came across a post about this on the British
Speaker 3: Library's Medieval Manuscript's blog. I love the British Library's blogs,
Speaker 3: by the way, they often are wonderful resource. But this
Speaker 3: post is from November seventh, twenty twelve. It's called Beaver's
Speaker 3: on the Run by Nicole Eddie, and it includes a
Speaker 3: number of illustrations, a couple that we alluded to at
Speaker 3: the beginning of part one of this series, and several
Speaker 3: that I think we haven't talked about yet, but none
Speaker 3: of which have we featured in detail. So the author
Speaker 3: of this blog post says you can usually recognize a
Speaker 3: beaver in a medieval bestiary, which seemed at first like
Speaker 3: a very odd statement, because most of these drawings look
Speaker 3: absolutely nothing like the real animal, not even a little,
Speaker 3: But she goes on to explain you can recognize them
Speaker 3: because they are always depicted the same way in a
Speaker 3: characteristic or stereotyped scene quote on the run, pursued by
Speaker 3: a hunter who is frequently blowing a horn and accompanied
Speaker 3: by hunting dogs. And just as you said, Rob, we
Speaker 3: can add to that image the fact that they are
Speaker 3: often depicted either discarding or in the middle of biting
Speaker 3: off their own testicles while in hot pursuit several examples.
Speaker 3: Let's start with one we briefly alluded to in Part one.
Speaker 3: So this is a miniature from a Latin bestiary originating
Speaker 3: in England from the second or third quarter of the
Speaker 3: thirteenth century. The manuscript is known as Sloane thirty five
Speaker 3: forty four. So what we see in a miniature with
Speaker 3: the Latin text all around is a sort of rectangle
Speaker 3: of red background decorated with these three leaf clover shapes.
Speaker 3: And then we have what appears to be some kind
Speaker 3: of big cat, maybe a mountain lion. Compared to the
Speaker 3: human and the dog in this drawing, it is about
Speaker 3: the size of a horse. Also, it has a horse's tail.
Speaker 3: Did you notice that has like a hairtail?
Speaker 1: This does not even look like a fish tail. As
Speaker 1: we mentioned before some depictions of beavers, they often have
Speaker 1: almost like a mermaid quality to them.
Speaker 3: Of course, beavers do have interesting unusual tails. They have
Speaker 3: the flat tail, which aids them in swimming, but they
Speaker 3: also use for a type of signaling known as water slapping,
Speaker 3: where they slap the surface of the water to make
Speaker 3: loud sounds, and this is use for social reasons to
Speaker 3: signal to the other beavers around them that may be
Speaker 3: a predator or a rival beaver from outside the family
Speaker 3: group is approaching their territory.
Speaker 1: I will say this about this particular quote unquote beaver.
Speaker 1: The posture here with feet back, rear feet on the ground,
Speaker 1: front feet elevated, and this tail as horsey as it looks,
Speaker 1: it is kind of going down and out, which is
Speaker 1: at least vaguely reminiscent of the way that beavers will
Speaker 1: often walk if they're carrying something, you know, with that
Speaker 1: tail helping them to balance and their front legs are
Speaker 1: up helping to carry something.
Speaker 3: That would be fortunate if that was the artist's intention.
Speaker 3: But I think what's being shown here is a horsehair
Speaker 3: styled tail like flapping in the wind as the beaver runs.
Speaker 1: If it were not for the vulgar air as we'll
Speaker 1: discuss regarding the eating of the testicles or the biting
Speaker 1: of the testicles here, this is otherwise, I think a
Speaker 1: beautiful image. I like the use of the like the red,
Speaker 1: like the deep crimson behind it.
Speaker 3: Oh but wait, we didn't get to the animal's head yet.
Speaker 3: So it's got horse sized body, horse looking tail, but
Speaker 3: with feline paws and an approximately leonine head like a
Speaker 3: mountain lion's head, but also with a snake neck. It's
Speaker 3: kind of a dragon like. The neck is curving around
Speaker 3: and it appears to be covered in maybe feathers or scales,
Speaker 3: and the neck is curving all the way around for
Speaker 3: the head to reach back and yes, bite its own testicles.
Speaker 3: While the beast is in mid spring, it's leaping through
Speaker 3: the air and biting while it's aloft, it's its front
Speaker 3: paws are off the ground.
Speaker 1: It is range ima, chef. You had no background on this,
Speaker 1: you would just think this is a fantastic creature.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Meanwhile, the hunting dog is after it, of course,
Speaker 3: sort of barking, pulling. Maybe is that a leashure? I
Speaker 3: can't quite tell, But there's a hunter also a dude
Speaker 3: standing there looking kind of like a hungover George Washington,
Speaker 3: and he is blowing an upturned hunter's horn.
Speaker 1: Yeah. All the eyes in this image look kind of bloodshot,
Speaker 1: which adds an interesting effect to it.
Speaker 3: Okay, next image for us to discuss. This is from
Speaker 3: a work known as the Rochester Bestiary from England around
Speaker 3: the year twelve thirty, in a manuscript called Royal twelve f.
Speaker 3: This one is a lot more colorful. Here, the hunt
Speaker 3: takes place on a green hill with a golden sky
Speaker 3: in the background and trees that look like asparagus. The
Speaker 3: hunter has blonde surfer hair and wears a blue tunic.
Speaker 3: He really does. It's kind of surfery, isn't it. It's
Speaker 3: kind of Owen Wilson hair. Yeah, and he's blowing his horn.
Speaker 3: He's carrying either a sword or a club of some
Speaker 3: kind in the other hand from the horn. The dogs
Speaker 3: are howling in pursuit. The beaver is once again sort
Speaker 3: of a serpentine lion, with the long scaly neck twisting
Speaker 3: all the way back around biting off the genitalia, but
Speaker 3: with a different face this time. The beaver's face here
Speaker 3: is kind of sad and porky, like a like a
Speaker 3: lion pig muttering geez not again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is another strange one where the beaver looks
Speaker 1: more like a camel or perhaps you know, some variation
Speaker 1: of prehistoric mammal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now I want to get into some ones that
Speaker 3: have more differences. The next one has actually no testicle biting.
Speaker 3: This is from an herbal medicine manual called Tractatus de
Speaker 3: Herbis from Salerno, which is in Italy, produced between twelve
Speaker 3: eighty and thirteen ten. The manuscript is called Egerton seven
Speaker 3: forty seven. Here the hunter is a wizard. That interesting.
Speaker 3: He's wearing a pointy wizard hat, and he has huge hands,
Speaker 3: one of which which is like up in front of
Speaker 3: his face, almost as if he's marveling at the hand,
Speaker 3: like how did my hand get this way? What has
Speaker 3: become of me?
Speaker 1: Yeah? This image has a kind of childlike wonder to it,
Speaker 1: especially when we're describing the beaver.
Speaker 3: That's right, right, So, yeah, the wizard hunter has gigantic
Speaker 3: hands bigger than his head. He's got his horns slung
Speaker 3: around his shoulder. He's about to heave a spear. Interesting,
Speaker 3: I guess there was spear hunting of beavers maybe, But
Speaker 3: he's got a spear like cocked back ready to throw it.
Speaker 3: And then the hunter, the dogs, and the beaver are
Speaker 3: all standing in what looks like a field of spinach plants.
Speaker 3: Like there are these green forking plants interspursed all around.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's supposed to be the kind
Speaker 3: of vegetation growing in the landscape that has been altered
Speaker 3: by the proximity of a beaver dam. And then one
Speaker 3: of the dogs is gigantic and the other is not
Speaker 3: that gigantic. And then the beaver is a horse, and
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean that it's not like a horse.
Speaker 3: The beaver is a horse. It's just horse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a kind of shaggy looking horse with I believe
Speaker 1: visible testicles.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, not just visible. They're sort of in bold
Speaker 3: compared to the rest of the illustration. Do you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. Yeah, Yeah, they're like filled in a
Speaker 3: darker color than anything else. So the beaver horse is
Speaker 3: not biting them off, but they're just like they're very
Speaker 3: prominent and they're almost perfectly centered in the illustration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe the dogs got to him before he could,
Speaker 1: in this narrative get rid of them.
Speaker 3: Okay, This next one I thought was really funny. This
Speaker 3: is from another English best year a twelfth century, in
Speaker 3: a manuscript called Stowe ten sixty seven. It's not fully colored,
Speaker 3: in just a line drawing. The hunter looks like he's
Speaker 3: dancing kind of. He looks, you know, jolly, like he's moving,
Speaker 3: he's feeling the rhythm, and he's blowing his horn and
Speaker 3: pointing a single finger at the beaver with his one hand.
Speaker 3: You see the pointing hand. I don't know why. That
Speaker 3: was really funny to me. But the beaver, meanwhile, is
Speaker 3: a dog. It's just fully a dog, but with one
Speaker 3: major variation with weird bulbous eye sockets bulging out of
Speaker 3: his head over the snout. And we were trying to
Speaker 3: figure out which Star Wars alien this dog looked like.
Speaker 3: I eventually realized I was sort of thinking, it looks
Speaker 3: like the dog version of the Zando Zan assassin from
Speaker 3: the Last Starfighter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I can see that, and I took a
Speaker 1: I was like, something was about this was ringing Star
Speaker 1: Wars for me as well. So I had the best
Speaker 1: ares some of a couple of Star Wars best areas
Speaker 1: out anyway for the monster fact I'm working on for
Speaker 1: this week. So I was like, what is it reminding
Speaker 1: me of? And I think it's reminded me of of
Speaker 1: Issue tib. This is a strange kind of avian or
Speaker 1: beaked looking creature that's in the background at Jaba's palace,
Speaker 1: but has also subsequently been used in like comics and
Speaker 1: on the Clone Wars and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: This was one of the those where you showed me
Speaker 3: an image and I was like, oh, I have seen
Speaker 3: this before, but I can't remember from where. It's really
Speaker 3: kind of in the background, but yeah, Isshu tub is
Speaker 3: like in Return of the Jedi, the I found a
Speaker 3: shot of him like back sort of behind Luke's head
Speaker 3: while Luke is pointing a blaster at Jaba.
Speaker 1: He's not, in my opinion, one of the more interesting
Speaker 1: Jaba's Palace aliens. Like I didn't have him as a figure,
Speaker 1: which maybe that's because I didn't find him interesting, or
Speaker 1: maybe I don't find him interesting because I don't have
Speaker 1: the connection with the toy.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, do you get back to the beaver in
Speaker 3: this drawing, which again is just a dog. It's interesting
Speaker 3: because he's not biting his testicles here, they're floating in
Speaker 3: the air behind him, as if the alien dog beaver
Speaker 3: has sort of projectile defecated them in the hunter's direction.
Speaker 3: You see, they're like a floating four leaf clover in
Speaker 3: the air.
Speaker 1: The four leafed aspect of the testicle is interesting, and
Speaker 1: I think that will be of note when we get
Speaker 1: into the actual anatomy of the lower regions of the beaver.
Speaker 3: Now, the examples don't stop there. We could go on
Speaker 3: naming many more, but I think you get the idea.
Speaker 3: There was one thing I just wanted to mention further
Speaker 3: because it's kind of interesting variation, and that's an illustration
Speaker 3: of a beaver hunt from the Queen Mary Salter, an
Speaker 3: early fourteenth century manuscript called Royal two B. And in
Speaker 3: this one, the beaver again looks nothing like a beaver,
Speaker 3: but in a different way. This time it's just a fox.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, would you say it looks like a gray fox?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks like a fox.
Speaker 3: The hunter approaches with an axe propped up on his shoulder,
Speaker 3: and the beaver lies on his back, exposing his belly. Interesting.
Speaker 3: Apparently this was another common motif in these medieval illustrations
Speaker 3: of beavers, in addition to beaver's biting off their own testicles. Allegedly,
Speaker 3: this would happen they would lie on their back and
Speaker 3: expose their belly after they had previously bitten them off,
Speaker 3: or after they had been harvested by a previous hunter
Speaker 3: and the beaver had survived. So the beaver here is
Speaker 3: revealing I haven't got what you're looking for. And then
Speaker 3: the hunter in this image, the hunter does look kind
Speaker 3: of annoyed. Doesn't he He's like, ah, what for real?
Speaker 1: He does these guys hand up like ah, man chase
Speaker 1: this critter down in the woods and it doesn't have
Speaker 1: the goods anymore.
Speaker 3: But in the medieval lore of beaver hunts, the idea
Speaker 3: was that the beaver is clever. It knows what the
Speaker 3: hunter is looking for, and the beaver is thinking, oh,
Speaker 3: if I can show off that I don't have what
Speaker 3: the hunter needs, it won't kill me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, this is going to be interesting to reflect
Speaker 1: on it in a bit. When we talk about beaver aggression,
Speaker 1: I can only imagine that this idea of the cornered
Speaker 1: beaver being a docile creature, yes, is an extreme exaggeration
Speaker 1: and inaccuracy.
Speaker 3: So this imagery is obviously a lot of fun. But
Speaker 3: rob would you, I think it's safe to say, I
Speaker 3: hope you'll agree that the chomping, off, dropping, shooting, projectile,
Speaker 3: pooping of testicles, none of this reflects any biological reality.
Speaker 3: This is not something beavers actually do, or ever actually did.
Speaker 1: Correct. Yeah, this is, as we'll discuss in a bit.
Speaker 1: It's referred to as the vulgar error. At times, the
Speaker 1: error is based on some definite biological realities. Concerning the beaver.
Speaker 1: But they did not do this. Yeah, this is not
Speaker 1: something they did. This is not something I think any
Speaker 1: animal does. So before we get into exactly why, though,
Speaker 1: we have to talk about what they were after with
Speaker 1: all of this. They were after castorium.
Speaker 3: The hunters were Yes, the hunters were.
Speaker 1: After castorium, a product derived from beavers. I believe we
Speaker 1: mentioned this briefly in the last episode. But the basic
Speaker 1: reality here is beavers keep their hide waterproof via oily
Speaker 1: secretions from their cast or glands. Each beaver, male or
Speaker 1: female has a pair of these along with a pair
Speaker 1: of glands. So so far castor glands anal glands, one
Speaker 1: pair of each. This alone makes me think back to
Speaker 1: that sort of four clothed testicle that has dropped in
Speaker 1: one of those eliminated manuscript details we were discussing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the four sac that's being chucked at the hunter.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now I found a great article of great short
Speaker 1: but detailed article with illustrations about the glands of the beaver.
Speaker 1: This is from nineteen seventy eight by Gerald E. Svenson,
Speaker 1: and it's titled castor and anal Glands of the Beaver
Speaker 1: and was published in the Journal of Mammalogy, and it's
Speaker 1: on jay Store. It's free to access. If you really
Speaker 1: want to go in depth on this and see the
Speaker 1: very helpful illustrations, I definitely recommend it. But the author
Speaker 1: here says, quote, these glands liberate odoriferous products that may
Speaker 1: be used in the construction of scent mounts and in
Speaker 1: scent communication.
Speaker 3: This will sort of connect to what we talked about
Speaker 3: in the previous episode about the territoriality observed in the
Speaker 3: Eurasian beavers, where a family group would build a lodge
Speaker 3: in a dam and it would sort of police the
Speaker 3: borders of its area to keep rivals out, and one
Speaker 3: of the things it would do in order to indicate
Speaker 3: the borders of its area is do scent marking. And
Speaker 3: often it was observed that along with the stick shaking behavior,
Speaker 3: when a beaver felt its territory might be being encroached on
Speaker 3: by another beaver from outside the group, it would engage
Speaker 3: in additional scent marking. It would start to mark either
Speaker 3: with anal glands or castorium.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So both anal and castor glands are in a cavity
Speaker 1: that the author here describes as being similar to a scrotum,
Speaker 1: and it quote testes lie anterior to the glands in
Speaker 1: the distal region of the nguin Old canal. The testes
Speaker 1: protrude into the gland cavity in sexually mature males that
Speaker 1: are separated from the glands by tissue of the terminal
Speaker 1: end of the Ingenol canal and the lining of the
Speaker 1: gland cavity. Okay, I realize that's a lot and joe
Speaker 1: for you. Anyway, I included an illustration from this paper
Speaker 1: that I think makes a little more sense of this.
Speaker 1: This is one of two illustrations that the author provides
Speaker 1: and a reminder. We're very much in the kloaca here.
Speaker 3: Right, So in the back of the beaver, sort of
Speaker 3: between the tail and the hind legs, we have the
Speaker 3: gland cavity and it contains these different organs, the anal
Speaker 3: gland and the castor gland.
Speaker 1: Yes, now, he points out that anal glands are posterior
Speaker 1: to the castor glands, and each gland opens independently via ducts.
Speaker 1: So the castor glands, however, don't open directly to the outside. Instead,
Speaker 1: they hook up to the urethra and open into the
Speaker 1: beaver's cloaca. However, imagine this will be key to what
Speaker 1: we're discussing here. Quote. Contraction of the muscle sheath also
Speaker 1: forces the papillary end of the anal gland to protrude
Speaker 1: from the kloeca. I do not think the same is
Speaker 1: true of the castor glands proper, but again I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of some of that basically getting back to this idea
Speaker 1: of glands something like testicles, or they could be seen
Speaker 1: as testicles emerging from the cloaca of the beaver, and
Speaker 1: then it's not there again, you know. Common feature of
Speaker 1: these illustrations interesting though, these if I'm understanding everything correctly,
Speaker 1: these would be the anal glands, not the castor glands.
Speaker 3: But the illustrator doesn't understand. It's either one they think
Speaker 3: they're seeing gonads and then like they're there again, and
Speaker 3: then then they're gone.
Speaker 1: Right now. As for the castorium itself, I've seen it
Speaker 1: described as butter like. Svenson describes it as yellowish, but
Speaker 1: then it turns brown when exposed to air and sunlight.
Speaker 1: That urine washes the cast st or out in a
Speaker 1: quote unquote composite mixture that has a pungent odor. He writes,
Speaker 1: the secretions from both pairs of glands quote can be
Speaker 1: involved in scent mound construction, but that the method of
Speaker 1: producing these secretions differs based on what we've just discussed.
Speaker 1: So anal gland secretions are rubbed on something, they're expressed,
Speaker 1: and then the beaver you know, gets to rub it
Speaker 1: on the rock or the tree trunk, whatever, While castorium
Speaker 1: is essentially urinated out, so beavers use castorum to mark
Speaker 1: territory and to waterproof their fur. But since ancient times
Speaker 1: humans have found other uses for the substance. To harvest it,
Speaker 1: it can be milked from a live animal apparently, I've
Speaker 1: read that they frequently expel it when handled, though again
Speaker 1: huge caveat here. Don't go trying to handle beavers. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure under what circumstances it is even and recommended
Speaker 1: to do this, but leave it to the professionals. Professional
Speaker 1: beaver handlers, if they exist, are the ones that need
Speaker 1: to be doing this. Most of what we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: especially with these illustrations and historical collection of castorium, though,
Speaker 1: involves of course killing the beaver, and this requires the
Speaker 1: glands to be removed post mortem and then smoked for
Speaker 1: preservation Joe, I've included a photo. You can find lots
Speaker 1: of photos of castorium that has been dried or smoked,
Speaker 1: and it essentially looks like some sort like you might
Speaker 1: imagine some sort of like like dried up gland, some
Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, mummified scrotum sort of idea here.
Speaker 3: You ever like a drop of fingerling potato while you're
Speaker 3: preparing food and it rolls under the cabinet and you
Speaker 3: don't realize it's there, and then you find it a
Speaker 3: few months later when you're cleaning, and it's all shriveled
Speaker 3: up into Yes, like a mummy of a potato. That's
Speaker 3: what it looks like.
Speaker 1: Yes, Now getting into this idea of the alleged testicle drop,
Speaker 1: this has been around for quite a while, and you
Speaker 1: find mention of it in the works of Plenty the
Speaker 1: Elder from the Natural History, where of course we're always
Speaker 1: turning to Plenty to see what he had to say.
Speaker 1: And this is what he had to say in the
Speaker 1: Natural History. This is the Bostic translation quote. The beavers
Speaker 1: of Yuxin, when they are closely pressed by danger, themselves
Speaker 1: cut off the same part as they know that it
Speaker 1: is for this they are pursued. This substance is called
Speaker 1: castorian by the physicians. In addition to this, the bite
Speaker 1: of this animal is terrible. With its teeth, it can
Speaker 1: cut down trees on the banks of rivers just as
Speaker 1: though with a knife. If they seize a man by
Speaker 1: any part of his body, they will never loose their
Speaker 1: hold until his bones are broken and crackle under their teeth.
Speaker 1: The tail is like that of a fish. In other
Speaker 1: parts of the body, they resemble the otter. They are
Speaker 1: both of them aquatic animals, and both have hair softer
Speaker 1: than down.
Speaker 3: I love the description of the ferociousness here is sort
Speaker 3: of describing like the snapping turtle reputation. You know, it
Speaker 3: won't let go into lightning strikes. If you make a
Speaker 3: beaver mad, it's gonna bite until your bones are broken,
Speaker 3: and basically it's crunching on them like cereal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is an idea that I think for
Speaker 1: many of us might seem comical because we don't think
Speaker 1: of the beaver as being aggressive. And I you know,
Speaker 1: as we discussed in the last episode, beavers, certainly when
Speaker 1: they're dealing with other beavers, they have an number of
Speaker 1: safeguards in place to prevent like actual combat from occurring
Speaker 1: unless necessary. So you might be wondering, well, is there
Speaker 1: anything too, Is this just Plenty getting it wrong, or
Speaker 1: are beaver's truly this ferocious? Well, beaver attacks on humans
Speaker 1: are rare, but they are not unknown. Rabis can of
Speaker 1: course play a role, but it's not always a factor
Speaker 1: in these rare instances. We might laugh at Plenty's description,
Speaker 1: but beavers are of course wild animals. They should be respected,
Speaker 1: and they can be put into situations where they then
Speaker 1: violently defend themselves. There has been at least one account
Speaker 1: of a fatal attack on a human in the last century,
Speaker 1: and I believe in that case it was a situation
Speaker 1: where they were bit by the beaver and then bled
Speaker 1: to death. Now, there is a wonderful CBC Radio interview
Speaker 1: out there if you haven't heard it, from the early
Speaker 1: nineties and then I'm not sure the date is known,
Speaker 1: but it was rebroadcasting I think ninety seven, and that's
Speaker 1: the version that is archived with CBC Radio. It's apparently
Speaker 1: one of the most requested recordings from the CBC Radio archive.
Speaker 1: If you look for it, you can find it out there.
Speaker 1: It is action packed, it is a little bit funny,
Speaker 1: but it's also not for the weak of heart.
Speaker 3: This interview is riveting. A man describes I think he's
Speaker 3: trying to drive across a bridge in his truck when
Speaker 3: during a heavy downpour, or maybe right after one, and
Speaker 3: the bridge is sort of flooded. There's some water standing
Speaker 3: between the concrete barriers on the sides of the bridge,
Speaker 3: and it appears that a beaver has taken up residence
Speaker 3: on the bridge. It's sort of swimming back and forth
Speaker 3: in the water. The man gets out of his truck
Speaker 3: because he is afraid he has accidentally hit the beaver
Speaker 3: with his truck, and when he gets out, the beaver
Speaker 3: angrily latches onto his leg and proceeds to attack him
Speaker 3: multiple times. He sustains. It seems not life threatening necessarily,
Speaker 3: but pretty serious sounding injuries, Like the beaver bites and
Speaker 3: it bites hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like bites him like eleven times, and he's just
Speaker 1: fighting it off, trying to get back in his truck
Speaker 1: and drive off. I think he has to hit it
Speaker 1: with a propane tank at some point. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a violent account, though I have to stress that the
Speaker 1: the man telling the tale, he has a lot of
Speaker 1: sympathy for the beaver, and at the end of it,
Speaker 1: he's like, you know, it's my fault. I'm the one
Speaker 1: who I thought I hit it, and I should never
Speaker 1: have gotten out of the car. It was just it
Speaker 1: was just out of the truck. It was just defending itself.
Speaker 1: But it really drives home that, yes, if the beaver
Speaker 1: is cornered, the beaver can be ferocious. Those teeth can
Speaker 1: dig into you, and you can easily see how in
Speaker 1: another situation, if the beaver had got him in just
Speaker 1: a few different places, he could have easily bled to
Speaker 1: death before he was able to drive himself to the hospital.
Speaker 1: I also like how the individual in this story he's
Speaker 1: quick to add it's like, I've been bit by just
Speaker 1: about every animal out there, but I'd never been bit
Speaker 1: or i'd been attacked by it. Just about every animal
Speaker 1: out there been attacked by a wolverine one imagines a moose,
Speaker 1: but never a beaver.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But I am, like you said, impressed by he
Speaker 3: holds no malice for the beaver even after the attack.
Speaker 3: I think he just keeps saying he was on defense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So definitely sweep that out of you if you're interested.
Speaker 1: But back to the plenty document here, One of the
Speaker 1: notes on this text points out that Plenty derived this
Speaker 1: description from the physician Sextius, and the text goes hun
Speaker 1: to remark on the vulgar error here and mentions the
Speaker 1: work of the French naturalist Cuvier. Quote. Cuvier remarks that
Speaker 1: when the gland becomes distended with this secretion, the animal
Speaker 1: may probably get rid of it by rubbing the part
Speaker 1: against a stone or tree, and in this way leave
Speaker 1: the cast door for the hunters, thus giving rise to
Speaker 1: the vulgar error. Now this is interesting because going back
Speaker 1: to what we just discussed, it discussed disgusted. Sorry, it's
Speaker 1: easy to get the too confused here. What we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, what they're rubbing would be the anal gland secretions,
Speaker 1: not the cast door. But still, you can imagine this
Speaker 1: situation where you'd have something distended from the lower end
Speaker 1: of the beaver, something and that may look from a
Speaker 1: pair of glands that may look like testicles. Here's this
Speaker 1: beaver going up or rubbing itself against a stone or
Speaker 1: a piece of a tree branch or something, and then
Speaker 1: oh lo and behold, whatever was protruding is gone. This
Speaker 1: could be the thing that quote gives rise to the
Speaker 1: vulgar era.
Speaker 3: Yep, that does make sense, and it connects again to
Speaker 3: the idea of the scent markings being territorial boundaries in nature,
Speaker 3: you know, trying to ward off encroachments by other beavers
Speaker 3: often so it makes a lot of sense that, say,
Speaker 3: if a hunter is coming into a beaver's family group territory,
Speaker 3: the hunter might see it marking.
Speaker 1: Now Plenty also mentions the beaver again in the natural
Speaker 1: history when discussing the sea cow, which he says has
Speaker 1: a similar level of intelligence and a similar alleged defense capability.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: And this is talking about the sea cow. It vomits
Speaker 1: forth its gall which is useful for many purposes in medicine.
Speaker 1: Also the rennet, which serves as a remedy in epilepsy,
Speaker 1: for it is well aware that it is hunted. For
Speaker 1: these substances, Theophrastus informs us that lizards also cast their
Speaker 1: skins like the serpent, and instantly devour them, thus depriving
Speaker 1: us of a powerful remedy for epilepsy. He says two
Speaker 1: that the bite of the lizard is fatal in Greece
Speaker 1: but harmless in Italy. Okay, Now there is some merit
Speaker 1: to what plenty is saying here generally because certain creatures
Speaker 1: are thought to leave behind parts of their body or
Speaker 1: vomit something as a distract for predators. We also know
Speaker 1: very well that not just humans but animal predators sometimes
Speaker 1: target specific organs of their prey. But what he's reporting
Speaker 1: about the beaver here specifically is not true. But I
Speaker 1: also find this interesting a tangent the idea that the
Speaker 1: lizard eats its skin after it sheds it, despite us
Speaker 1: to be like, Nope, you're not getting in your hands
Speaker 1: on my sweet skin, when I mean, in reality, we
Speaker 1: know that many lizards, including my son's gecko, consumes its
Speaker 1: own sheddings because you're not gonna waste that good stuff.
Speaker 3: Of course not. Yeah, nature is full of disgusting efficiencies.
Speaker 3: But to add a little bit to what you said
Speaker 3: a minute ago, it is absolutely true that, yeah, there
Speaker 3: are many animals that will self amputate when threatened to
Speaker 3: buy a predator or under various stressful situations. This is
Speaker 3: a strategy known as autotomy. A a u t o
Speaker 3: t o m y comes from the Greek for self
Speaker 3: cutting or self severing. And yeah, this is you can
Speaker 3: often see it like in lizards, where yes, if a predator, say,
Speaker 3: grabs hold of their tail. The lizard will just release
Speaker 3: the tail from their body the predator can have it,
Speaker 3: which has a double effect that's helpful for the lizard's survival.
Speaker 3: For one thing, if it is grabbed by the tail
Speaker 3: and then releases the tail, it has now escaped the
Speaker 3: grasp of the predator. But the other thing is but
Speaker 3: give being the predator a sort of consolation prize. It's
Speaker 3: almost like compromising with them. It's like, well, you can
Speaker 3: have this much, but you can't have my whole life.
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting that I think, I mean, all
Speaker 1: the examples of this that come to mind are essentially
Speaker 1: ejections releases. They do not involve like active severing of
Speaker 1: a creature's own body with its teeth or its claws
Speaker 1: or that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's a good question. All of the ones
Speaker 3: I can think of, having read of read about before, yeah,
Speaker 3: just seem to be reject severings, often of like a
Speaker 3: tail or a leg or something, or a claw. But
Speaker 3: that is a good question. There are there cases where
Speaker 3: the animal has to work on its own autonomy, where
Speaker 3: it essentially must do the severing itself with its teeth,
Speaker 3: or claws or other something something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if the beaver were to sever its own testicles,
Speaker 1: it would be really an alarm behavioral development. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine a situation where this where a creature would develop,
Speaker 1: like evolved to have this as an as an actual
Speaker 1: feature of like dropping their testicles, like ejecting them, because
Speaker 1: you know, even examples like certain scorpions that eject part
Speaker 1: of their own tail and in doing so eject their
Speaker 1: anus and then can no longer poop, as we've discussed,
Speaker 1: and then just kind of swell up with poop for
Speaker 1: the rest of their lives. If memory serves, they can
Speaker 1: still reproduce. They're not giving up reproduction, that vital act
Speaker 1: of any species in order to protect itself.
Speaker 3: I did think of a possible counter example. I wish
Speaker 3: I had read up on this deeply before we started recording,
Speaker 3: but I believe there are cases where crabs will practice
Speaker 3: autonomy and that will involve the like cutting or pulling
Speaker 3: of the autonomized claw with the other claw, So that
Speaker 3: is like active like the alleged beaver testicle biting it.
Speaker 1: To crabs to do it that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe we'll have to come back to that. In
Speaker 3: listener mail or.
Speaker 2: Something all right.
Speaker 1: Now, coming back to custorium, the origins of human uses
Speaker 1: for this substance are of course lost to time. They
Speaker 1: emerge from somewhere in the vast period of time during
Speaker 1: which our ancestors determined how best to process and use
Speaker 1: an animal's body for resources that range from like the
Speaker 1: really practical like meat and materials, to things that are
Speaker 1: more cultural like decorations and adornments. And also that often
Speaker 1: mercy area of medicinal and magical properties in a given substance.
Speaker 1: But still we have some early sources to consider. Now,
Speaker 1: apparently the ancient archaeological evidence of caustorium usage by humans
Speaker 1: takes us back a good six thousand years. I was
Speaker 1: looking at a paper titled Ancient Throwing Dart reveals first
Speaker 1: archaeological evidence of Custorium, pushed in the Journal of Archaeological
Speaker 1: Science Reports. This was in June of twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: by Hellwig at All and basically this throwing dart in
Speaker 1: particular was found in the Yukon territory, and it featured
Speaker 1: a red orange residue that, upon analysis contained the various
Speaker 1: organic ingredients and materials that matched up with beaver castorium.
Speaker 1: The authors point out that the substance was seemingly used
Speaker 1: to toughen wood by ancient hunters, though baiting and medicinal
Speaker 1: uses among later First Nations people were also recorded. The
Speaker 1: Taltan people in particular were said to use it on
Speaker 1: the heated wood of their bows and kept some on
Speaker 1: their person in a small container of like wood or
Speaker 1: horn or bone. So it sounds like it was something
Speaker 1: that was probably used to like to maintain your weapons,
Speaker 1: to maintain your hunting implements.
Speaker 3: That's a kind of oily treatment for the wood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, which you know this to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: I guess kind of reminds one of how the beavers
Speaker 1: use it to help use that special claw comb of
Speaker 1: theirs to comb it into their fur, in addition to
Speaker 1: using it to mark their scent.
Speaker 3: But in the fur, it's I believe it's supposed to
Speaker 3: have some waterproofing purposes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Now, Sarah Lohman, in a twenty seventeen article
Speaker 1: for Mental Floss, points it's a nice overview that points
Speaker 1: to a number of different additional alleged uses for a castorium.
Speaker 1: For instance, I believe in Roman times it was thought
Speaker 1: that you could use like a smoke inhalation based version
Speaker 1: of it for as an abortive medicine. Twelfth century mystic
Speaker 1: Hildegarde von Bingen wrote that it could be powdered and
Speaker 1: put into a wine to reduce fever, and then in
Speaker 1: colonial America it was used for all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1: It was used as both the means of staving off
Speaker 1: sweep you know, sort of like your trucker speed, I guess,
Speaker 1: but it was also used to encourage sleep, you know,
Speaker 1: having a little insomnia. Well her own castorium. It was
Speaker 1: used as a kind of brain booster. You know, you're
Speaker 1: feeling like you need to up your game. Well, you
Speaker 1: can't just grab some some some pills, some brain booster
Speaker 1: pills at the grocery store. You need to go get
Speaker 1: yourself some castorium from the local apothecary.
Speaker 3: They must have gotten really smart.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was used to treat colic, to treat gout,
Speaker 1: and to treat toothaches and earaches.
Speaker 3: Now I got interested in the idea of the use
Speaker 3: of castorium allegedly to treat pain because of something I read. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: I was not able to find a very clear answer
Speaker 3: on this, but what I read was that I was
Speaker 3: looking at a book called Aspirin and the Salacillates by KD. Rainsford,
Speaker 3: published in twenty thirteen. Quote salacillates have also been identified
Speaker 3: in beaver castor i e. Of from where it is
Speaker 3: secreted instead of the via the usual urinary route. The
Speaker 3: salicylates are probably metabolic transformation products from vegetable sources in
Speaker 3: the diet of the beaver. So that kind of interested
Speaker 3: me because salicylates are related to the active ingredient in aspirin.
Speaker 3: Aspirin is, of course, it's a nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drug
Speaker 3: often used to reduce fever and treat pain inflammation, and
Speaker 3: this active ingredient in aspirin, acetyl salicilic acid, is derived
Speaker 3: from a precursor found in the bark of the willow tree,
Speaker 3: which of course is something that beavers tend to chew
Speaker 3: and eat a lot of. So this chemical relationship with
Speaker 3: the active ingredient in a common nonsteroidal anti inflammatory and
Speaker 3: pain reliever made me wonder if there could be some
Speaker 3: kind of of connection there, like maybe this downstream animal
Speaker 3: product that's derived from this original plant molecule. I wondered
Speaker 3: if that could be playing a role in castorium actually
Speaker 3: having an anti inflammatory effect or treating pain. But I
Speaker 3: could not find anything solid to back up that connection,
Speaker 3: So I don't know if there's actually anything to that,
Speaker 3: but my curiosity is raised here.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, that's interesting. Now, outside of alleged medicinal properties,
Speaker 1: it also has a long history of being used as
Speaker 1: a like a just for its scent and as a
Speaker 1: flavor enhancer. Loman notes, as others have noted in these
Speaker 1: other sources we've looked at that castorium, once processed, you know,
Speaker 1: smoked or derived into a tincture, it can be used
Speaker 1: to enhance flavors, particularly to enhance flavors of raspberry and
Speaker 1: strawberry to replicate a kind of vanilla flavor. And it's
Speaker 1: also been used to give perfumes a sort of leathery odor.
Speaker 1: And I guess all this shouldn't be too surprising, again
Speaker 1: realizing that the compounds in castorium are ultimately derived from
Speaker 1: leaves and tree bark, so it shouldn't be completely shocking. Now.
Speaker 1: It's still technically an FDA approved natural flavoring in the
Speaker 1: United States, but it's rarely used and was far more
Speaker 1: commonly used as a flavor enhancer in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Now you've probably if you've looked around at anything about this,
Speaker 1: you may have come across this. There is apparently a
Speaker 1: Swedish spirit called Baverhook that uses castorium, translated as beaver shout.
Speaker 1: Some adventurous imbibers have sought it out. You'll find a
Speaker 1: number of essentially I guess spirit and alcohol bloggers out
Speaker 1: there talking about their experiences with it or doing videos,
Speaker 1: some of these with kind of crude titles. But I
Speaker 1: found a really nice one on a blog from an
Speaker 1: individual named Dolly Jorgensen at Dolly dot jorgensenweb dot net,
Speaker 1: who has like a very nice, historically driven post on
Speaker 1: the subject that is again far classier than what I
Speaker 1: was seeing in other places online. I just want to
Speaker 1: read a quick quote from Dolly Jorgenson about trying out
Speaker 1: beaver shout. Quote. The first flavor was similar to oak
Speaker 1: cured whiskey, but then the musk comes out. It's a
Speaker 1: hard to describe taste, but I imagine that it's what traditional
Speaker 1: male musky cologne would taste like. It was not particularly strong, however,
Speaker 1: so it seemed pleasant enough to consume. Most of the shot.
Speaker 1: An hour later, however, I had a different opinion as
Speaker 1: the castorium sense started to seep out through my skin.
Speaker 1: Literally my pores started to extrude the musky smell.
Speaker 3: Okay, I mean that's a commercial basically.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was tell because the way the
Speaker 1: author describes it here it is it's probably or at
Speaker 1: least in this case, and I guess it depends on
Speaker 1: who's making the liquor and so forth, But it sounds
Speaker 1: like it's more tolerable than you might imagine, but there
Speaker 1: being this kind of like after effect to consuming it.
Speaker 1: If any adventurous sorts out there listening to this episode
Speaker 1: have experience with beaver shout, do write in. We would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. We'd love to hear your
Speaker 1: impression of this.
Speaker 3: You know, this reminds me of the time we talked
Speaker 3: about the liquor that had a human toe in it,
Speaker 3: and then we heard from multiple listeners who said they
Speaker 3: drank it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. There was another blog post that I was
Speaker 1: looking at where the individual was like, Hey, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a hobby of mine to find various alcohols that
Speaker 1: have something organic in them, something some like part and
Speaker 1: then try it out and you see this in different cultures,
Speaker 1: Like the idea is like some sort of alcohol and
Speaker 1: it has like I don't know, a snake in it,
Speaker 1: a scorpion in it, that sort of thing. But in
Speaker 1: this case, the the castor glands of a beaver are
Speaker 1: used to create a unique spirit. I also looked around.
Speaker 1: I was like, maybe somebody's making a cocktail with this.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a beaver shout cocktail out there. I could
Speaker 1: not find one. So if mixologists out there are figuring
Speaker 1: out a way to sort of tame the flavor of
Speaker 1: beaver shout and like sort of manipulate it into a
Speaker 1: more refined concoction, I have not found evidence of it
Speaker 1: of it. I went to im Buy magazine and looked
Speaker 1: around for castorium and that nothing was coming up. And
Speaker 1: that's the one place I would expect, like some professional
Speaker 1: mixologists out there has has whipped this up, you know,
Speaker 1: just on just as a challenge. But I saw no
Speaker 1: evidence of it. Maybe in Sweden, maybe maybe it's like
Speaker 1: a special thing. You need to like look to Swedish
Speaker 1: high end bars to find this.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe you got to ask beer get where to
Speaker 3: find it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well I believe we're going to close
Speaker 1: out our two parter on the beaver here, but this
Speaker 1: was a fun one. This is one that initially I
Speaker 1: was thinking we would discuss these some of these images
Speaker 1: of the beaver in an episode that looked at other
Speaker 1: inaccurate depictions of animals from various bestiaries. And then it
Speaker 1: quickly became obvious that this was an entire episode, and
Speaker 1: then that it was actually a part one and a
Speaker 1: part two. I have so much more respect and admiration
Speaker 1: for the weird and wonderful beaver.
Speaker 3: Now, how can you not? I mean, if you don't,
Speaker 3: they'll shake a stick at you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, all right, we're going to go and close
Speaker 1: it out here, but we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 1: out there if you have thoughts experiences concerning the beaver
Speaker 1: right in. If you want to check out other episodes
Speaker 1: we've done in the past, We've covered a lot of
Speaker 1: curious animals over the years, kind of composing our own
Speaker 1: bestiary in many respects on the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast. You can find core episodes of that on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed. On Mondays, we do list you mail on
Speaker 1: Wednesday's we do a short form artifactor of Months Your Fact,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we set aside most series concerns to
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 4: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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