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