Stuff You Should Know - Beavers: Tail Slapping Fun

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

Beavers are in fact, very busy. They're builders and solid family members, husbands and wives. Learn all about N America's largest rodent today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and there's Jerry somewhere.

And this is Stuff You Should Know, the Orange Incisors edition. Oh, I thought you were gonna make a bad naked gun joke. No, no, it did run through my head over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. It's hard though, when you're at our age. And you saw those movies, you know? For sure, yeah.

Dumb joke though. Yeah, well, I mean, it's a naked gun joke for Pete's sake. Come on. So this kind of ties in, I think, a little bit with our porcupine episode in that beavers are, you know, they're porcupine-esque in some ways. I think it ties in even more to our wetlands episode, which gave birth to the idea for this episode, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm pretty excited about this one. I think beavers are about as great as it gets, because they're so studious, and they also bend the world to their will. They shape things the way that they want them. And I like that about them. Yeah, and I also love their familial aspects.

Yeah. Which we'll get to all this stuff, but what we're talking about is the largest rodent in North America. Which really demeans them, I guess, but yes. Rodent's such a, it's not a bad word. There's so many great rodents. Who?

Beavers, porcupines. What else? Squirrels, I know you have a thing with squirrels, but. Well, I know I like squirrels now. Momo and I, and Yumi sometimes comes with us to chase squirrels across the street in the park, and feed them peanuts. We give them peanuts to kind of buy them off

after Moe chases them up a tree. Oh, gotcha. But the squirrels across the way will actually come to you, and eat peanuts out of your hand. So I'm kind of on squirrels now. Momo loves squirrels. Chipmunks, mice.

Chipmunks too. Yeah, rodents are okay, Chuck. I think there are fewer terrible rodents and the only ones I can think of that are terrible are those scary New York City sewer rats. No, yeah. Okay, so rodents are all right. Up with rodents, I guess is the way.

Rabbits? And I don't think they're rodents. They are, you like a hamster? Sure, hamsters. I don't know if rabbits are rodents, are they? It makes sense that they would be, but. It's what rodent.com says. Okay, well who am I to disagree with that?

But we're not talking about rabbits. We're not talking about sewer rats. We're talking about beavers. And again, beavers are amazing, amazing animals. And like you said, it's kind of related to porcupines in that there's what you could call old world and new world beavers, but there's really just two species. And one is found in North America

and one is found in Eurasia. And it's easy, peasy, no fuss, no must. These are the beavers that are alive on the planet. Yeah, so we've got the American beaver. They weigh between 15 and 65 pounds, which is very large. If you've ever seen a large beaver in the wild, it's not scary because you know, and we'll get to whether or not they're dangerous.

They're really not, but it's such a large thing that you're like, wow, they're bigger than I thought, usually has run through my head when I see a beaver. Yeah, I mean 60 or 30, no, yeah, 65 pounds is about 30 kilograms. It's a big beaver. It is a big beaver and I had to convert it to kilograms for at least our friends in Canada

because the beavers, their national emblem, they have beaver on their nickel, which is amazing. Like this just makes me love Canada all the much more, you know? So for that 60 pounds, you're gonna be a couple of feet long, 23 to 40 inches long. That's without the tail.

You don't count the tail when you're measuring a beaver. The tail, we'll talk a little bit more about it, but they're anywhere from seven to 12 inches. If you're Asian, you're about the same size. You can be a little bit smaller. Oh, I thought bigger. Well, you can be a little smaller on the, I think the range is bigger.

Okay. So you can be down in the 20s, poundage-wise, but up to the 70s, poundage-wise. And you're probably a little bit longer and your skull and your tail are gonna be narrower or your tail's narrower and your skull is smaller. So yeah, but that tail is what everybody understands when they see a beaver.

Just like with a porcupine and its quills, a beaver and its tail is, they're just synonymous. Everybody recognizes a beaver because of its tail. And also the tails help make it cute. Even though if you zoomed in and took a really close look at the tail, you'd be like gross. You think?

Yeah, it's scaly. It's got sparse, coarse hair associated with it. It looks like a blackjack that some old-timey like roughs would beat you up with. And yet it's one of the most amazing appendages any animal has as far, it's like a Swiss army knife, but for tails. Yeah, they're very useful in a lot of ways.

They, obviously if they're swimming and beavers, by the way, can swim five to seven miles an hour. They have little web feet. They can close their ear holes and their nose holes and they can roll their, a film over their eyeballs. Yeah, nicotating membrane. Yeah, it's amazing. So if they're gonna be swimming,

then that tail is gonna be acting as a rudder and as a propeller. It's also, if they're on land, it's gonna act as a little kickstand at times. Yeah, when they stand up on their back legs, they use their tail to kind of lean against it. Sure. It's a big one for sure.

They also, and this is a sure sign that you have frightened slash upset a beaver. They will slap the water with their tail in part to frighten you away to say like, don't mess with me. But also to warn other beavers, because like you were saying, they're familial. They are actually fairly social animals and they live in family units.

So they would wanna warn like, you know, the wife and the kids back at the lodge. Yeah, and here's the thing. I spent a lot of time at a lake here in Georgia and I have heard something which I thought was a beaver tail smash, but I'm not sure, because I didn't see it. I have seen evidence of beavers eating tree stuff.

Oh yeah, yeah. And which we'll get to. And one day when I was in the lake, I saw a mammal's head coming toward me. And I don't know if it was, we also have river otter, so I don't know if it was an otter or a beaver. But either way, it was a large head and even though I know that they weren't gonna like

come after me, when that thing pops under the water, you're just like, where's he going? What's he doing? Where is he? Is he coming at me or not? Were you swimming in the lake at the time? Yeah, I was swimming in the lake and I saw this large mammal head, you know, dunked under.

I could feel you. And if it was, I'm not sure how long beavers can hold their, or otters can hold their breath, but beavers can hold their breath for about 15 minutes, which is pretty remarkable. I thought, I think it's remarkable too. I mean, it really just goes to show like just how adapted they are for life in the water.

And they are mammals, so they have lungs, so they need to breathe air outside of the water. But yeah, the fact that they can hold their breath for 15 minutes, that they have nicotating membranes that cover their eyes like little goggles so they can see and work under water. They spend a significant amount of their time underwater. In fact, they're most protected in water.

That's where they can move the fastest. They can swim pretty fast, way faster than they can waddle on land. Sure. And a lot of their predators won't necessarily come into, especially deep water after them. So when they're in the water, they're at their happy place most of the time.

Yeah, and imagine when they'd dive for 15 minutes and are swimming around. What do you think those fish think? Oh, here comes a beaver. I mean, do they know or are they just like, what in the world is that big hairy thing? I would guess that they, I would like to think they know. I like to think of communities of animals

or ecosystems just. They know each other? Yeah, they know each other. They know each other's foibles. They've come to accept one another. You know, they have their own things, beaver foibles. They always kind of, you know, they in the end that when somebody, you know, like a human comes in

and tries to screw things up, they'll all band together and, you know, raise money for the community center so that the developer can't buy it. So if you are a North American beaver, you can live pretty much anywhere in North America except for the desert because you want water around. You're probably gonna be near a pond or a lake or a marsh or a swamp or a river.

Your Asian beavers used to live all over Europe and Asia but they were hunted, over hunted because at one point in time, wearing beaver pelts and beaver hats was like really high fashion. So now they're only found in Germany, France, Poland, Scandinavia, Southern Scandinavia and Central Russia. Yeah, and a lot of those are

because they were reintroduced to the areas. Like I believe Germany had to have their population reintroduced because they were hunted to extinction. And how many beavers used to be here? Like 400 million? That's the estimate is that in North America prior to Colombian contact that they were, there were about 400 million beavers

and they were hunted down to near extinction within the hundreds of thousands from what I saw. And we're luckily held back from the brink. And when I say luckily, I don't just mean for the beavers but I mean for the planet as far as North America is concerned because one of the things that we are still learning but have come to realize is that the beavers are probably the most useful species on the planet

because they're one of the few species that alters their environment as radically as they do. Yeah, what are they called? They're a keystone species. Keystone species. Because when they are present, biodiversity thrives and when beavers are removed from an area, biodiversity suffers.

The presence of beavers makes life better and richer for entirely other animals and species just because of what they do and how they do it. All right, that's a great place to take a break. And I say when we come back, we talk about the two fundamental fulcrums on which beaver life is based, the dam and the lodge. Okay.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars,

friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back.

And there are a couple of things, you know, you've heard busy as a beaver. It's, I don't know if that's proven, but I think it is almost universally agreed that that phrase came about because beavers are, in fact, very busy. And they work, work, work all day long building their homes. And they're all busy. They're all busy.

They're all busy. They're all busy. They're all busy. They're all busy. They're all busy. They're all busy. They're all busy. They're all busy.

They're all busy building their homes and building dams. Their homes are called lodges and you've probably seen, if you ever been hiking and stuff in America, you've probably seen a beaver lodge by River Erlick. It's a little, little dome. A little hut. Made out of sticks and grasses and moss and mud. Maybe you thought a local witch had built it?

Yeah, maybe it does look like a little, what do you call witches' houses? Witch's house. I think there's another one, too. Cottage? Oh, sure. A witch's house, there's a name for those? I thought so, no. I don't know.

I don't think so, witch house? Maybe I'm thinking of Covens. House a day witch? No, there's a word. I just watched the witch, the movie again. I think there's a word for it. I love that, that might be my favorite movie. We did a movie crush round table on that,

by the way, it was really good. It is a good one. That's the guy who did the lighthouses, isn't it? Yeah, Robert Rogers. God bless that man. I can't wait to see his Viking movie too. Oh man, I can't imagine. Okay.

So the Beaver Lodge is about eight feet wide, a few feet high. They're on the banks of these ponds, they're on lakeshores. They have, this is one of my favorite parts, many of them have a little underwater back door. Yeah. So it's like sort of a ski in chalet, if you're snow skiing. Yeah, which makes sense because again,

they spend so much time in the water, but also it protects them from terrestrial predators, because they can get into the water and escape when a predator is like at their door. Yeah, and this is, they're nocturnal, they don't hibernate, but most of this action is going on at night. And everyone pitches in, the whole family.

I don't think we said yet. They live with their children till they're about two, and in a Beaver Lodge, you might find a mom and a dad who are monogamous mates for life, and they might have their three, two year old, almost two year old children, and then they might have their little grandbabies. Yeah, because when they have their babies,

which are called kits, which admittedly is not as cute a word as porcupettes. No, but they're cute. But dude, just- Baby beavers. Press pause right now, everybody, and go look up some baby beaver pictures. Those little tails.

Oh my God. Oh my God, how they're cute. So they have baby beavers, and one of the reasons why they're so cute is because they stick around for so long, or they stick around so long because they're so cute. That's what I mean to say. But they do, they stay as part of the family unit

and help like work on the family lodge and dam until about two when they wander off, and then at three they start to mate, but they build their own lodge at age two. And from what I've read, it's usually very clumsy. It's not in the best place necessarily. And so they kind of learn as they go, but they also learn from their family unit first,

which I think is super cute. It is. I think we should talk about dams though. I mean, the lodges are cool, and it's a great place to live. If you're a beaver. But the dams is where they really, that's where they get their shining moment

as a species that really helps out the environment, because they help create these wetlands, don't they? Yeah, so a beaver will move into an area that's dry as a bone that's maybe cropland, that's maybe timberland, that is not at all flooded. There's no pond or wetland or anything like that. And they say, this can be better. And so they find like a source of moving water,

like a stream or a brook, maybe a creek, maybe a creek, something like that. And they stop it up. They build the dam and they build this dam so that the water backs up behind it and floods this area and turns it into a wetland. And they do this not to irk humans or just for fun. They do it because they're altering the ecosystem

to better suit themselves. Like I said, they survive much better when they're in the water, they move faster, they can work faster. So they actually make this ecosystem into an aquatic ecosystem where before there wasn't an aquatic ecosystem and they do it all by building this dam.

And the way that they build dams is magnificent in and of itself. Yeah, so you got your dam base, the foundation basically, where you're gonna use mud and gravel that you get from the stream and you kind of work together as a family and with your tail and you're pushing,

I say we, we're beavers all of a sudden, and you're pushing this mud and gravel up from the bottom of the stream. And if let's say it's a place where the creek is running a little bit too fast and there's too much flow, they're gonna say, you know what, we're gonna take these sticks,

we're gonna pile these things up all along the bottom until basically it's like building from the ground up until they're strong enough to stay in place. Right, but they're so good at using their hands and they're so strong, you said, you know, 60, 65 pounds or about 30 kilograms. They're mostly muscle too, they're really strong little rodents,

especially for being like herbivores, you know, they're like those vegan bodybuilders. But they can take, they'll take sticks and like plant them in the bottom of this stream or whatever and start forming a latticework that they weave in between and fill up with mud to really stop up some, you know, fast moving current. That like, that's the level of manipulation

that they're doing, they're building a dam that they eventually successfully back up the flow of water from. Yeah, which is, I've tried to do that before and it's hard to do. Yeah. My buddy Scotty and I, you know, we went camping once in California

and it was when I was young in the film industry, so there was a lot of time between jobs and we just decided to stay and keep staying. And I think we ended up staying for like 11 or 12 days. Wow. And we wanted to build a waterfall next to our campsite so it sounded better. So we spent days and days with sticks and big rocks

and trying to reroute and change the river. And it was some of the hardest work I've ever done. Imagine doing that at like 48 inches long and only 65 pounds. Yeah, so they're not only building this thing up, they got their little kits and their children helping, like bringing up sticks and mud saying, Pa, Ma, is this okay? And they say, yeah, add it to the pile.

And then once they're done, they like, there's a periodic like inspections that go on. Yeah. Make sure that it stays strong because that current just keeps going and it's very easy to wiggle the right stick loose and all of a sudden it starts crumbling down. So they basically inspect these things every so often

and check it for leaks and bring in mud and patch it up just like it's like a human might do. Oh, I saw that they do daily maintenance on it that one way to tell whether beavers are in the areas to find their dam, make it like a little minor hole in it and then go back and look the next day. And if it's patched up, the beavers are around there. And giving you the middle finger.

Right, exactly. Like, okay, yeah, we're here. You've figured it out. Please leave our dam alone. But yeah, these things are like water tight for the most part or they allow very little water through or I guess from what I can tell as much water as the beaver wants through,

like they're very willfully deliberately constructed structures that will turn a dry area into a wetland. And when that happens, one of the things that they use to build this stuff with their trees around the area and they can, they use their teeth, those really, really sharp, strong teeth that I said are like kind of orangish

at the very beginning of the episode. And they're orange because they have so much iron in them which actually gives them that much more strength. Yeah, they're up to an inch long. They're super strong. They actually sharpen as they gnaw on trees. So it's not like it'll dull their teeth out. It actually sharpens them.

And the other thing they're doing is they're eating that tree. They're one of the few mammals that are maybe the only mammal that can actually digest cellulose. Well, porcupines can too, remember? Oh, that's right. Yeah, they can digest cellulose

because they probably have a very similar kind of bacteria that helps digest it for them. But they digest a lot of the cellulose that they eat and it's really hard to break down normally for mammals though. Yeah, but like you said, they're essentially creating these wetlands. They're preventing erosion. They are helping to purify the water.

Oh, let's talk about what the dams can do. Okay, Chuck. I mean, it's amazing. It's like a little environmental coalition that goes into the woods to make things better. Yeah, so I think in the wetlands episode, I said something like a beaver creates the equivalent of some like a $5 million waste water treatment land

or something like that. I could not find that again to save my life, but I think that was roughly it. They create this structure that creates the artificial wetland. And in doing so, it filters the water because it slows the water down so much that the stuff can trickle down to the bottom.

It turns a normal terrestrial piece of land into a wetland. So aquatic plants come. And they've also found out that not only does it filter water of like sediment and particles, it also is capable of handling farm runoff fertilizer, which is really pernicious because, you know, when all that fertilizer

makes its way into watersheds and wetlands, it creates algae blooms which suck up all the oxygen and kill off a bunch of fish, right? Which is a big problem. They figured out that beaver dams actually work against that by fixing nitrogen, excess nitrogen from fertilizer. It prevents it from flowing, bacteria chomps down on it and releases it as nitrogen gas into the atmosphere.

And the stuff the bacteria doesn't eat floats down to the bottom, gets eaten up by aquatic plants, which when they die, lock it into the sediment. So this farm runoff, that's a huge problem as it stands, is actually mitigated by beaver dams they've recently found out. Yeah, and talk about just what kind of impact it has

on who lives there. I mean, it's basically like an invitation to nature that says, hey, we got a good scene going over here. If you're an invertebrate that doesn't feel like they have a home, you're welcome here. If you're a new species of bird that didn't think that you would flourish here, time to change that attitude.

If you're a duck or a goose, you can nest on top of our lodge because our lodge is super warm, because it's full of beavers and you can nest on top of there and stay warm. And especially if it's out in the middle of a pond or something, you're gonna be safer. What else?

If you are a woodpecker and you're like, all these trees are too healthy, there's no insects in them. Well, just wait because flooded timberland doesn't stand up very well to standing water. And so some of those trees die off and they provide housing for insects, which in turn provides food for the woodpeckers. What if you're a moose, let's say?

Probably no good for you, right? No, you're gonna love this if you're a moose. So buckle up, because the beaver has turned it into a wetland, it's now an aquatic environment and moose-like aquatic plants that grow on the edge of like marshy areas. So these plants that weren't there before are suddenly there for the moose,

and it gets even better. Because when the beaver family finally moves away or they die off and the whole thing gets abandoned, eventually the dam's going to break without regular maintenance. And when it does, the place is gonna go back to how it was before, but it's gonna go back to better than it was before.

Because think about all that nitrogen that was fixed in the sediment, all the erosion that was prevented, and all of a sudden you have a lush, beautiful meadow that deer can come eat on. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Like they help out all these animals and introduce all these new animals that can live together.

And then once it's done, it becomes a flowery meadow for deer. They leave it better than it was when they first got there. Amazing. It is amazing. The problem is that humans frequently have much different plans for those same areas, and beavers don't

have to follow them. Say we take a break and we come back and talk about that after a break. Like I just said, what do you think? Answer now. Yes. Okay. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up

sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart

radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has

been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends, and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious

show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. The situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Look at all this stuff, there's so much stuff, look at all this stuff you shouldn't have done. All right, so we love Beaver. You love Beaver, everyone out there listening. There's a lot of people who don't love Beaver. Is it Beaver? It is now. Okay.

And the reason why is because if you own a standard of timber, your plan is to eventually cut that timber down and sell it for wood planks or books, like stuff you should know, Colin, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things available everywhere you get books to pre-order now. There's things you can do with trees that you grow. And if Beavers move into your area and they build the dam,

those dams are effective. This isn't like a little puddle we're talking about. They can create basically like lakes, ponds, like enormous wetlands. And when you have standing water over timberland, those trees are not, they're not aquatic trees that you're growing there. So they actually die.

Again, remember they die off and bugs move in and woodpeckers eat the bugs. Well, if you're trying to make money off of those trees, you don't really want the Beavers to do that to your timberland. No, and I think how many tens of millions of dollars? I think it was like $20 million a year or something.

I think more than that, cause I think I saw Alabama alone suffered like $14 million in losses from timberland, just Alabama. From Beaver damage. And not only that, it'll flooding for crops. It can make what was ordinarily a very stable bridge or road now unstable and cause damage to roads and stuff like that.

Yeah, from like saturating the soil that was holding it up just fine before. Yeah, the good news is back in the old days, they would just, you know, they would just cull as many Beavers as they could to get rid of them these days. And this is kind of a weird stat, but it says 75% of Beaver human conflict

can be resolved without trapping or killing the Beavers. So I take that as in they will somehow move them along in a way that's humane. Well, I don't know if that's even the case. I think that more often than not, the first question is, is the Beaver really causing a problem? Or is it that there's Beavers and they've created this wetland

and it wasn't there before and you're taking it as a problem. And that's the thing that I'm seeing that it seems to be like the new paradigm for viewing Beavers as far as their relationship to humans. It's like, really, what's the problem? If it's, yes, they're damaging crop land. Okay, that's a problem.

If they're killing timberland, that's a problem. If they've, if they're washing out a road, that's a problem. But if they just created a wetland that wasn't there before on your property, where you bought the property and it was dry and now there's a wetland there that you didn't plan for, is it really a problem? And I think that's what they're saying

is that 75% of the people who are asked that question will say, actually, I guess it's not. I'm gonna learn to love the Beaver. I love Beaver. Yeah, and, you know, it really gets my dander up when I, this lake that I go to, the Facebook page, there are people, you know, people post like, hey, it looks like I have a beaver eating on my trees.

And, you know, some of these people literally are like, yep, I'll take care of that with my 12 gauge. And it's just like, you don't, I've never understood the people who want to move to nature to kill the nature. Yeah, I know. It's just, it's unnerving. And I have seen some beaver damage and I love it.

I welcome it. So yeah, you eat all you want. You would be one of the 75% who would say like, nope, it's no problem whatsoever. You probably wouldn't even say it was an issue. No, you wouldn't even be asked that question. You would just know from the outset that it's not a problem.

I call that a beaver beavering. Yeah, that's right. Beaver's gonna beaver. And so, and we know now that like, they are a keystone species. They're so important that it's great. The impression I'm getting is it's kind of like, no, it's not really a problem.

So you can't touch that beaver. Don't shoot that beaver. You're going to get in big trouble depending on where you are for shooting a beaver when it wasn't creating a problem, which I love because they should be protected because again, not just the fact that they were almost hunted to extinction.

They provide so many really important services. I don't even know if we talked about it. There were two others, Chuck. They prevent flooding, three others. They prevent flooding by slowing the flow of water. So things downstream from the dam don't get overwhelmed as much. The stuff in the dam helps recharge aquifers below,

whereas before there's just a little stream trickling over, it was doing jack for the aquifer. Now the aquifer is getting recharged on the daily. And then the third one is they provide natural fire breaks, which helps contain forest fires. Yeah. I have a feeling when we're done, we're gonna be mad as there were like three more things we didn't think about.

That happens to me a lot and drives me nuts. Here's some of the things that people do try and do though, to mitigate what they perceive as their beaver problems. Yeah, no, because they do create some problems as far as human settlement is concerned. They will use beaver pipes. And this is basically plastic pipes that you put in a beaver dam to route that water

to where you want it. Helps control the flooding that beavers can cause. Yeah, it's like so long that the beavers like, it doesn't think to go to the end of the pipes. It just sees that there's something around its dam and it probably dams up around the pipe, but that still lets the flow of water go through. Yeah, this is kind of cool.

They will build a pre-dam if they want beavers away from a certain place and in a different place. They'll basically say, hey, look over here, we got this fence. It's like a foundation for your new home. Right. It's kind of, you got 10% of your work is already done. I want you to start here.

So they'll do that. Yeah, the beaver says, hot dog. And then another thing is to design, well, there's two types of fences. There's the pre-dam fence that encourages them to come. And then there is another kind of fence to keep them from building there in the first place. Yeah, those are called beaver deceivers.

And they are, it's just basically, so like a culvert is a frequent place that a beaver likes to dam up. And that's where it causes a lot of damage because culverts are meant to help drain water to keep roadways stable and that kind of thing. So you would just basically put a fence radiating out from either side of the culvert outward

at an angle, kind of like in a V shape. And then those two fences are connected by another fence between the two. So it's just basically like a triangle that ends in the culvert. The key is if you make those fences long enough, I think 12 feet minimum or something like that, the beaver is going to be like nuts to this.

This just isn't even worth it. I'm not going to try to build a dam here. Or if it does start to build a dam, it's going to give up eventually and your culvert is saved without the beaver being hurt or harmed. The beaver just moves on to a different spot that it likes. Right. And if you have a tree that you really love

that you see has a beaver activity, you can wrap like chicken wire around the base of it if you want. There's also some special paint that you can paint on the trunk that apparently beavers don't like if you want to protect a certain tree. It's like the nail biting stuff all that.

Oh my God. Somebody wrote in about that. What'd they say? I didn't see that one. I think they were just asking like what it was. I'm sure they still have it, but I don't remember what it was. I believe, remember Lee press on nails?

I think they had a sideline in that stuff. I'm sure it was. It's probably just like clear nail polish. Yeah. It tastes like garbage. Yeah, it tastes really bad. Tastes like what? I thought it was like hot.

No, it was bitter. Oh, okay. Yeah, I wouldn't like that at all. No, it was very bitter. I don't think we mentioned the, I mean, we should talk a little bit. We talked about the kits, but they do live in large groups.

They're very social. They're called colonies. And they mate in the winter during the first few months of the year. The Eurasian beaver gestates for 60 to 128 days and have one to six little babies. And the American beavers gestate from 100 to about 105 to 107 days.

Again, one to four little kits. And they are weaned around two weeks of age, whereas the Eurasian beavers weaned at about six weeks of age. Right. And so Chuck, I saw that beavers tend to live, like you said, they were monogamous typically. I saw that they live about 10 to 15 years in the wild,

which is so cute. But you can also build a pretty respectable dam in that time too. And I think actually the largest dam that they've ever seen is they think it is from many, many, many generations of beavers staying and working on it in Alberta, right? Yeah, it's huge.

And I guess everyone just got in on the party. Yeah, they think since the 70s that some beavers have been keeping it up. Very appropriate. Yeah, pretty much. And those little kits, by the way, they can swim about just one day after they're born and they're already swimming around.

Right. So like we said, I think that they are, I think that they become sexually mature at age three. And around that time, they're going to start producing something called castorum or castorium, right? Yeah. And castorium is like a lot of people think

that it's like the origin of castor oil. It's not correct from the castor bean, I believe. This stuff is like the opposite of castor oil. It actually like tastes and smells like really good. Yeah, I mean, it's used, the FDA says you can eat it. It's one of those grass, remember? Generally recognized as safe ingredients.

And the thing is though, there's just not a lot of it. It's very tough to, and it's a lot of work to go out there and try and extract this flavor ingredient from the beaver tail. Right. I think it says 200, about 292 pounds annually, total. Right.

So imagine it's expensive. It is very expensive. And you can still find in some places, I think I saw a whiskey that uses it. Ooh. Chanel's perfume, what is it called? Coire de Russi, I believe, it still uses it. Really?

And it's a flavor ingredient too, because it's, like you're saying, it's generally recognized as safe, but it also adds like a vanilla raspberry flavor. That's what it tastes like to humans. And they think that there are some ice creams out there that still may use that, like old-timey ice creams that use beaver castorium, like beaver scent. That's what it is, it's beaver musk.

Yeah. It just so happens. That beaver musk tastes like raspberry vanilla to humans. Huh. Yeah. But they were hunting for a really long time, which kind of led to this one myth, didn't it? The testicle myth?

Yeah. Yeah, up until about the 1100s, people thought beavers ate or bit off their own testicles. And apparently this has its origins in ancient Egypt, in medieval Europe, it continued where, I think what they said was that beavers knew that hunters were coming after them because of that castorium,

which originated in their testicles. And none of this is true. I think they're testicles, they don't even have hangers, right? No, they don't. They're located inside them, which automatically disqualifies it. But also, so the beavers were basically saying like,

no, you can't have my castorium. I can't have it anymore either. I would rather bite off my own testicles than let you have them. I guess maybe as a survival mechanism, like they thought that the hunters would leave them alone if they didn't have testicles, but no, that's not true at all.

And then there's one other great fact, Chuck, that I think you got to take us out with. The, yeah, the pope in the 16th century said, you know what, that tail is pretty scaly and they sure are in the water a lot. So during the fasting days, go ahead and eat that beaver. It's close enough to a fish. Yep, exactly, it qualifies as a fish.

So you could eat beaver back in the 16th century thanks to the pope. That's right. As far as, I know it teased early if they were dangerous, they're not beavers are very nice little fellas and ladies. And if there is a beaver that attacks somebody, it will make the news because it's so rare and it probably means they're really sick.

Yeah, they, like all mammals can get rabies, but like porcupines, I get the impression that that's one of the few diseases you can get from a beaver. The thing is, is if they are rabid and they do charge at you, they can do some serious damage with those teeth. Like they can chew through three foot diameter trees,

they can bite through your skin. And so if you get too close to a beaver, it can have bad effects. It's just, like you said, it's extremely rare. But I saw at least one guy's died from them in the last decade or so, right? That was just bad luck. So a guy in Belarus was trying to get a picture of a beaver

and got too close. And the thing bit him in his thigh and bit through his femoral artery and the guy bled to death from a beaver attack. He died from a beaver attack. His family has to live like that for the rest of their lives. Yep.

Beaver attack. I know. And there's been some other attacks too, but yeah, I think they just kind of give Beaver's bad name unwarrantedly, don't you? Shot through the leg. And you're too blame, you give Beaver's a bad name. Oh goodness.

Todd. Well, I guess that's it for beavers, huh? That's it. I'm glad we finally got to do this one. Leave them alone. Yeah, let them do their beaver thing. Beaver in, like Chuck says. Beaver's gonna beaver.

If you want to know more about beavers with them, by God, you go find some beavers and study them from afar because they are nature's miracles. And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call this Braver Angels. Hey guys, listen to your episode on swing states. You mentioned the dangerous level of polarization

going on between reds and blues in America. Oh yeah, thanks for reading this one. You're welcome. And I wanted to let you know that there's something we can do about it. There's a great grassroots organization with a specific goal of depolarizing America called Braver Angels, which organizes events

to bring reds and blues together to have real nuanced discussions about things they disagree about and help us understand and respect each other. That's great. It is great. I mean, that's quite a service. Yeah, I would love to peek in on one of these meetings

and maybe go to one. Yeah. They're doing a lot of online events now due to COVID and among other things, just launched a campaign called Hold America Together to prepare a response to potential election related conflict in November. Could you please tell your listeners about Braver Angels?

Yes. We are a country together because America needs this. Love to all the reds and blues out there. And you guys are great at what you do. Join the Braver Angels. That is from Krista. And just go to braverangels.org.

B-A-R-A-V-E-R-A-N-G-E-L-S.org. B-R-A-V-E-R-A-N-G-E-L-S.org. That is correct. Okay, cool. That's fantastic. Thank you, Krista. And thanks to all the Braver Angels out there who are trying to keep the country together

because like Krista said, we kind of need it right now. And it is brave. It's daunting to step outside your echo chamber. Oh man, it is. And it's just harder and harder because the echoes have gotten stronger and stronger. So to hear something other than that is like just almost like makes your brain melt.

Pretty neat. All right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us to let us know about some group or service that the country or the world is in dire need of, if we want to hear about it, you can send us an email to stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production

of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called

on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place

because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,

or wherever you listen to podcasts.