00:00Throughout our long history as a species, we've domesticated a plethora of wild animals.
00:07Dogs for their loyalty and protection, cats for pest control, and farm animals like cows,
00:14sheep, and chickens for food and resources.
00:18Yet, one cannot help but wonder why we didn't tame other animals with unique and valuable traits,
00:26especially the most majestic rodent of them all, the beaver.
00:32Our furry aquatic acquaintances are renowned for their industrious nature,
00:38building great dams and lodges out of wood with remarkable precision.
00:43However, our ancestors weren't interested in beavers for their engineering skills, but rather for their fur.
00:51You see, beaver fur is quite special compared to that of most other mammals.
00:57A beaver's hair strands are soft and fine, with serrated edges that make the felting process much easier
01:05and the resulting felt much more durable.
01:09Crucially, beaver fur is also waterproof, thanks to the special oils beavers naturally secrete.
01:15This rare combination of properties made beaver fur by far the best candidate for felt hats,
01:21coats, and various other garments, a fact that was independently discovered in both North America and Eurasia.
01:28Our first attested evidence of beaver felting comes from Siberia,
01:32and it's likely that it spread westwards into Europe through trade.
01:37We know that in the Middle Ages, beavers were hunted to near extinction across Europe,
01:42and not just for their fur.
01:44Some of our ancestors held the questionable belief that beaver testicles produced a special liquid
01:50with medicinal properties called castorium.
01:54So much so that beavers supposedly would castrate themselves to evade pursuit.
01:59This myth was so pervasive that it appears in medieval manuscripts and besties from France, England, and Wales.
02:07We know that castorium is produced by a separate gland near the beaver's bottom,
02:13and that it is used to mark territory and for mating, and we still use it today in perfumes.
02:19But anyway, this mistaken belief contributed to the near extinction of the Eurasian beaver during the Middle Ages,
02:26with Welsh beaver pelts at one point being worth 120 times more than an equivalent sheepskin.
02:33Demand for beaver pelts grew even more with the invention of carotene,
02:39a more efficient felting technique whereby the beaver's fur was treated with mercuric nitrate
02:45to make it even softer and more pliable.
02:49A funny thing about mercuric nitrate is that it is extremely neurotoxic,
02:54which is why so many felt workers, especially those making hats, eventually went mad.
03:00Hence the phrase, mad as a hatter.
03:03Now, my friends, even if you're not being exposed to neurotoxic chemicals in your field of work,
03:10taking care of your mental health is important.
03:13Take it from me, even something as engaging as making YouTube videos
03:16can sometimes feel like an insurmountable challenge.
03:20And we all have those days, or weeks, or even months,
03:26where nothing goes right and we feel powerless.
03:28It is in such times that the value of quality therapy becomes most apparent.
03:35You might have noticed some gaps in our publication schedule over the past year,
03:38and whilst I won't bore you with any personal drama,
03:42I can confidently say that having access to a licensed therapist
03:46who can listen, understand, and provide helpful, unbiased advice
03:52has helped me pull through such a difficult period.
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04:48Now, speaking of embarking, just as the nascent European empires were exhausting their native supply of beaver felt,
04:57a new, seemingly boundless supply was discovered in North America.
05:02The British Empire, through Canada, became the world's leading producer of beaver felt,
05:08exporting 21 million caster hats in the first 70 years of the 18th century.
05:15The only reason the beaver wasn't completely exterminated
05:18was because of a major swing in fashion during the early 1800s.
05:23The classic silk top hat eclipsed the felted beaver hat,
05:27saving our furry friends from certain extinction.
05:31But all of this brings us back to our original question.
05:34Why didn't we try to domesticate the oh-so-invaluable beaver?
05:40Well, as we all know, beavers enjoy eating trees.
05:45More specifically, their nutritious inner bark,
05:48which is a small fraction of the mass of the entire tree.
05:52So it would be prohibitively expensive to provide sustainably.
05:56An enterprising beaver rancher could try to feed their beaver brigade with other feedings.
06:02But the beaver diet and digestive system is very specialized.
06:07Notably, captive beavers suffer from iodine and sodium deficiencies if they don't eat any aquatic plants.
06:15Another problem is that beavers need to constantly chew on things.
06:19Like all other rodents, a beaver's teeth grow continuously throughout their lives.
06:26And if they don't wear them down by chewing, things turn ugly fast.
06:32This also makes beavers very hard to contain.
06:36Wooden fences would be little more than toothpicks for them to chew on,
06:40while metal fences would have been prohibitively expensive until very recently.
06:44And while beavers are social animals, they only get along with their family,
06:49which consists of mom, pop, their kids from this year, and the ones from the year before.
06:54Packing multiple beaver families together is a surefire way to trigger devastating beaver wars,
07:01where things, again, turn ugly very fast.
07:06If we could disregard the need for profitability,
07:09it might have been possible to breed the territorial instinct out of beavers.
07:14But, alas, profits cannot be disregarded in our harsh capitalistic world.
07:20And thus, the brave beaver had to endure centuries of persecution.
07:26But, luckily, conservation efforts have allowed beavers to reclaim many of their native habitats,
07:31and even to find a few new homes, like Argentina and Finland.
07:37Now that I think of it, I might even go there as well.
07:40But, my friends, thank you for joining me on this semi-aquatic journey.
07:45Make sure to gently caress the like button,
07:49and stay tuned for the next beaverly-hilled episode of Scythe Quest.
