Not sure if this is a joke, but Eurasian beaver exists. Chances that some random monk had seen one was fairly slim though, they were almost wiped out in the entirety of Europe during the middle ages.
It's from an old Greek fable about beaver's chewing off their testicles to escape hunters. Weird medieval Christians turned it into a metaphor for abstinence.
They're slowly recovering, but it's difficult in western Europe because their little landscaping projects quickly end up causing conflicts with local landowners. Large wilderness areas as seen in the US or Canada just aren't a thing in my country, even the most remote parts of our national parks in the Alps are at best 10 miles from the next road. There's a lot of potential habitats in rural areas, but there's always humans living close by, and they get mad when you build a dam in their back yard.
Being Canadian, I was taught that beaver pelts were a big part of French people colonizing parts of the place, I figured it was cause beavers just weren't in Europe and fops wanted a new animal to wear. Didn't know the war on beavers had gone on so long
The sub-polar wildlife is really similar across Europe, Asia and America due to the Bering Strait being frozen during the last ice age. Most Northern Eurasian mammal species have an equivalent in Northern America. There's even European bisons - which were down to a single herd in Poland after WWII. Almost anything here has been hunted close to extinction. And when we discovered there's a whole continent with animals really similar to ours, first thing we did was go over there and kill as many as possible.
That makes sense. I knew some northern European animals had Canadian equivalents, just didn't know that beavers were part of that. Euros fucking hate animals.
Not sure if this is a joke, but Eurasian beaver exists. Chances that some random monk had seen one was fairly slim though, they were almost wiped out in the entirety of Europe during the middle ages.
Didn't know those were a thing. Probably cause they almost aren't
It's from an old Greek fable about beaver's chewing off their testicles to escape hunters. Weird medieval Christians turned it into a metaphor for abstinence.
Be cunning and full of tricks, volcel beaver, and your people shall never be destroyed
They're slowly recovering, but it's difficult in western Europe because their little landscaping projects quickly end up causing conflicts with local landowners. Large wilderness areas as seen in the US or Canada just aren't a thing in my country, even the most remote parts of our national parks in the Alps are at best 10 miles from the next road. There's a lot of potential habitats in rural areas, but there's always humans living close by, and they get mad when you build a dam in their back yard.
Being Canadian, I was taught that beaver pelts were a big part of French people colonizing parts of the place, I figured it was cause beavers just weren't in Europe and fops wanted a new animal to wear. Didn't know the war on beavers had gone on so long
The depletion of European beaver was a big driver of colonization of Canada. Gotta get that beaver skin and sniff those castor sacs.
Dang, knew they really wanted some skins and sacs, just didn't know it was cause they ran out at home.
The sub-polar wildlife is really similar across Europe, Asia and America due to the Bering Strait being frozen during the last ice age. Most Northern Eurasian mammal species have an equivalent in Northern America. There's even European bisons - which were down to a single herd in Poland after WWII. Almost anything here has been hunted close to extinction. And when we discovered there's a whole continent with animals really similar to ours, first thing we did was go over there and kill as many as possible.
That makes sense. I knew some northern European animals had Canadian equivalents, just didn't know that beavers were part of that. Euros fucking hate animals.