Recently I’ve had my feathers ruffled by more than a few “Admire-the-beaver” photos posted on facebook by folks who couldn’t tell a beaver from a bar stool if their life depended on it. One was from a “we love wildlife site” that posted with surprise when they read that beavers are actually helpful to the environment!
I can’t find the museum where this lovely diaorama is displayed, but if that’s a living breathing pair of mismatched beavers I will kiss a goat. I helpfully wrote the poster that they would find photos of real beavers on our website and were welcome to share them and the poster wrote back saying she had no reason to think these weren’t real beavers, as she found the story on the BBC.
Let’s start with the with the easy parts. Texture. These beavers are completely dry. Not castorum coating dry but just back from the salon in sedonna dry. Let’s talk about size. These beavers size difference suggest parent and kit – but they are completely different colors. Even if there was some kind of unique throwback gene in operation, the left beavers face looks jarringly unreal. You found this on the BBC? First of all, there are no beavers in england to speak of so the BBC is uniquely unqualified to decide what is an actual beaver. Moreover the oldest posting I can find of this image is from a website which also offers this as a picture of a beaver:
I wrote back a few of these helpful points saying that these were “stuffed beavers” to which she gamely defended that she was sure the BBC wouldn’t use stuffed toys for photos!
Sigh.
Not toys, I explained. Taxidermy.
Then this yesterday on facebook from author Eric Jay Dolin who wrote the Fur, Fortune and Empire, the recent research and retelling of the history of the fur trade. He helpfully wrote next to the picture “The rodent that founded America. If you don’t know about the role of beavers, you don’t know American history.”
I wrote a helpful comment or two and the famous researcher politely wrote back,
“It is stuffed. Took picture at a museum. It said it was a beaver, and I think it is, but if I am wrong, blame it on the fact that I am a writer, who sits for hours and hours in a room in front of a computer, and not a field naturalist!! I have a beaver skull, I got while out west, at a store, and it is an amazingly sturdy set of bones, with some truly tremendous teeth. Would definitely not want to get bit by a beaver.”
Yes, we know it was stuffed, that is patently obvious. And I’m delighted you have a skull. I have two, and one’s castoroides. I wonder why folks think its a good idea to defend their errors by saying they “aren’t a field naturalist”. I’m not either, but I knew better? And I didn’t even write a book on the subject.
Although maybe I could.
