Springtime for Beavers and orb weavers,
and perhaps your allergies too
Spring time is upon us and with it between your sneezing, watery eyes and so much pollen your might as become a tree since that’s the only action you’ll be seeing this season, comes to use two animals that are associated with spring. Beavers and orb weaver spiders.
Hello my fellow weirdos and welcome to Weird Animal Facts: Explicit a podcast dedicated to the weird odd unusual gross and often times disturbing facts about animals. I am your springtime fairy host, Deidre and having grown up in the beaver state and having one myself you could say that I do know a thing or two about said animal. And now since I am praying to Darwin that the nights stay warm enough for me to start my first season as a gardener I am expecting to spot a few orb weaver spiders. So what’s a better way of getting into the springtime spirit then to learn about these two animals.
I myself have never worked with a beaver, although while in my zookeeping career I have worked with may rodents as well as a few spiders. But none of which were the icons we are about to discuss now. And these two animals, I would say, should be the mascots of spring. I know many people in the states don’t consider it spring until those robins start bebopping around but these two animals are much more amazing and weirder; if I do say so myself.
**Beaver: Just because this is an adult animal show does not mean I’ll be making inappropriate jokes about beavers the entire time, just when the opportunity best presents itself. Let’s start with the beaver. (That’s what she said). Just what is a beaver? There are two species one in the states and the other in Europe and they are rodents, and only the second biggest following of course the capybara. But what makes beavers so unique is that tail; at least when talking about their appearance because there are a lot of other weirder things about this animal aside from its tail. But before we dive into that, I’m sure there are some of you out there who don’t know what a beaver is. And I’m not just talking about the virgins. (Your jokes are getting worse. Stop it.)
Let’s start with an animal we all should know; a rat! And increase its size by 5, makes its fur brown and much courser. Smoosh the face just a bit so that the nose isn’t so pointy and it larger, especially the nostrils. Keep those orange incisors, those are important! Now for the feet; add some webbing between the twos. Then finally that tail. Let’s just flatten it like a pancake. And that ladies and gentleman is a beaver.
Unlike other rodents the beaver is aquatic. Now of course I’m excluding the muskrat and nutria in this, which too enjoy a nice swim. But no other rodent, let alone animal has such a large impact of its environment as the beaver does.
Keystone species! That’s right, the only reason why some wetland exist is because of the beaver. These guys, just like your ex, is a fantastic manipulator. But unlike your ex manipulating your soul and livelihood, they manipulate the water. I feel like I don’t really need to go into too much details about a beaver’s relationship with water and wood as most of us know that beavers create damns using wood and they live inside these damns that are called lodges. We know. But jumping back to an earlier point; these damns they make aren’t just for their own comfort.
Alright I guess I should say that as far as we know beavers are only creating these damns so that they can live inside them, we don’t know why all beavers just decided that they need to be in a stream. Perhaps its to make it harder for predators to get them. After all if you’re camping in the woods, its much less likely a bear will eat you if you’re in a yurt verse simply wrapped up like a burrito in a sleeping bag under the stary night. Hell, if there’s two bears then you’ve just given them a romantic dinner date.
Disclaimer: The likelihood of getting eaten by a bear while camping is very slim…not impossible…but slim. End of disclaimer.
Other then to have a roof over their head and protect them from predators, their natural need to construct a home in the middle of a flowing river is way more beneficial then architectural structure we humans have come up with. If anything we just fuck everything up. Beavers have been constructing damns for over 125,000 years and in doing so have given life to wetlands. And as we’ve briefly talked about in other episodes, wetlands are home to so many animals. Nearly 1000 terrestrial animals depend on the wetlands for survival and we aren’t even including most of the small invertebrates or fish. Wetlands are one of the most diverse ecosystem in the world! Just like how the animals of the ocean depend on coral reefs, the animals of the wetland depend on the beavers to create their damn, to slow down the water and create these large spaces of wetland habitat.
Back in the times of earlier America (you know when all the white men came around and started to murder everything and everyone). Well one of the things they tried to murder was the beaver. Their fur was used for hats, which I don’t know who the hell would ever want a beaver hat, and this was a time before the world beaver had a double meaning, or so I assume. Or maybe that’s where the term came from, because it smelt so bad. Not that all lady’s beavers smell bad, but you have to admit; there is an odd smell to it. Anyways, beaver hats were a thing and a big deal apparently. They were hunted and simply killed so much that they were nearly extinct. About 90% of their population was murdered in about 300 years. What can I say: Humans are dicks, humans are dicks, humans are dick, dick dick. We’re dicks.
Oh, but its wasn’t just the hats that caught the humans of the 1600 to 1800s, it was one other weirdly amazing feature that has to do with their smell. When was the last time you spritz on a dap of perfume, added a teaspoon of vanilla to your chocolate chip cookies, or had a scoop of strawberry ice cream? Well back in the day all those wonderfully tasting and smelling things were thanks to a stinky gland in the ass of a beaver. (Perhaps that’s where the slang for beaver came from).
Fun Fact: The slang for beaver; referring to a female’s genitals is thought to have come from its similar appearance to that of a split beaver pelt. My guess it’s the fur traders of the time were spending way too much time in the woods and not enough time with their wives. Anything can look like genitals if you stare long enough at it and have been lost in the woods for months.
Don’t worry, today none of the food you eat has beaver goo. And yes you could call it goo. Technically its called castor glands.
Scientific names are hard: And Fun fact! The glands of the beaver are actually named after their scientific name which I no doubt will butcher in a similar fashion as those really shit taxidermy creatures. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about then just google: bad taxidermy.
American Beaver: Castor canadensis
Eurasian Beaver: Castor fiber
Now back to these glands. Just like most animals with glands beavers will use them to communicate… and just a random side thought I’m having now while I think about this: who was the first person to taste this stuff. Because according to my research the fluid of these glands can be similar in appearance to puss or even really runny shit. Depending on how fresh from the gland it is.
But another use of these glands is for swimming. Similar to how birds will preen and groom with their uropygial gland; aka preening gland, beaver will use their castor gland to brush their oil through their fur. And both beavers and birds do this so to waterproof the fur or feathers. As disgusting as this all sounds, back in the day we humans really loved this odor enough that we wished that we were beavers. Just like how beavers oil themselves up, we would spray perform based from castor gland on us before a hot date where we would eat snack on a cone of vanilla ice cream make from the same gland. Beavers though would go even further and even put their scent all over the inside and outside of their lodge. Perhaps the human fashion sense is the equivalent of beaver scents glands.
One other thing castor glands were used for was medicine. Although there is no scientific evidence to support their medical uses. Back in the time of Medicine shows (which the name alone should tell you that something up) there were claim that the fluid from a beaver’s ass could relieve nearly everything from anxiety, insomnia or even menstrual cramps.
Hailing from the anus of the aquatic rodent known as the beaver, here today, and today only you can be cured of whatever ales you. Is your kid not going to sleep at night, nervous about talking to that pretty lady, or your man can’t keep it up. Whatever your problem is the beaver can help. For only a small payment you too can have this miracle drug (not FDA approved) that can relieve even your most pester of headaches. Come on down folks for a chance to purchase this one of kind miracle! Only available today, you don’t want to get caught tomorrow saying how you wished you invested this one of kind product. Just fork over your money and this disgusting looking colored fluid is yours. Beaver Juice: its more then just flavor.
**Orb Weaver Spiders: The traditional spider. You know during Halloween when you see that web; straight webbings used as anchors then that spiral stickiness that swirls around from the outside to the in. Well that is a web of an orb weaver spider. And the orb weavers are very impressive; especially their size. And I’m not just talking about the spiders themselves but their webs too.
Known for having larger webs, some ranging larger then 1 meter in diameter these not so little guys are great to have in you garden. In fact: a common name for a very common and terrifying looking spider here in the US is the Garden spider.
Imagine spotting a Wiz Khalifa approved spider: Black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow. Everything these spiders do, they do it big. Even the males, despite their size. You see it’s the females who are physically big. The males are one quarter the size of the females and sometimes even smaller. And there can be danger in this, as any short man who has ever tried to date me can attest to. But let’s focus of the dating life of the garden spider and not mine.
Unlike Bumble it’s the male who needs to put on the moves first, which can be risky as if she’s not happy with him she will do the ultimate ghosting…which isn’t just not responding to your text, but murder. The male of course is hoping this doesn’t happen or at least not until they get some sex, so he must do his best to seduce her. How? As if plucking the strings on a guitar the male will announce their presence; then slowly, or cautious make his approach.
Fun Fact: Some male garden spiders have been observed making the move while the female is molting as she’d be pretty immobile at that point. I don’t know if we should called smart or rape.
If the female accepts the male, or is a temporary mummy or even just preoccupied with dinner, the male can cum. But to get the sperm into the female is hard. And this isn’t even taking into account him having to risk the female killing and possibly eating him.
Let’s take a look at some spider genitalia. Time to learn. Female spider genitals are located on the underside of their abdomen closer to their cephalothorax and sternum and is a hardened plate. When the make inserts his sperm she can actually store it her spermathecas until its time for her body to make babies. And all that is pretty normal as far as invertebrate reproduction goes. As for the males…oh boy.
For those of you sexual active adults out there we know that for humans, sperm is transferred via the penis into the woman. Its pretty simple, but not for male spiders. Similar to the female their reproductive parts start under the abdomen in the testes and do connect to a penis; or more like a small tube. From there the male will spin a small mat of silk so to put the sperm inside. So think of this like a guy jizzing in a cup. Then, as we learned from episode 4 about New World Tarantula, spiders have these two arms, they aren’t legs, spiders have eight legs plus two arms that are called pedipalps. With the male’s sperm now inside his silk mat (or cup) he will use his pedipalps like a syringe and syphon up the sperm. This will then swell up the pedipalps so that they now look like boxing gloves to of which he will sock his sperm into the female’s love spot…that is if he doesn’t get eaten first.
Many spiders face this dilemma, not just the orb weavers; tiny male having to win the affect of the female and risk life itself to simply pass along their genes. It can be a very tough word for a male spider. For the orb weaver males we can consider them to be a bit smart, or I suppose the correct word might be scaredy-cats. As many will attempt to seduce the female but then at the first sign of trouble he races out of them until he once again finds his confidence to try again. But perhaps this “scaredy-cat” behavior is due to the docile personality of orb weavers. With that being said, if you see an orb weaver in your garden, which is likely, then don’t freak and most certainly don’t kill it. These spiders are known for being non-aggressive. But just like any animal, if you corner or piss them off they will defend themselves. Orb weaver spider, and yes even the large females ones, probably won’t bite you and if they do it won’t kill you (unless your allergic to their venom). Plus having spiders in your garden is a good thing. They’ll eat all those true pests of the garden all while hanging out on that cool ass looking web.
And that web! It is so fine! There are many different types of webs out there, from funnel: that is shaped how it sounds, tangles; which it like a cobweb or a natty hair, or even sheet that is like a creepy dangly hammock that drapes over grass and bushes. But not only are orb weaver webs the traditional looking perfect web that ever was, the garden spider takes hers up a notch. In the middle of this beautiful web looks to be a zipper, or some will even call it a zig-zag pattern. Its thicker web that goes back and forth just in the middle. Its beautiful! But chances are you don’t have Charlotte living in you backyard attempting to spell out “Some Pig”. So then why does the garden spider do this?
I should point out that the garden spider I’m talking about is the yellow garden spider found in the United States not to be confused with garden spider of the UK which is uglier in my opinion but is still an orb weaver spider who makes an even more traditional Halloween shaped web. It even has the creepiness down.
And while we’re talking about these two different types of spiders we might as well help those of you who are fluent in Latin and only call animals names based on their scientific names and get this segment out of the way: Scientific names are hard.
Garden spider UK: Araneus diadematus
Yellow garden spider US: Argiope aurantia
Now back to that question about the zig-zag in the US’s yellow garden spider’s web. Why? Birds can be dumb. And you especially know this if you listened to the pigeon episode. Some birds get so focused and set on flying that they don’t really think about where they’re going and do a through check of their surroundings. In fact one of the greatest cause of death to birds is fling into shit; like windows. And this is a big issue for birds, as there are a lot of birds and many are endangered. Flying into windows is among the top three human related causes of bird deaths (the first being your fucking cat. Okay maybe not your cat but domestic cats. Put your cat inside damn it!).
The reason birds fly into window is because they can’t see it. Face it we all have run into a sliding glass door before, even if you won’t admit it out loud, we’ve all been there. But there is a simple solution and the orb weavers have figured out it! UV. For windows people are starting to put up stickers that reflects UV lights as birds can see UV, therefore can see these stickers and don’t fly into a window and die. Scientist took a UV light and found that the web and spider may have disappeared but the zigzag pattern stayed. And even more some insects can also see UV meaning they might see this zigzag and think it’s a tasty meal; only its them who will become a tasty meal for the spider.
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With spring here, and if you actually venture outside of your stinky apartment, you are very likely to spot one of the two animals of today. Both working harder then your body trying to beat out allergies, the beaver and orb weaver spiders of the world work hard so that we don’t have to. And in their process helps to make our world better; by providing homes for thousands of other animals in a wetlands or a finally resting place for all those pesky critters you don’t want buzzing around your face whenever you step outside. These animals, and all animals are doing what comes naturally so to help make our lives and our springtime so much better.
Let me know what animals or animal topic you want to learn about next by reaching out on our Instagram @wafpodcast. Until then: stay weird.