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Comment by Scarblac

4 days ago

In the middle ages there was a big debate in the Catholic church about whether beavers were fish (nobility hated eating no meat except fish on fridays and were looking for some variety).

It was argued that their tails are scaly like a fish', and of course they live in water. But on the other hand there's all the fur and so on.

So eventually it was decided that beaver tails count as fish, not the whole animal.

This led to it being hunted to local extinction in quite some places.