For four years, photographer Louis-Marie Preau would lie motionless underwater for hours at a time to get this perfect shot of a Eurasian beaver carrying a branch back to its lodge. Equally as impressive as Preau's efforts were the efforts to pull these delightful creatures back from near extinction. Via bioGraphic: Prized for both their fur and their castoreuma scent-gland secretion once believed to cure everything from headaches to hysteria, Eurasian beavers were nearly hunted to extinction by the middle of the 19th century.