Croatia put a marten on its money for centuries
Medieval taxes in Slavonia and Dalmatia were once paid in marten pelts—the marturina. The banovac coin struck from 1235 to 1384 bore the animal, and the Croatian currency was later named kuna, the word for marten. Even the 1-euro coin still shows one on its national face.
Martens are slender mustelids of the genus Martes in subfamily Guloninae—bushy-tailed, large-pawed forest carnivores with partly retractile claws. Fur ranges from yellowish to dark brown and has long drawn trappers. They inhabit coniferous and northern deciduous forests across the Northern Hemisphere's colder belt, agile climbers of the taiga. DNA studies suggest Martes is paraphyletic, with the American marten sometimes grouped nearer to tayra and wolverine; the genus dates back as far as about seven million years in the Miocene.
Mostly solitary and often nocturnal, adults pair for mating when spring turns toward summer. Broods may hold as many as five nearly hairless kits that appear in early spring, wean around two months, and disperse at three to four months. They eat omnivorously. Where stone and pine martens share ground, they divide space by diet, cold tolerance, and predator avoidance; Belarus work finds pine martens denser in rich clay woodlands while stone martens use scarcer sandy habitats and lean on berries and carrion. In well-stocked Irish and Italian ranges, pine martens keep stable home ranges that reduce direct clashes.
English marten traces through Old French martre to Germanic roots; the animal sense overtook the fur-name after about 1400. Hudson's Bay trade valued pelts for mittens around Big Trout Lake, Ontario. Finnish company Nokia takes its name, via a river, from a local marten type. Homer's Dolon wears a marten-pelt cap; Latin galea, helmet, once meant marten pelt. From forest predator to heraldic charge on Croatia's arms, the marten kept crossing from ecology into economy.
Source: Marten
