The beech marten likely originated in the Near East or southwestern Asia, and may have arrived in Europe by the Late Pleistocene or the early Holocene.

Comparisons between fossil animals and their descendants indicate that the beech marten underwent a decrease in size beginning in the Würm period.

[3] Beech martens indigenous to the Aegean Islands represent a relic population with primitive Asiatic affinities.

Selective pressures must have acted to increase the beech marten's bite force at the expense of gape.

[12] Its feet are not as densely furred as those of the pine marten, thus making them look less broad, with the paw pads remaining visible even in winter.

[14] Its skull is similar to that of the pine marten, but differs in its shorter facial region, more convex profile, its larger carnassials and smaller molars.

[17] In an area of northeastern Spain, where the beech marten still lives in relatively unmodified habitats, one specimen was recorded to have had a home range of 52.5 ha (130 acres) with two centres of activity.

[22] Mating occurs in the June–July period, and takes place in the morning or in moonlit nights on the ground or on the roofs of houses.

Plant foods eaten by the beech marten include cherries, apples, pears, plums, black nightshade, tomatoes, grapes, raspberries and mountain ash.

The marten likes to plunder nests of birds including passerines, galliformes and small owls, preferring to kill the parents in addition to the fledglings.

It occurs in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan and was recently confirmed to inhabit northern Burma.

It is also present in several wooded, upland areas in the Kettle Moraine State Forest, and in nearby woodlands of Walworth, Racine, Waukesha and probably Jefferson Counties.

North American beech martens are likely descended from feral animals that escaped a private fur farm in Burlington during the 1940s.

[27] British zoologist George Rolleston theorised that the "domestic cat" of the Ancient Greeks and Romans was in fact the beech marten.

Beech martens were caught only in the Caucasus, in the Montane part of Crimea and (in very small numbers) in the rest of Ukraine, and in the republics of Middle Asia.

Because animals with more valuable pelts are rare in those areas, the beech marten is of value to hunters on the local market.

The shooting of beech martens is inefficient, and trailing them with dogs is only successful when the animal can be trapped in a tree hollow.

[31] On 29 April and 21 November 2016, two beech martens shut down the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, by climbing on 18–66 kV electrical transformers located above ground near the LHCb and ALICE experiments, respectively.