Once in a while it’s fun to visit an article about beavers written by someone who is surprised to find themselves writing about beavers. Kind of like “Oh I missed the moose this morning so I might as well write about beavers.. It’s not how they expected to spend their day, but it’s nothing new to us. Joan Herrmann is so surprised by their adaptions she never gets around to their true gifts.
Where I Wander – Extraordinary Rodent
Whereiwander – perhaps when you hear the word rodent the mammal which may come to mind first might be mouse or rat or even squirrel. Today’s column is about one of my favorite rodents which is one of the largest too. A memorable encounter with one was first hearing then seeing, the flat-tailed rodent (Castor canadensis) known as an American Beaver.
I have learned that the beaver’s body is ideal for both underwater and land maneuvering. Beavers have very dense, soft, waterproof “under fur” that traps air, insulates, and also keeps them buoyant. Their broad scaly tail in addition to sounding alarms; works as a rudder in the water and as a prop, for balancing them on their hind legs, when cutting down a tree or standing. In the summer heat, their tail works as a heat exchanger allowing them to eliminate as much as twenty-five percent of their body heat. Their hind feet are webbed helping them to swim. They have a split toenail which aids in grooming their fur acting like a comb. The split toenail also assists them when they apply waterproofing oil from their oil gland and when they need to remove parasites and other debris from their fur. The forefeet are not webbed and are kept “balled up” against their chest when they swim. The forefeet are able to carry mud and sticks and are also used to dig, handle food, and for grooming. Beavers have an excellent sense of smell and can easily identify their favorite food tree just by its smell.
I can identify a favorite food by smell too. Not such a big deal.
Beaver are engineers extraordinaire; they dam up streams that are too shallow to hide them from predators and to make their lodges and routes of travel safe as they move to and from feeding areas. Most active from dusk to dawn a beaver is able to take down a three-inch diameter tree in less than ten minutes and a five-inch tree in about a half-hour. One beaver will fell the tree and the rest of the family will help with the removal of twigs and branches. In climates like ours where the water freezes, caching food begins in the fall. Tree branches of their favorite foods are secured in the mud below the water near their lodge entrance. The caches may be extremely large since a family of seven can consume about one ton of food over the winter.
Uh huh. What’s surprising about articles like this is that they spend so much time marveling at beaver attributes “ooh orange teeth! Oooh third eyelid” but they never get around too the frigging most impressive things about beavers. “ooh climate change! “Ooh waterstorage” “Ooh biodiversity!”
They just like writing about the part where they’re freaks of nature,
I hope that this column may have sparked an interest in learning more about these intriguing rodents.
I hope when they do they actually find out the truth.
