Isn’t that a beautiful word? It means coming at dusk and dawn, and there has actually been some debate as to whether beavers were “crepuscular” or “nocturnal”. Skip Lisle told me about a standing argument he had had with a professor over just that. He was very excited to learn that some of us had spent wee hours at the dam site and could say with certainty that they were nocturnal. At least OUR beavers are nocturnal.
First Night in Martinez saw several of us act as beaver docents from the bridge, explaining behavior and keeping things safe. We saw the beavers at 6:00 and at midnight and all the hours in between. It was kind of magical, bundled in the freezing air and able to watch them when they are usually alone. Imagining they’re crepuscular seems the height of egocentric to me. Like when you’re a child and you think the moon is following you. Man can only see the beavers at dusk and dawn so he assumes that’s when the beavers are out?
I have read that beavers are on a different internal clock than we are, some where closer to a 26 hour day. They often live in conditions where the daylight is inaccessible anyway. Think about what it would be like to be a beaver in a lodge under the snow for three months. You would probably decide when to feed based on your hunger, not much else. One woman I met at the dam had only seen beavers in Alaska. She saw them in daylight because the latitude and time of year made it “the land of the midnight sun” and that was when they could feed. (“There are strange things done, ‘neath the midnight sun, by the men who moil for gold…”) One might imagine that if you watched 20 different beaver colonies you would see 20 different beaver clocks in operation, depending on the available food and how far they needed to travel for their supper.
Our beavers, though, are nocturnal. I saw them last night at the “crepusculum”, and filmed them last summer at the “diluculum” but they are up all the hours in between. Mystery solved. Next question?
Oh and for your daily dose of cute, follow the link to this footage from the Pittsburg zoo’s new baby beavers.
