Beaver colony sighted in downtown San Jose
Don’t tell me you didn’t see this already! I got phone calls from my mother, my business partner and an NPS Ranger from John Muir last night. Another version ran on CBS as well. Since you’ve been following this website you probably know who these players are. Greg Kerekes, who shot the footage that I’ve been showing you. Leslee Hamilton the executive director of the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy, and did you recognize the other guy?
That’s our good friend “Wikipedia Rick” who I published the historic prevalence paper with! Isn’t he a natural on camera? Honestly what a perfect team and collection of quotes! You guys put the AWE in awesome!
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Now I’m sure you’ve had enough ‘celebrity beaver news’ and expect some heavier fare! Enough tabloid San Jose and Jennifer Aniston reporting for god’s sakes, you might be thinking. What about some important beaver research?
Beavers Use Their Nose to Assess Their Foes
Apr. 9, 2013 — Study says beavers use scent to detect when trespassers could be a threat.
For territorial animals, such as beavers, “owning” a territory ensures access to food, mates and nest sites. Defending that territory can involve fights which cause injury or death. How does an animal decide whether to take on an opponent or not? A new study by Helga Tinnesand and her colleagues from the Telemark University College in Norway has found that the anal gland secretions of beavers contain information about age and social status which helps other beavers gauge their level of response to the perceived threat.
The study is published online today in Springer’s journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought we already knew that? I thought that was the point of scent marking? I assume that there was something in her study that gave us new information and the press release just didn’t make it clear? Wait this must be it…
The researchers hypothesized that information about social status and age or body size may also be contained in the anal gland secretions of male beavers. This would enable established territory owners to accurately assess the level of threat posed by an intruder.
So, if you have the smell of an encroaching second son, for example, and give off that dissatisfied Richard III air with your ‘lean and hungry look’, you’ll be firmly escorted to the door. I guess that’s new information. Mary Obrien wrote last night to ask whether female beavers are ever seen as a threat? Apparently beaver research mirrors the enormity of all human research, — males are always studied first.
The title of the article might explain this though?
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Beaver ‘bites man to death’
The man was said to be on a fishing trip at Lake Shestakov in Belarus when the animal launched a savage attack, biting his thigh and severing a main artery.
Two friends who were with the individual at the time were reported as saying they were unable to stem the flow of blood and he bled to death.
The story says a fisherman in Belarus was attacked by the beaver who severed an artery in his leg causing the man to bleed to death. I must be the most cynical person in the entire history of the world but I cannot for the slightest hairsbreadth of an instant believe this story is true – or true the way the report makes it sound. Certainly beavers don’t fight ‘to the death’ over anything. They fight ‘to the runaway’. Even the very rare rabid beaver attacks last year weren’t exactly ‘to the death’.
I believe a beaver can give a human a nasty bite. They cut down trees with those teeth, so your femur is hardly an obstacle. Especially a human whose stomping around their lodge at the time new kits are born. I suppose its theoretically possible that the bite could open an artery, and that if your friends were too drunk to make a fist they might not be able to stop the bleeding in time to save your life.
But honestly, all I could think of when I read the article was this:
Apparently, I’ve been living on the edge for 6 years now, photographing beavers as casually as if it were a trip to the botanical gardens instead of a realizing that I was exposing myself to breath-taking danger by marching through the lion’s cave. If you’re going beaver watching today, keep your wits about you and watch out! It’s a jungle out there.
