This morning there’s an excellent article about the power of beavers to change their environment and how it can save us from extinction. Well. no it doesn’t specifically say that but it comes pretty dam close if you know what I mean.
Giant beaver’s diet likely led to its demise, Western study finds
The giant beaver’s diet may have been the reason it died out in the last ice age, a first-of-its-kind study by Western University researchers says.
Researchers studied chemical tracers — stable isotopes of nitrogen and carbon — in the beavers’ fossilized bones and teeth to learn more about their diets. The study authors found the 100-kilogram rodents dined on underwater plants and therefore required wetland environments to survive.
“We did not find any evidence that the giant beaver cut down trees or ate trees for food,” lead study author and former Western graduate student Tessa Plint said in a statement. “Giant beavers were not ‘ecosystem-engineers’ the way that the North American beaver is.”
“When you look at the fossil record from the last million years, you repeatedly see regional giant beaver populations disappear with the onset of more arid climatic conditions,” study co-author and Western earth sciences researcher Fred Longstaffe said in a statement.
Well, well, well. Not so much of a NUISANCE beaver now, am I? Adapt and change, that’s our motto.If you don’t like the way the pond looks today, get up and change it tomorrow. That’s the beaver way. And if you don’t take our advice you’ll go extinct and end up with some grad student studying the isotopes in your useless teeth.
The smaller beavers’ diet and behaviour, especially chewing through trees to build dams, might be the reason their descendants are still around today, researchers say.
“The ability to build dams and lodges may have actually given beavers a competitive advantage over giant beavers because it could alter the landscape to create suitable wetland habitat where required. Giant beavers couldn’t do this,” Longstaffe said in a statement.
So wait a minute. Wait just a doggone minute. Hold everything.
Are you telling me that the very thing that annoys and frustrates folk most about beavers, their damming streams and chewing of trees, the very reason we HATE and trap them and complain about them, is the EXACT same reason they survived the last big climate change crisis?
No reason, just asking for a friend.
