It’s that time again! When a beaver male’s heart starts to turn to fancy. Despite all the hysteria about rodent over-population, the female beaver enters estrus only once a year for 12-24 hours – not much time to find Mr. Right or ever Mr. Right now! So beavers solve this problem (and many others) by mating for life. This footage by someone named Holger Pletzch is of castor fiber – not our castor canadensis. (Notice their noses aren’t as pretty. Shh). There is nuzzling, mutual grooming and then at minute 8 about 3 seconds of mating.
Isn’t that always the way?
For the record, the beaver mating footage I ever saw was in my living room, shown to me by Moses Silva just after Christmas in 2007. Don’t know where that footage is now, but it was how we initially identified the tail mark as belonging to mom.
Let’s hope romance is going swimmingly in Alhambra Creek this year too!
