So I was minding my own business scanning headlines yesterday when THIS caught my eye,
Beavers in Chernobyl now live in trees
The 1986 Chernobyl disaster left a huge area of Ukraine uninhabitable, but wildlife still found a way to thrive. However, they were not left untouched by the effects of radiation. Chernobyl’s beaver population has taken to building its lodges in trees as a result of radioactive waterways.
Of c0urse that immediately got my attention. Because there’s one thing beavers can’t do with their big bottom heavy bodies and that’s nest in trees.
Although similar sightings were unofficially recorded by Richard Astley as early as 1987, this bizarre behaviour was only recently confirmed by scientists. On a research exhibition to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in January, members of the Forest Office of Lviv observed beavers nesting in the canopies of hardwood trees.
You might wonder how beavers of Chernobyl have adapted to an arboreal lifestyle – how the even get up to the forest canopy. In fact, they use their teeth and, as they are rodents, they regrow. This has the added benefit of gnawing them down.
The idea that beavers climb trees with their TEETH was even funnier to me. I became more attentive. I had to see when this was published and by whom. That’s when I saw the article was published two months earlier.
HMM two months. Now what was happening two months ago? May, April.
OH RIGHT! the article was published on April 1st. But since it’s basically read by a few Peta liberal types no one even objected. In the comments one hardy “Scientist” says that the photo shows a “Beaver Rat” not a true beaver, and that’s why he’s in a tree.
Scientists are fascinated by this discovery; however, they are not pleased. At the moment beavers are still building dams as they don’t spend all their time in trees. But there are worries that in the future, beavers will spend less time building dams on the ground and areas will flood the riverbanks, potentially spreading the contaminated water to other areas.
“This new discovery has changed the way we think about beavers, from their general behaviour to their environmental effects as ecosystem engineers. Is this to be a reoccurring pattern in other areas, then ecosystems will fundamentally change – we could soon start seeing ducks nesting in tree holes. Not every species will be able to adapt to the higher levels of radiation in water however; some species simply cannot change their ecology this rapidly. Real consequences of human pollution are what is observed here, not some funny animal joking around.”
Just look at the name of the researcher they quoted,
Pauline Y’Oleg.
