And everything is extremely simple. Hardworking beavers- river inhabitants. They live in water. First, they choose a place on the river that they like, most often it is shallow water. Then, very painstakingly, day after day, they drag out all kinds of twigs and sticks and build a kind of partition from them. This entire structure can be supported by silt and stones. The partition, in other words the dam, regulates the water level in the area of the beaver settlement.
The construction process itself is quite interesting. After the first layer of the dam is laid and fastened, the second, third, and so on are laid. When construction approaches the upper part of the bank, the beavers change the direction of laying the building materials. Now they lay the branches parallel to the base of the dam and across the previously laid layers.
How beavers build dams: video.
Beaver dams: photo.
Why do beavers build dams?
After we have studied the process of building dams, we will try to figure out why beavers build them. When the dam is built, the water level in this place begins to rise, thereby flooding the beavers' home. And to ensure their safety, they absolutely need this. After all, a predator, hunting for its prey, will not go into the water. And the deeper underwater the beaver’s house is, the safer it is. Beavers' homes are called lodges.
After a beaver has flooded a river bank by building a dam, marsh vegetation begins to form on that bank, providing the beavers with the necessary nutrition.
The more you learn about these unusual aquatic rodents and how beavers live, the more amazed you are at their ingenuity, hard work and resourcefulness. Nature has endowed these animals not only with strength and beauty, but also with intelligence.
Appearance
It is believed that the river beaver is the most big rodent in Russia and neighboring countries . Beaver size, or beaver length , is a little more than a meter, height reaches 40 cm. The weight of the beaver is about 30 kg.
He has beautiful shiny fur, almost waterproof. On top there is coarser thick hair, below there is soft dense undercoat. The coat color is dark and light chestnut, dark brown or black.
The animal has a squat body, short limbs with five-fingered swimming membranes and strong claws. The tail is shaped like an oar, up to 30 cm long, covered with horny scales and sparse hairs. The rodent's eyes are small, its ears are short and wide. This description of the beaver will not allow it to be confused with other aquatic rodents.
Varieties
The beaver family has only two species: the common beaver, or river beaver, and the Canadian beaver. Let's take a closer look at the types of beavers.
River
This is a semi-aquatic animal, the largest rodent in size, inhabiting old light, forest-steppe zone of Russia, Mongolia, China. They settle along the banks of rivers with no fast current, irrigation canals, lakes and other bodies of water, the banks of which are covered with trees and bushes.
Canadian
In appearance it differs from the river beaver in having a less elongated body, a short head and larger ears. The color is blackish or reddish brown. It lives throughout almost the entire United States (except for Florida and most of Nevada and California), in Canada, except for the northern regions.
It was brought to the Scandinavian countries, from where it independently penetrated into Leningrad region and Karelia.
These two beaver species have different quantities chromosomes and do not interbreed.
Habitats
It is not very difficult to determine where beavers live. Having noticed fallen trees with a characteristic cone-shaped cut near reservoirs, as well as ready-made dams built by animals, one can conclude that they are somewhere nearby. It would be great luck to come across a beaver’s home - this is already an unambiguous marker of the presence of a friendly family. They settle in forests, with slow flow, rivers, streams, reservoirs, lakes.
In the first decade of the last century, beavers in the wild could have completely disappeared in most countries of the world. Russia was no exception. Fortunately, the situation was corrected, thanks to measures taken for the protection of these animals.
The river beaver now feels free throughout almost the entire country. European part of Russia, Yenisei basin, South part Western Siberia, Kamchatka - these are the places where beavers live.
Lifestyle and habits
A beaver can stay in water without air for about a quarter of an hour. Sensing danger, the animal dives under water. At the same time, he loudly slaps his tail on the water, which serves as an alarm signal for his fellows.
Reliable protection from enemies (bear, wolf, wolverine) and frost is his carefully fortified hut. Even in very coldy it is warm, steam flows through the openings of the home in winter - it becomes clear how beavers spend the winter.
IN summer time rodents get food, build dams and huts. They work from dusk until dawn. Powerful sharp teeth beavers gnaw through, for example, an aspen tree with a diameter of 12 cm in half an hour. Thick trees can be worked on for several nights in a row. This sound of a beaver can be heard hundreds of meters away.
Nutrition
The main criterion for choosing a place of residence for animals in nature is the sufficient availability of food. The diet of beavers is quite varied.
They eat the bark of trees growing near bodies of water. aquatic plants. They love to eat the bark of aspen, linden, and willow. Reeds, sedges, nettles, sorrel and other plants are what beavers eat.
Scientists who observed their life and what beavers eat in nature counted up to 300 various plants, which serve as food for animals.
Most beavers live in families and touchingly care about the well-being of their “relatives” - they build houses and stock up on food for the winter. They painstakingly place tree branches on the bottom of the reservoir, which they eat in winter. Such reserves for one family reach ten or more cubic meters.
If, due to the river flow, it is not possible to build their “cellar”, beavers go out onto land at night to find food. They take great risks: beavers, slow on the ground, easily fall into the clutches of four-legged predators, most often wolves.
Dwellings
On high banks with hard ground, beavers dig burrows. The entrance to them is located under water. A beaver's burrow is a complex labyrinth with several holes, chambers, and entrances and exits. The partitions between the “rooms” are tightly compacted, and the inside is kept clean. The animals throw the leftover food into the river and are carried away by the current.
The name of a beaver's dwelling, which differs from a burrow, can be understood by its appearance, which resembles a small house with a sloping roof. The animal first builds one small “room” up to one and a half meters high.
Uses branches of different lengths and thicknesses, clay, grass. The walls are compacted with silt and clay, leveled by biting off protruding branches. The “floor” is covered with wood shavings. This is the beaver's hut.
As the family grows, its caring head completes and expands his living space. The beaver lodge is being replenished with new “rooms”, and another floor is being built.
A beaver's house can reach more than 3 meters in height! Painstaking work and the animal’s engineering ingenuity amazes the imagination.
Dam construction
What else surprises and delights in the way of life of animals is how beavers build a dam. They are located downstream from their habitat.
Such structures prevent the river from shallowing and contribute to its flooding. This means they contribute to the settlement of animals in flooded areas and increase the ability to find food. This is why beavers build dams.
This tactic is also aimed at increasing residential safety. This is another explanation why beavers build a dam.
The width and depth of the river, the speed of the flow determine what it will be beaver dam. It must block the river from one bank to the other and be strong enough so that it does not get carried away by the current. Animals choose where there is a convenient place to start construction - a fallen tree, a narrowing riverbed.
Hardworking beavers build a dam by sticking twigs and stakes into the bottom and filling the spaces between them with cobblestones, silt, and clay. Beaver dams must be strengthened constantly, month after month, year after year, to prevent them from being washed away. But that doesn't stop the beavers! As a result, the dam becomes stronger and bushes and trees grow on it. You can even cross it from one bank to the other.
And this is not the only benefit beavers have. The dams they built increase the water level, which is beneficial for aquatic insects and helps increase the number of fish.
Reproduction
Mating occurs in January-February. And after three months, 3-6 half-blind cubs are born. Newborns weigh only 400-600 g. They gain weight gradually while their mother feeds them milk throughout the summer. Inexperienced and weak children also spend the winter with their parents. They usually leave the parental home after 2 years.
It is known quite accurately how long beavers live. IN natural conditions- about 15 years.
Beavers are the only rodents that can walk confidently on two legs. In the front ones they hold branches, stones, and tree bark. Females carry their young in this way.
Economic importance
Beavers have long been hunted for their beautiful, valuable fur. In addition, beaver stream is used, which is used in medicine and the perfume industry.
Beaver meat is eaten. Interestingly, Catholics considered it a Lenten food. The scaly tail was misleading, because of which the rodent was considered a fish. Beaver is dangerous when eaten because it naturally carries salmonellosis.
Video
Watch a fascinating video about the life of beavers.
Beavers first build their home - a hut located on the water, and then, using the dam they built, they raise the water level in the reservoir so that the entrance to the hut is flooded with water. This will protect the animals from uninvited guests and save their home. However, this is not always to your liking local residents, for which changes in river water levels lead to adverse agricultural consequences.
Beavers can live both in water and on land. These large rodents They live on small rivers and streams on which they build their homes. In order to protect their houses, called huts, they build a dam downstream. The water level rises. Due to rising water, the entrance to the beaver houses goes under water, allowing only beavers to enter.
The floor level in the hut is always above the water level. The floor level above the water is controlled by beavers. They also monitor the water level in front of the dam. Construction material tree branches are used for the hut. Then all this is strengthened with stones, silt and clay.
The structure turns out to be surprisingly very strong and can even support a horse.
Beavers make dams on the river to raise the water level, then their hole or, as it is also called, the hut will be under water, or rather, only the entrance to it, this is necessary for safety, there are two rooms inside and it is dry there and in the one at the entrance provisions, into the second rubble, where he sleeps.
It turns out that for safety from enemies, not everyone will dive into the water to get into their home.
It seems to me that they are building dams in order to form a quiet backwater and were able to equip their houses for housing, because if there is a strong current it will be very difficult for them to move around this area.
Beavers build their dams to maintain the water level in rivers at the same level. The entrance to their burrows is under water, and this makes it much more convenient for them to hide from predators. Beavers are great, they don’t allow water bodies to become shallow.
Beavers have constantly growing front incisors, so that their teeth do not rest on the jaw and they do not walk like fools with their mouths open, they must gnaw a lot on wood, thereby grinding down their teeth. For a long time They did this aimlessly, but one day one of the beavers noticed that dams could be built from chewed trees. Everyone also liked it because after that the water spilled and it was possible not to walk but to swim. Since that time, ecologists have adopted the saying kill the beaver and save the tree.
Just as a person arranges his home so that it becomes comfortable for living, so beavers build dams on narrow flowing reservoirs with low banks, which in this form are not very suitable for the life of beavers. In such a place in its original form, beavers have no safety either in their burrows or in the water. So beavers build dams, increasing this place water level. In this way, they solve a lot of problems: ensure the safety of their homes, as well as movement, create conditions for wetland vegetation to appear on ponds, and increase the availability of food on land.
Platinum for beavers is their home - a hut. They build platinums from branches, sticks, silt, and stones. In the place where the beaver wants to build a dam, he gnaws trees on both sides, which fall into the water, forming a dam. By the end of summer, the beaver stores up food for the winter and places a large number of branches near the hut. The beaver species is in danger of extinction due to the value of its fur.
Beavers build their own houses - huts. To protect against enemies, the entrance is placed under water. But they can’t build in water, so they raise the level of the reservoir by building a dam to flood the entrance to the hut.
The beaver needs a dam to raise the water level. If the water level rises, then the depth of the reservoir where beavers live will increase. This is how a deep dam is created so that in winter it is at an acceptable temperature for these cute animals.
Beavers build their house, or hut, on the very shore or in a dam, where it is shallow. Beavers build dams using their unique teeth, the four magnificent front incisors.
Beavers build dams to change direction water flow rivers. They do this so that the water will flood other places and form a pond where the beavers will build a home for themselves. Their house is also called Khatka.
Beaver. Both species have similar habits, appearance, habitat. The only difference is that the common beaver inhabits the Eurasian continent, and the Canadian beaver inhabits North America.
Previously it was believed that the Canadian beaver was only a subspecies of the common beaver. However, later studies showed that they differ in the number of chromosomes - the common beaver has 48, the Canadian beaver has 40.
The beaver is one of the largest rodents in Eurasia - its length varies between 90 and 130 cm, the Canadian beaver is slightly smaller. The weight of the animal reaches 35 kg.
The beaver's body is elongated, covered with thick dark, sometimes black, fur. Beavers are good swimmers; on land they are much less agile. The membranes between the toes and the long flat toes help them move in the water.
Another interesting adaptation for aquatic life in the beaver is the isolation of the incisors from the rest. oral cavity, which allows the animal to chew underwater without fear of choking.
Beaver dwellings
Beavers settle on the banks of reservoirs with dense vegetation along the banks, most spending time in the water. Beavers have two types of dwellings: burrows and structures called huts.
Beavers dig burrows in steep banks. Usually this is a central living chamber and an extensive network of passages ending in several exits. It is noteworthy that the exit is always organized under water to protect the home from predators.
Huts are built where digging holes is impossible - on swampy soil, low banks or shallows. The hut is a conical structure made of brushwood with a base diameter of up to ten meters and a height of up to three. The walls of the hut are reinforced with clay.
Inside the hut there is a room above the water level and several exits. Air enters the home through a small hole in the ceiling. The entrances, just like in the burrow, are located under water.
Thus, beavers need a fairly deep body of water to protect their homes. If the depth of the stream or river is not enough, dams are built.
Platinum
To maintain the water level in the beaver town, rodents build dams. The building materials are tree trunks, brushwood, and sometimes stones. The structure is held together with silt and clay. A drain is installed at one edge of the platinum.
The record for the length of the dam belongs to Canadian beaver. In the northern US state of New Hampshire, a dam more than 1200 meters long was discovered.
The usual size of platinum is 20-30 meters in length. The width at the base is 4-6 meters, at the top - 1-2 meters. The height of the structure is usually about two meters.
Beavers closely monitor the constructed dam. In case of damage, the animals repair the structure, since the safety of the entire settlement depends on it.
Everyone knows that beavers are excellent builders: they build such perfect dams from fallen trees that even some experienced hydraulic engineers might envy their designs!
Beavers engage in construction in order to make their way to their homes easier - huts located near bodies of water with fast currents. Having blocked the water with a high wall formed from several trees and large quantity branches, beavers weaken the current (create a backwater) and, as a result, completely unnoticed by many predators hunting them, they can swim up to their own house, where it is also convenient to store food supplies.
Also, by creating such artificial ponds with the help of platins, they create conditions for the appearance of thickets of wetland vegetation in the backwaters. Plantations of lush green food will soon become good help in the feed ration and balance of the animal.
Beavers build dams by gnawing the base of trees, after the beaver gnaws a tree, it falls down and forms the base of the dam. Except large trees Beavers use smaller trees to build dams. Beavers strengthen the dam with tree branches, stones and clay.
After the dam is built, the beavers build their lodge. A beaver's hut is an entire engineering structure, although it looks like a pile of branches. It is made entirely from tree branches and soil. Using tree branches and clay to build a hut, beavers arrange it in such a way that only another beaver can enter it; for this purpose, the size of the entrance to the hut is strictly controlled by the beaver during construction.
The hut has the appearance of a cone-shaped pile of brushwood, held together by silt and earth, up to 1-3 meters high and up to 10-12 meters in diameter. There is an access hole in the ceiling of the hut fresh air and light.
The entrance to the hut is made at a depth where the water does not freeze even in severe frosts. Inside the hut is a chamber 40-50 centimeters high and 1 meter wide. At the bottom of the chamber, a den is made, lined with wood chips, twigs, wool, and dry grass.
In a beaver hut, beavers sleep, store food supplies and raise beaver cubs. The beavers' home also helps them protect themselves from enemies and wait out the cold season.
Interestingly, the record for the longest dam construction belongs to those beavers who live in North America. Particularly large hydraulic structures of these animals are observed where their activities are not disturbed by humans. According to the observations of biologists, in US nature reserves there was a beaver den 230 meters long and about 70 meters wide. But an even larger dam of these rodents was found on one of the rivers of this continent. The length of this structure was 652 meters. This dam is, without a doubt, the product of several generations of beavers; it took several decades to build.
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