They are striking in their hard work, seriousness and personify order and devotion.
Man made the animal a positive hero of fairy tales and fables about the eternal values of life. You just need to distinguish between consonant words: beaver is an animal, and beaver is the name of its fur.
Features and habitat of the beaver
In the order of rodents, this river mammal is one of the largest, reaching 30 kg or more in weight. The body is squat and elongated up to 1.5 m in length, up to approximately 30 cm in height. Short limbs with five fingers, between which there are membranes. The hind legs are much stronger than the front legs.
The claws are strong, curved and flattened. On the second finger the claw is forked, similar to a comb. This is what the animal uses to comb its beautiful and valuable fur. The fur consists of hard guard hairs and dense undercoat, reliable protection from hypothermia, since it does not get wet well in water.
A layer of subcutaneous fat, which retains internal heat, also protects from the cold. The color range of the coat ranges from chestnut to dark brown, almost black, like the paws and tail.
Because of its valuable and beautiful fur, the animal was almost destroyed as a species: there were a lot of people who wanted to get a fur coat and a hat made from the animal’s skin. Eventually beaver added to the list animals of the Red Book.
The animal's tail is like a paddle, 30 cm in size and up to 11-13 cm wide. The surface is covered with large scales and hard bristles. The shape of the tail and some other characteristics distinguish the Eurasian, or common beaver, from its American (Canadian) relative.
At the tail there are wen and two glands for the production of an odorous substance, which is called beaver stream. The secret of wen is to preserve information about the individual (age, gender), and the smell indicates the boundaries of the occupied territory. An interesting fact is that beaver streams are unique, like human fingerprints. The substance is used in perfumery.
In the photo there is a river beaver
On the small muzzle, short ears barely protruding from the fur are visible. Despite the size of the auditory organs, the animal has excellent hearing. When immersed in water, the animal’s nostrils and ears are closed, the eyes are protected by the “third eyelid” and are protected from injury.
The nictitating membrane allows the animal to be seen in dense water. The beaver's lips are also specially designed in such a way that it does not choke and water does not enter the oral cavity when it gnaws.
Large lung volumes allow the animal to swim, without appearing on the water surface, up to 700 m, spending approximately 15 minutes. These are record figures for semi-aquatic animals.
live animals beavers in deep freshwater bodies with slow flow. These are forest lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, and the banks of reservoirs. The main condition is rich coastal vegetation from soft rocks, shrubs and grass. If the landscape is not quite suitable, then the beaver works to change the environment, like a builder.
Once upon a time, animals were distributed throughout Europe and Asia, except Kamchatka and Sakhalin. But extermination and economic activity led to the extinction of most beavers. The restoration work lasts until today, beavers settle into bodies of water suitable for habitation.
The character and lifestyle of the beaver
Beavers are semi-aquatic animals that feel more confident in water, swim and dive well, and on land beaver It has view clumsy animal.
Animal activity increases towards dusk and with the onset of night. In the summer they can work 12 hours. Only in winter, in severe frosts, do they not leave their secluded dwellings. Burrows or so-called huts are places where beaver families live.
The entrances to the burrows are hidden by water and lead through complex labyrinths of coastal areas. Emergency exits ensure the safety of animals. The living chamber is more than a meter in size and approximately 50 cm high, and is always located above the water level.
A beaver can build dams that can easily support a person's weight.
A special canopy protects the place on the river where the hole is located from winter freezing. The foresight of beavers is akin to the professionalism of designers. The construction of huts is carried out on flat areas or low banks. These are cone-shaped structures up to 3 m high made of brushwood, silt and clay.
The inside is spacious, up to 12 m in diameter. At the top there is a hole for air, and at the bottom there are holes for immersion in water. In winter, it stays warm inside, there is no ice, and beavers can dive into the pond. Steam above the hut on a frosty day is a sign of habitation.
For supporting the required level water and preservation of huts and burrows, beavers build well-known dams, or dams from tree trunks, brushwood and silt. Even heavy stones up to 18 kg are found to strengthen the building.
The frame of the dam, as a rule, is a fallen tree, which is overgrown with building materials up to 30 m in length, up to 2 m in height, and up to 6 m in width. The structure can easily support the weight of any person.
The photo shows a beaver hole
Construction time takes approximately 2-3 weeks. Then the beavers carefully monitor the safety of the constructed object and carry out “repairs” as necessary. They work in families, distributing responsibilities as if as a result of precise and error-free planning.
Rodents can easily cope with trees up to 7-8 cm in diameter in 5 minutes, gnawing the trunks at the base. It copes with larger trees, up to 40 cm in diameter, overnight. Cutting into pieces and towing to a dwelling or dam are carried out in an organized and uninterrupted manner.
What animals are beavers? on their farm, as can be seen from their habitat area. Not only the dwellings, but also the channels through which building materials and feed are rafted do not contain excrement or food debris.
Paths, houses, areas for construction - everything is interconnected and tidied up. A special landscape is created, which is called beaver. Animals communicate using special scent marks, sounds similar to whistling, and tail strikes.
A tap on the water is an alarm signal and a command to hide under water. The main enemies in nature are brown ones. But humans have caused enormous damage to the beaver population.
Beaver is an animal- a hard worker and connoisseur of a quiet family way of life. IN free time take care of the fur coat, lubricating it with secretions from the sebaceous glands, protecting it from getting wet.
Beaver nutrition
The diet of beavers is based on plant foods: bark and shoots of soft trees, summer period a significant part is made up of herbaceous plants.
The volume of food per day should average up to 1/5 of the animal’s weight. The rodent's strong teeth allow it to cope with various woody foods. They mainly prefer willow, birch, aspen, poplar, and less often linden and bird cherry. They love acorns, plant buds, bark and leaves.
In the fall, beavers store wood food for the winter. Warehouses are located in places under overhanging banks with special storage of supplies. This will allow you to find unfrozen willow, aspen or birch trunks under the ice in winter.
Reserve volumes can be huge: up to 70 cubic meters. for one beaver family. Special bacteria help digestion process cellulose, and beavers' incisors grow throughout their lives.
Reproduction and lifespan
Females dominate the beaver family and are larger in size. Marriage time takes place in winter time, from mid-January to February.
Pictured is a baby beaver
Gestation of the cubs lasts until May; they are born from 1 to 6, weighing approximately 0.5 kg. A brood most often contains 2-4 cubs. Beaver cubs, sighted and covered with fur, after 2 days are already swimming under the care of their mother.
The babies are surrounded by care; milk feeding lasts up to 20 days, and then they gradually switch to plant foods. For 2 years, the young live in the parental circle, and after reaching sexual maturity, their own colony and new settlement are created. Life in nature river beaver lasts 12-17 years, and in captivity it doubles.
Monogamous pairs of beavers with offspring of the first and second years of life form family groups in a populated area with its own habitat structure. Their resettlement, as a rule, has a positive impact on ecological state environment.
There are cases when beaver buildings caused erosion of roads or railroad tracks. But more often beaver wildlife enriched with clean reservoirs and inhabited by fish, birds, and forest inhabitants.
About beavers
- (Castor) - a genus from the order. Currently sole representative Beaver family. The genus Beaver is divided into two species - common beaver(Castor fiber), living in Eurasia and Canadian beaver(Castor canadensis) - in North America. Some zoologists consider the Canadian beaver to be a subspecies of the common beaver, but this point of view is contradicted different quantities chromosomes (48 in the common and 40 in the Canadian). In addition, beavers of two species cannot interbreed.
- The word “beaver” is inherited from the Proto-Indo-European language, the literal translation of this word is “double brown.”
- The word beaver, according to linguistic sources of 1961, should be used in the meaning, and beaver - in the meaning of the fur of this animal: beaver collar, clothing with beaver fur. The word beaver, however, is in spoken language widely used as a synonym for the word beaver (like fox and, ferret and polecat).
- The common beaver is the most large rodent fauna of the Old World and the second largest rodent after the capybara.
- In many Russian cities there are monuments to Beaver.
- Beavers first appear in Asia, where their fossilized remains date back to the Eocene (5-3 million years ago). Those ancient beavers are long extinct. Of the extinct beavers, the most famous giants of the Pleistocene times are the Siberian Trogontherium cuvieri and the North American Castoroides ohioensis. Judging by the size of the skull, the latter’s height reached 2.75 m and weight 350 kg. Such a beaver could compete with himself!
- Modern beavers are, of course, much smaller. Females are usually larger than males.
- The Canadian beaver weighs from 15 to 35 kg. The usual weight is 20 kg with a body length of about 1 meter. Canadian beavers grow throughout their lives, so older beavers can reach a weight of 45 kg. The common beaver has a body weight of 30-32 kg with a body length of 1-1.3 meters.
- About 15-18 centimeters of the total length falls on the tail. The Canadian beaver has a wider tail than the common or Eurasian beaver (the average width is 15-18 cm for the Canadian beaver and 10-12 cm for the common beaver).
- The beaver's tail is simply unique. It is shaped like an oar. The length does not exceed 30 cm. There is no hair on the tail. It is covered with horny plates, between which sparse hairs emerge. In the middle, along the entire length of its tail, there is a horny protrusion, reminiscent of a ship's keel.
- The beaver has two glands at the base of its tail that produce an odorous substance called beaver phlegm. Animals use it to mark their territory, and people use the substance in perfumery and medicine.
- Beavers have squat bodies. There are 5 fingers on the limbs. There are membranes between them.
- Beavers live along the banks of slow-flowing rivers, lakes, reservoirs, oxbow lakes, ponds, irrigation canals and quarries. Avoid bodies of water that freeze to the bottom in winter, as well as wide and fast rivers. It is important for beavers that soft trees and shrubs grow along the banks of the reservoir. hardwood.
- Beavers lead predominantly night look life, resting during the day in his home. The beaver's home is either a hole dug on a steep bank or a hut made of sticks and mud.
- Beavers dig their burrows in steep banks. They are quite long and represent a whole labyrinth with several entrances. In such burrows the floor is slightly above the water level. If the river floods, the animals scrape down the earth from the ceiling, and thus “raise” the floor.
- In addition to burrows, beavers build huts. They collect dry tree branches in a heap on the shallows and cover them with earth, clay and silt. A free space is created inside the heap, rising above the water. The entrance to it is made from under the water. The height of such a hut reaches 3 meters, and the diameter is 10 meters. The walls of the hut are very strong. They serve as excellent protection against predatory animals. In preparation for cold weather, beavers place an additional layer of earth and clay on the walls. In such buildings winter months The temperature is always above zero, and the water in the holes does not freeze. Beavers maintain perfect order in their homes. They never contain excrement or food waste.
- The entrance to any beaver's home is always under water.
- Beavers are excellent swimmers. They reach speeds of up to 10 km/h, pushing off the water with strong hind legs. It is quite possible that it was the beaver's webbed feet that suggested the idea of swimming fins to the inventor. The beaver's rather small front paws are unwebbed, but are armed with long, strong claws for digging. A beaver, while swimming, clenches its front paws into fists and pushes away any obstacles with them. He carries branches and clay with them, pressing them to his chest and lower jaw.
- It would seem that living among the water, such large animals would have to eat. But this is not the case at all. The beaver is a herbivore. He eats aquatic and sedge with pleasure. Gnaws the bark from poplars. And yet, young shoots seduce him more. Beavers help grind food with their huge incisors, which grow throughout their lives, and they digest cellulose with the help of special bacteria living in the cecum.
- In winter, the beaver's only food is wood, among which preference is given to willow, aspen and birch. Beavers do not come to the surface in winter, so they have to store food for the winter by dragging small wood under water. To prevent the water in the place where the beaver lives from freezing in winter, the animals build dams that raise the water level. To do this, beavers stick gnawed trunks vertically into the river bottom. They lay between them big stones and cover them with silt. Branches and tree trunks are placed as desired as the dam grows. Often the branches take root and intertwine, which further strengthens the dam. Pile branches onto the above-water part. They are held together with clay. It turns out to be a very strong structure.
- Beavers cut down trees by gnawing the trunk. The beaver gnaws through thin alder with ten bites. Typically, beavers use trunks approximately 25 cm thick. A tree this size can be cut down in one night. To do this, the beaver makes two notches on the trunk, one above the other, and between these notches scrapes out the wood with its teeth. They generally prefer soft tree species such as aspen, poplar, alder or willow.
- The length of the dam can reach up to 30 meters. It is wider at the base, about 5-6 meters. It narrows with height. The dam reaches a width of 2 meters at the very top. The height can be 3, 4, or 5 meters. History knows of cases where beavers built dams 500 and even 850 meters long. In the USA, a beaver dam was once discovered six meters high, although its length was only 10 meters. But in the state of New Hampshire, near the town of Berlin, they found a dam 1200 meters long, and 40 beaver lodges were built in the dam behind it.
- Beavers constantly monitor the condition of the dam. Minor damage and leaks are immediately repaired.
- In water, beavers mate, enter their homes and, naturally, protect their lives from predatory animals.
- A beaver can stay underwater for a maximum of 15 minutes.
- The beaver is a social animal; all beavers form families. One family usually has up to 10 individuals. These are married couples and young animals that have not yet reached puberty. The right to reproduce in a family, however, belongs only to the leading couple; the remaining individuals, after growing up, are forced to leave the group in order to organize their own colony. One family can live on the same plot for a century. The length of such a plot of land along the coast reaches 3-4 km.
- Beavers mate for life. Only death can separate the betrothed. The exception is the Canadian beaver, which may have a small harem of 2-3 females. It falls in winter mating season. Mating occurs in water. The gestation period for the common beaver is 107 days, for the Canadian beaver it is 128 days. There are from 2 to 6 cubs in a litter.
- In his free time, the beaver is constantly busy maintaining his fur in proper condition. To maintain the water-repellent properties of the fur, it must be constantly lubricated with secretions from the sebaceous glands, for which a special claw is used on the hind legs. This allows the animal not to get wet or freeze even in icy water.
- Main natural enemies river beaver are brown bears, wolves and foxes, but the most significant damage to the animal population is caused by humans.
- Cities, localities, and towns are named after the beaver. settlements, rivers. More details
Others built a miracle dam.
This, friends, is not a mirage, not a deception:
Beavers saved a caravan in the desert.
The people will not forget the brave beavers!
The glory of the beaver lives in the world.
A press conference was held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
News - beavers have appeared in Antarctica.
Instead of trees, glaciers are gnawing
These animals are tireless.
The beavers quickly spread across the planet.
We've already seen them in Tibet,
Geysers are ponded by beavers in Kamchatka,
There are beaver lodges on the Yellow River.
Even in Australia the beaver is important
I built myself a three-story tent.
There was also a message from NATO,
That there is a beaver's house on the moon.
You can't run away from beavers anywhere,
Everywhere the beaver winks from the pond.
(c) Nikolay Tyurin
And now interesting photos about the life of beavers next to humans.
As you know, beavers are kind,
Beavers are full of kindness.
If you want good for yourself,
you just need to call the beaver.
Just think, my friend, about the beaver,
you'll be head over heels in goodness.
If you are kind without a beaver,
it means you yourself are a beaver at heart!
Beavers are kind. Kinder than a beaver
You won't find an animal in the whole forest!
And, even if the forest itself is not kind at all,
The beaver is kind. I believe the beaver.
The nightingales have become sleepy,
And the owls also became numb.
Your brown favorites -
The bears were completely overwhelmed.
Where are the worlds going?!
The hunter will readily confirm,
That only beavers are kind
And the huts are made carefully.
However, in colloquial language the word beaver widely used as a synonym for beaver(How fox And fox, ferret And ferret).
Origin
The beaver has beautiful fur, which consists of coarse guard hairs and very thick silky underfur. The fur color ranges from light chestnut to dark brown, sometimes black. The tail and limbs are black. Shedding occurs once a year, at the end of spring, but continues almost until winter. In the anal area there are paired glands, wen and the beaver stream itself, which secretes a strong-smelling secret - the beaver stream. The prevailing opinion about the use of wen as a lubricant for fur from getting wet is wrong. The secretion of the wen performs a communicative function, exclusively carrying information about the owner (gender, age). The smell of a beaver stream serves as a guide to other beavers about the border of the territory of a beaver settlement; it is unique, like fingerprints. The secretion of wen, used in conjunction with the jet, allows you to keep the beaver tag in a “working” state longer due to its oily structure, which evaporates much later. longer secret beaver stream.
Spreading
In early historical times, the common beaver was distributed throughout the forest-meadow zone of Europe and Asia, but due to intensive hunting, by the beginning of the 20th century, the beaver was practically exterminated in most of its range. The beaver's current range is largely the result of acclimatization and reintroduction efforts. In Europe, it lives in the Scandinavian countries, the lower reaches of the Rhone (France), the Elbe basin (Germany), the Vistula basin (Poland), in the forest and partly forest-steppe zones of the European part of Russia. In Russia, the beaver is also found in the Northern Trans-Urals. There are scattered habitats of the common beaver in the upper reaches of the Yenisei, Kuzbass, Baikal region, Khabarovsk Territory, and Kamchatka. In addition, it is found in Mongolia (Urungu and Bimen rivers) and in Northeast China (Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region).
Lifestyle
In early historical times, beavers everywhere inhabited the forest, taiga and forest-steppe zones of Eurasia, along the floodplains of rivers reaching the forest-tundra to the north, and semi-deserts to the south. Beavers prefer to settle along the banks of slow-flowing rivers, oxbow lakes, ponds and lakes, reservoirs, irrigation canals and quarries. Avoid wide and fast rivers, as well as reservoirs that freeze to the bottom in winter. For beavers, it is important to have trees and shrubs of soft deciduous trees along the banks of a reservoir, as well as an abundance of aquatic and coastal herbaceous vegetation that makes up their diet. Beavers are excellent swimmers and divers. Large lungs and liver provide them with such reserves of air and arterial blood that beavers can stay under water for 10-15 minutes, swimming up to 750 m during this time. On land, beavers are quite clumsy.
Beavers live alone or in families. A complete family consists of 5-8 individuals: married couple and young beavers - the offspring of last and current years. A family plot is sometimes occupied by the family for many generations. A small pond is occupied by one family or single beaver. On larger bodies of water, the length of the family plot along the shore ranges from 0.3 to 2.9 km. Beavers rarely move more than 200 m away from water. The length of the area depends on the amount of food. In areas rich in vegetation, areas may touch each other and even intersect. Beavers mark the boundaries of their territory with the secretion of their musk glands - beaver stream. Marks are applied to special mounds of mud, silt and branches 30 cm high and up to 1 m wide. Beavers communicate with each other using odorous marks, poses, tail strikes on the water and whistle-like calls. When in danger, a swimming beaver slaps its tail loudly on the water and dives. The clap serves as an alarm signal to all beavers within earshot.
Beaver trail
Beavers are active at night and at dusk. In summer, they leave their homes at dusk and work until 4-6 am. In the fall, when the preparation of feed for the winter begins, the working day lengthens to 10-12 hours. In winter, activity decreases and shifts to daylight hours; At this time of year, beavers hardly appear on the surface. At temperatures below −20 °C, animals remain in their homes.
Huts and dams
Beavers live in burrows or huts. The entrance to a beaver's home is always located under water. Beavers dig burrows in steep banks; they are a complex labyrinth with 4-5 entrances. The walls and ceiling of the hole are carefully leveled and compacted. The living chamber inside the hole is located at a depth of no more than 1 m. The width of the living chamber is a little more than a meter, the height is 40-50 centimeters. The floor must be 20 centimeters above the water level. If the water in the river rises, the beaver also raises the floor, scraping soil from the ceiling. Sometimes the ceiling of the hole is destroyed and in its place a flooring of branches and brushwood is built, turning the hole into a transitional type of shelter - a semi-hut. In the spring, during high water, beavers build nests on the tops of bushes from branches and twigs with a bedding of dry grass.
Traces of beaver work
Huts are built in places where digging a hole is impossible - on low, swampy banks and in shallows. Beavers rarely begin building new housing before the end of August. The huts have the appearance of a cone-shaped pile of brushwood, held together by silt and earth, up to 1-3 m high and up to 10-12 m in diameter. The walls of the hut are carefully coated with silt and clay, so that it turns into a real fortress, impregnable to predators; air enters through the ceiling. Despite popular belief, beavers apply clay using their front paws, not their tail (the tail serves only as a rudder). Inside the hut there are manholes into the water and a platform rising above the water level. With the first frost, beavers additionally insulate their huts with a new layer of clay. In winter, the temperature in the huts remains above zero, the water in the holes does not freeze, and beavers have the opportunity to go out into the under-ice layer of the reservoir. IN very coldy There is steam above the huts, which is a sign of habitation. Sometimes in the same beaver settlement there are both huts and burrows. Beavers are very clean and never litter their homes with leftover food or excrement.
In reservoirs with changing water levels, as well as on small streams and rivers, beaver families build their famous dams (dams). This allows them to raise, maintain and regulate the water level in a reservoir. Dams are built below the beaver town from tree trunks, branches and brushwood, held together by clay, silt, pieces of driftwood and other materials that beavers bring in their teeth or front paws. If the reservoir has a fast current and there are stones at the bottom, they are also used as building material. The weight of stones can reach 15-18 kg.
Beaver Dam (Vologda Region)
For the construction of the dam, places where trees grow closer to the edge of the shore are selected. Construction begins with beavers vertically sticking branches and trunks into the bottom, strengthening the gaps with branches and reeds, filling the voids with silt, clay and stones. They often use a tree that has fallen into the river as a supporting frame, gradually covering it on all sides. building material. Sometimes branches in beaver dams take root, giving them additional strength. The usual length of the dam is 20-30 m, width at the base is 4-6 m, at the crest - 1-2 m; the height can reach 4.8 m, although usually 2 m. The old dam can easily support the weight of a person. The record in the construction of dams belongs, however, not to ordinary beavers, but to Canadian beavers - the dam they built on the river. Jefferson (Montana), reached a length of 700 m. The shape of the dam depends on the speed of the current - where it is slow, the dam is almost straight; on fast rivers it is curved towards the flow. If the current is very strong, beavers build small additional dams further up the river. The dam is often provided with a drain to prevent it from being breached by floods. On average, it takes a beaver family about a week to build a 10 m dam. Beavers carefully monitor the safety of the dam and patch it if it leaks. Sometimes several families working in shifts participate in the construction.
Beaver Dam (Northern California)
Swedish ethologist Wilson () and French zoologist Richard (,) made a major contribution to the study of beaver behavior during dam construction. It turned out that the main incentive for construction is noise flowing water. Possessing excellent hearing, beavers accurately determined where the sound had changed, which meant changes had occurred in the structure of the dam. At the same time, they did not even pay attention to the lack of water - the beavers reacted in the same way to the sound of water recorded on a tape recorder. Further experiments showed that sound, apparently, is not the only stimulus. Thus, beavers clogged a pipe laid through a dam with silt and branches, even if it ran along the bottom and was “inaudible.” At the same time, it remains not entirely clear how beavers distribute responsibilities among themselves during collective work.
A canal dug by beavers
To build and prepare food, beavers cut down trees, gnawing them at the base, gnawing off branches, then dividing the trunk into parts. A beaver fells an aspen with a diameter of 5-7 cm in 5 minutes; a tree with a diameter of 40 cm is felled and cut up overnight, so that by morning only a sanded stump and a pile of shavings remains at the place where the animal works. The trunk of a tree gnawed by a beaver takes on a characteristic “hourglass” shape. A beaver is gnawing, having climbed onto hind legs and leaning on the tail. Its jaws act like a saw: to fell a tree, the beaver rests upper incisors into its cortex and begins to quickly move the lower jaw from side to side, making 5-6 movements per second. The beaver's incisors are self-sharpening: only the front side is covered with enamel, the back side consists of less hard dentin. When a beaver chews on something, the dentin wears down faster than the enamel, so the leading edge of the tooth remains sharp all the time.
Beavers eat some of the branches of a fallen tree on the spot, while others are demolished and towed or floated across the water to their home or to the site of dam construction. Every year, walking the same routes for food and building materials, they trample paths on the shore that are gradually filled with water - beaver canals. They float wood food along them. The length of the channel reaches hundreds of meters with a width of 40-50 cm and a depth of up to 1 m. Beavers always keep the channels clean.
Nutrition
A tree nibbled by a beaver
Beaver "dining room" in an aspen forest. Ivanovo region, Savinsky district
Beavers are strictly herbivorous. They feed on the bark and shoots of trees, preferring aspen, willow, poplar and birch, as well as various herbaceous plants(water lily, egg capsule, iris, cattail, reed, etc., up to 300 items). The abundance of softwood trees is necessary condition their habitat. Hazel, linden, elm, bird cherry and some other trees are of minor importance in their diet. Alder and oak are not eaten, but are used for buildings. The daily amount of food accounts for up to 20% of a beaver's weight. Large teeth and a powerful bite allow beavers to easily cope with hard plant feed. Food rich in cellulose is digested with the participation of microflora intestinal tract. Typically, the beaver consumes only a few tree species; To switch to a new diet, it requires an adaptation period, during which microorganisms adapt to the new diet.
In summer, the proportion of herbaceous food in the beaver diet increases. In autumn, beavers prepare wood food for the winter. Beavers store their reserves in water, where they store their reserves until February. nutritional quality. The volume of reserves can be huge - up to 60-70 cubic meters per family. To prevent food from freezing into the ice, beavers usually heat it below the water level under steep overhanging banks. Thus, even after the pond freezes, food remains available to the beavers under the ice.
Reproduction
Beaver with cub
Beavers are monogamous and the female is dominant. Offspring are born once a year. The mating season lasts from mid-January to the end of February; Mating occurs in the water under the ice. Pregnancy lasts 105-107 days. Cubs (1-6 per litter) will be born in April - May. They are semi-sighted, well-furred, and weigh on average 0.45 kg. After 1-2 days they can already swim; the mother trains the beaver cubs by literally pushing them into the underwater corridor. At the age of 3-4 weeks, beaver cubs switch to feeding on leaves and soft stems of grass, but the mother continues to feed them with milk until 3 months. Grown-up young animals usually do not leave their parents for another 2 years. Only at 2 years old do young beavers reach sexual maturity and move out.
In captivity, a beaver lives up to 35 years, in the wild 10-17 years.
The impact of beavers on ecology
The appearance of beavers in rivers and especially their construction of dams has a beneficial effect on the ecology of aquatic and riverine biotopes. Numerous mollusks and aquatic insects settle in the resulting spill, which in turn attract muskrats and waterfowl. Birds on their feet bring fish eggs. The fish, once in favorable conditions, begin to reproduce. Trees felled by beavers serve as food for hares and many ungulates, which gnaw the bark from the trunks and branches. The sap flowing from undermined trees in the spring is loved by butterflies and ants, followed by birds. Beavers are protected by muskrats; muskrats often live in their huts along with their owners. Dams help purify water, reducing its turbidity; silt lingers in them.
At the same time, beaver dams can cause damage to human buildings. There are known cases when spills caused by beavers flooded and washed away streets and railroad tracks and even caused crashes.
Population status and economic importance
Beavers have long been hunted for their beautiful and durable fur. In addition to valuable fur, they produce beaver stream, used in perfumery and medicine. Beaver meat is edible; however, they are natural carriers of salmonellosis pathogens. (It’s interesting that in Catholic tradition Beaver meat is considered lean, since the beaver, according to church canons, was considered a fish due to its scaly tail.)
As a result of predatory fishing, the common beaver was on the verge of extinction: by the beginning of the 20th century, only 6-8 isolated populations remained (in the Rhone, Elbe, Don, Dnieper basins, in the Northern Trans-Urals, the upper reaches of the Yenisei), with a total of 1200 animals. To preserve this valuable animal, a number of effective measures have been taken to protect and restore numbers in European countries. They began with a ban on beaver hunting, established in 1845 in Norway. By 1998, the beaver population in Europe and Russia was estimated at 430,000.
The common beaver has a minimum risk status on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The West Siberian and Tuvan subspecies of the common beaver are listed in the Red Book of Russia. The main threat to it at present comes from land reclamation measures, water pollution and the construction of hydroelectric power stations. Detergents that pollute water bodies wash away the natural protective layer and deteriorate the quality of beaver fur.
Beavers in Russia
where the shore of the Grand Duke is adjacent to the boyars, here the beavers drive. And the beavers of the Grand Duke and the boyars and divide the beavers in the old way, but the boyars do not keep nets and rods and sedges and do not set up logs and koshes. And where the prince’s or boyar’s shore is special, but the Grand Duke’s shore did not come, then they set up logs and ladles, and keep dogs, and catch beavers as best they can.
The traces or tools left behind for catching beavers imposed an obligation on the verv (community) to either look for the thief or pay a fine. In those days, beavers were caught with nets and traps. Later, by the 17th century, the number of beavers had already noticeably decreased, and their fishing moved mainly to Siberia. In 1635, it was already forbidden to set traps for beavers. In the Trade Book of the 16th century, the usual price for a black beaver is 2 rubles. Judging by the degree of collection of duties (1586, Novgorod), beaver was approximately 1.3 times more valuable than sable, since a duty was charged for 30 beavers, as for 40 sables. At the end of the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, a dozen beavers in wholesale cost from 8 to 30 rubles. Their fur was used primarily for women's hats, necklaces, and the trims of women's fur coats, but apparently was not used for men's fur coats.
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 slow-flowing rivers, irrigation canals, lakes and other bodies of water, the banks of which are covered with trees and bushes.
Canadian
By appearance 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 numbers of 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 slow-flowing forest rivers, streams, reservoirs, and 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 severe frosts it is warm, steam flows through the openings of the home in winter - it becomes clear how beavers winter.
IN summer time rodents get food, build dams and huts. They work from dusk until dawn. The powerful sharp teeth of a beaver 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.
Beaver sunbathing
The beaver is a large rodent adapted to a semi-aquatic lifestyle. The length of its body reaches 1-1.3 m, the height at the shoulder is up to 35.5 cm, and the weight is up to 30-32 kg. Sexual dimorphism is weakly expressed, females are larger. The beaver's body is squat, with shortened 5-toed limbs; the rear ones are much stronger than the front ones. Between the toes there are swimming membranes, strongly developed on the hind limbs and weakly developed on the forelimbs. The claws on the paws are strong and flattened. Claw of the second finger hind limbs forked - the beaver combs its fur with it. The tail is oar-shaped, strongly flattened from top to bottom; its length is up to 30 cm, width - 10-13 cm. Hair is present only at the base of the tail. Most of it is covered with large horny scutes, between which sparse, short and stiff hairs grow. Up by midline the tail has a horny keel. The beaver's eyes are small; The ears are wide and short, barely protruding above the level of the fur. The ear openings and nostrils close under water, the eyes are closed by nictitating membranes. Molars usually do not have roots; weakly isolated roots are formed only in some old individuals. The incisors behind are isolated from oral cavity special lip extensions that allow the beaver to chew underwater. The karyotype of the Eurasian beaver has 48 chromosomes (the American beaver has 40).
The beaver has beautiful fur, which consists of coarse guard hairs and very thick silky underfur. The fur color ranges from light chestnut to dark brown, sometimes black. The tail and limbs are black. Shedding occurs once a year, at the end of spring, but continues almost until winter. In the anal area there are paired glands that secrete a strong-smelling secretion - beaver stream. The beaver uses this secretion to mark its territory and lubricate its fur, protecting it from getting wet.
Spreading
In early historical times, the Eurasian beaver was distributed throughout the forest-meadow zone of Europe and Asia, but due to intensive hunting by the beginning of the century. The beaver was practically exterminated in most of its range. The beaver's current range is largely the result of acclimatization and reintroduction efforts. In Europe, it lives in the Scandinavian countries, the lower reaches of the Rhone (France), the Elbe basin (Germany), and the Vistula basin (Poland). In Russia - in the forest and partly forest-steppe zones of the European part and in the Northern Trans-Urals. There are scattered habitats of the Eurasian beaver in the upper reaches of the Yenisei, Kuzbass, Baikal region, Khabarovsk Territory, and Kamchatka. In addition, it is found in Mongolia (Urungu and Bimen rivers) and in Northeast China (Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region).
Lifestyle
Beaver lodge
In early historical times, beavers everywhere inhabited the forest, taiga and forest-steppe zones of Eurasia, along the floodplains of rivers reaching the forest-tundra to the north, and semi-deserts to the south. Beavers prefer to settle along the banks of slow-flowing rivers, oxbow lakes, ponds and lakes, reservoirs, irrigation canals and quarries. Avoid wide and fast rivers, as well as reservoirs that freeze to the bottom in winter. For beavers, it is important to have trees and shrubs of soft deciduous trees along the banks of a reservoir, as well as an abundance of aquatic and coastal herbaceous vegetation that makes up their diet. Beavers are excellent swimmers and divers. Large lungs and liver provide them with such reserves of air and arterial blood that beavers can stay under water for 10-15 minutes, swimming up to 750 m during this time. On land, beavers are quite clumsy.
Beavers live alone or in families. A complete family consists of 5-8 individuals: a married couple and young beavers - the offspring of the past and current years. A family plot is sometimes occupied by the family for many generations. A small pond is occupied by one family or single beaver. On larger bodies of water, the length of the family plot along the shore ranges from 0.3 to 2.9 km. Beavers rarely move more than 200 m away from water. The length of the area depends on the amount of food. In areas rich in vegetation, areas may touch each other and even intersect. Beavers mark the boundaries of their territory with the secretion of their musk glands - beaver stream. Marks are applied to special mounds of mud, silt and branches 30 cm high and up to 1 m wide. Beavers communicate with each other using odorous marks, poses, tail strikes on the water and whistle-like calls. When in danger, a swimming beaver slaps its tail loudly on the water and dives. The clap serves as an alarm signal to all beavers within earshot.
Beaver trail
Beavers are active at night and at dusk. In summer, they leave their homes at dusk and work until 4-6 am. In the fall, when the preparation of feed for the winter begins, the working day lengthens to 10-12 hours. In winter, activity decreases and shifts to daylight hours; At this time of year, beavers hardly appear on the surface. At temperatures below −20 °C, animals remain in their homes.
Huts and dams
Beavers live in burrows or huts. The entrance to a beaver's home is always located under water. Beavers dig burrows in steep banks; they are a complex labyrinth with 4-5 entrances. The walls and ceiling of the hole are carefully leveled and compacted. The living chamber inside the hole is located at a depth of no more than 1 m. The width of the living chamber is a little more than a meter, the height is 40-50 centimeters. The floor must be 20 centimeters above the water level. If the water in the river rises, the beaver also raises the floor, scraping soil from the ceiling. Sometimes the ceiling of the hole is destroyed and in its place a flooring of branches and brushwood is built, turning the hole into a transitional type of shelter - a semi-hut. In the spring, during high water, beavers build nests on the tops of bushes from branches and twigs with a bedding of dry grass.
Huts are built in places where digging holes is impossible - on low, swampy banks and in shallows. Beavers rarely begin building new housing before the end of August. The huts have the appearance of a cone-shaped pile of brushwood, held together by silt and earth, up to 1-3 m high and up to 10-12 m in diameter. The walls of the hut are carefully coated with silt and clay, so that it turns into a real fortress, impregnable to predators; air enters through the ceiling. Despite popular belief, beavers apply clay using their front paws, not their tail (the tail serves only as a rudder). Inside the hut there are manholes into the water and a platform rising above the water level. With the first frost, beavers additionally insulate their huts with a new layer of clay. In winter, the temperature in the huts remains positive, the water in the holes does not freeze, and beavers have the opportunity to go out into the under-ice layer of the reservoir. In severe frosts there is steam above the huts, which is a sign of habitation. Sometimes in the same beaver settlement there are both huts and burrows. Beavers are very clean and never litter their homes with leftover food or excrement.
Beaver Dam (Yellowstone National Park)
In reservoirs with changing water levels, as well as on small streams and rivers, beaver families build their famous dams (dams). This allows them to raise, maintain and regulate the water level in a reservoir. Dams are built below the beaver town from tree trunks, branches and brushwood, held together by clay, silt, pieces of driftwood and other materials that beavers bring in their teeth or front paws. If the reservoir has a fast current and there are stones at the bottom, they are also used as building material. The weight of stones can reach 15-18 kg.
For the construction of the dam, places where trees grow closer to the edge of the shore are selected. Construction begins with beavers vertically sticking branches and trunks into the bottom, strengthening the gaps with branches and reeds, filling the voids with silt, clay and stones. They often use a tree that has fallen into the river as a supporting frame, gradually covering it on all sides with building material. Sometimes branches in beaver dams take root, giving them additional strength. The usual length of the dam is 20-30 m, width at the base is 4-6 m, at the crest - 1-2 m; the height can reach 4.8 m, although usually 2 m. The old dam can easily support the weight of a person. The record in the construction of dams belongs, however, not to Eurasian beavers, but to Canadian beavers - the dam they built on the river. Jefferson (Montana), reached a length of 700 m. The shape of the dam depends on the speed of the current - where it is slow, the dam is almost straight; on fast rivers it is curved towards the flow. If the current is very strong, beavers build small additional dams further up the river. The dam is often provided with a drain to prevent it from being breached by floods. On average, it takes a beaver family about a week to build a 10 m dam. Beavers carefully monitor the safety of the dam and patch it if it leaks. Sometimes several families working in shifts participate in the construction.
Beaver Dam (Northern California)
Swedish ethologist Wilson () and French zoologist Richard (,) made a major contribution to the study of beaver behavior during dam construction. It turned out that the main stimulus for construction is the sound of flowing water. Possessing excellent hearing, beavers accurately determined where the sound had changed, which meant changes had occurred in the structure of the dam. At the same time, they did not even pay attention to the lack of water - beavers reacted in the same way to the sound of water recorded on a tape recorder. Further experiments showed that sound, apparently, is not the only stimulus. Thus, beavers clogged a pipe laid through a dam with silt and branches, even if it ran along the bottom and was “inaudible.” At the same time, how beavers distribute responsibilities among themselves during collective work remains not entirely clear.
A canal dug by beavers
To build and prepare food, beavers cut down trees, gnawing them at the base, gnawing off branches, then dividing the trunk into parts. A beaver fells an aspen with a diameter of 5-7 cm in 5 minutes; a tree with a diameter of 40 cm is felled and cut up overnight, so that by morning only a sanded stump and a pile of shavings remains at the place where the animal works. The trunk of a tree gnawed by a beaver takes on a characteristic “hourglass” shape. A beaver gnaws, rising on its hind legs and leaning on its tail. Its jaws act like a saw: to fell a tree, the beaver rests its upper incisors on its bark and begins to quickly move its lower jaw from side to side, making 5-6 movements per second. The beaver's incisors are self-sharpening: only the front side is covered with enamel, the back side consists of less hard dentin. When a beaver chews on something, the dentin wears down faster than the enamel, so the leading edge of the tooth remains sharp all the time.
Beavers eat some of the branches of a fallen tree on the spot, while others are demolished and towed or floated across the water to their home or to the site of dam construction. Sometimes they dig channels in the shore through which they float wood food. The length of the canal reaches hundreds of meters with a width of 40-50 cm and a depth of up to 1 m.
Nutrition
A tree nibbled by a beaver
Beaver "dining room" in an aspen forest. Ivanovo region, Savinsky district
Beavers are strictly herbivorous. They feed on the bark and shoots of trees, preferring aspen, willow, poplar and birch, as well as various herbaceous plants (water lily, egg capsule, iris, cattail, reed, etc., up to 300 items). The abundance of softwood trees is a necessary condition for their habitat. Hazel, linden, elm, bird cherry and some other trees are of minor importance in their diet. Alder and oak are not eaten, but are used for buildings. The daily amount of food accounts for up to 20% of a beaver's weight. Large teeth and a powerful bite allow beavers to easily cope with solid plant food. Cellulose-rich foods are digested with the participation of intestinal microflora. Typically, the beaver consumes only a few tree species; To switch to a new diet, it requires an adaptation period, during which microorganisms adapt to the new diet.
In summer, the proportion of herbaceous food in the beaver diet increases. In autumn, beavers prepare wood food for the winter. Beavers store their reserves in water, where they retain their nutritional qualities until February. The volume of reserves can be huge - up to 60-70 cubic meters per family. To prevent food from freezing into the ice, beavers usually heat it below the water level under steep overhanging banks. Thus, even after the pond freezes, food remains available to the beavers under the ice.
Reproduction
Beaver with cub
Beavers are monogamous and the female is dominant. Offspring are born once a year. The mating season lasts from mid-January to the end of February; Mating occurs in the water under the ice. Pregnancy lasts 105-107 days. Cubs (1-6 per litter) will be born in April-May. They are semi-sighted, well-furred, and weigh on average 0.45 kg. After 1-2 days they can already swim; the mother trains the beaver cubs by literally pushing them into the underwater corridor. At the age of 3-4 weeks, beaver cubs switch to feeding on leaves and soft stems of grass, but the mother continues to feed them with milk until 3 months. Grown-up young animals usually do not leave their parents for another 2 years. Only at 2.5-3 years do young beavers reach sexual maturity and move out.
In captivity, a beaver lives up to 35 years, in the wild 10-17 years.
The impact of beavers on ecology
The appearance of beavers in rivers and especially their construction of dams has a beneficial effect on the ecology of aquatic and riverine biotopes. The resulting spill is inhabited by numerous mollusks and aquatic insects, which in turn attract muskrats and waterfowl. Birds on their feet bring fish eggs. The fish, once in favorable conditions, begin to reproduce. Trees felled by beavers serve as food for hares and many ungulates, which gnaw the bark from the trunks and branches. The sap flowing from undermined trees in the spring is loved by butterflies and ants, followed by birds. Beavers are protected by muskrats; muskrats often live in their huts along with their owners. Dams help purify water, reducing its turbidity; silt lingers in them.
At the same time, beaver dams can cause damage to human buildings. There are known cases when spills caused by beavers flooded and washed away streets and railroad tracks and even caused crashes.
Population status and economic importance
Beavers have long been hunted for their beautiful and durable fur. In addition to valuable fur, they produce beaver stream, used in perfumery and medicine. Beaver meat is edible; however, they are natural carriers of salmonellosis pathogens. (It is curious that in the Catholic tradition, beaver meat is considered lean.)
As a result of predatory hunting, the Eurasian beaver found itself on the verge of extinction: by the beginning of the century. only 6-8 isolated populations remained (in the basins of the Rhone, Elbe, Don, Dnieper, in the Northern Trans-Urals, the upper reaches of the Yenisei), with a total of 1,200 animals. To preserve this valuable animal, a number of effective measures have been taken to protect and restore numbers in European countries. They began with a ban on beaver hunting, established in Norway. By this time, the beaver population in Europe and Russia was already estimated at 430,000 animals.
where the shore of the Grand Duke is adjacent to the boyars, here the beavers drive. And the beavers of the Grand Duke and the boyars and divide the beavers in the old way, but the boyars do not keep nets and rods and sedges and do not set up logs and koshes. And where the prince’s or boyar’s shore is special, but the Grand Duke’s shore did not come, then they set up logs and ladles, and keep dogs, and catch beavers as best they can.The traces or tools left behind for catching beavers imposed an obligation on the verv (community) to either look for the thief or pay a fine. In those days, beavers were caught with nets and traps. Later, by the 17th century. The number of beavers has already decreased noticeably and their fishing has moved mainly to Siberia. In the city it was already forbidden to set traps for beavers. In the Trade Book of the 16th century. The regular price for a black beaver is 2 rubles. Judging by the degree of collection of duties (Novgorod), beaver was approximately 1.3 times more valuable than sable, since the duty charged for 30 beavers was the same as for 40 sables. At the end of the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, a dozen beavers in wholesale cost from 8 to 30 rubles. Their fur was used primarily for women's hats, necklaces, and the trims of women's fur coats, but apparently was not used for men's fur coats.
By this time in Russia, beavers had survived in 4 isolated territories: in the Dnieper basin (the Berezina, Sozh, Pripyat and Teterev rivers); in the Don basin along the tributaries of the Voronezh; in the northern Trans-Urals (the Konda and Sosva rivers) and in the upper reaches of the Yenisei along the river. Azas. The total number of beavers did not exceed 800-900 heads. Since then, hunting for them has been prohibited everywhere. In the city in the Voronezh region along the river. A hunting reserve was organized in Usman, which was transformed into the Voronezh State Reserve. At the same time, two more reserves were created: Berezinsky and Kondo-Sosvinsky (founder and first director - Vasily Vasiliev). Their main task was to protect beavers and restore their numbers. Since then, the first attempts to resettle beavers have begun. From year to year, 316 beavers were settled in 12 regions of the European part of the USSR and 2 regions of Western Siberia. From now on, another 12,071 beavers were resettled in 52 regions, territories and autonomous republics of the RSFSR, in 3 regions of the BSSR, in 8 regions of the Ukrainian SSR, in the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian SSR. As a result of the measures taken, by the end of the 60s, the beaver in the USSR populated an area almost equal in area to its habitat in the 17th century. The increased number of beavers made it possible to organize their commercial catch again. Now the number of beavers in Russia reaches 85-90,000 individuals.
Geographical names named after beavers
Cities
- the city of Bobr in the Minsk region of Belarus,
- The city of Bobruisk in the Mogilev region of Belarus
- the city of Bobrov in the Voronezh region of Russia,
- city of Kastoria in Greece,
- a city ("Big Beaver") in County (English) ("Beaver") in the state of Pennsylvania, USA,
- 13 cities (“Beaver”) in the USA (in the states of Iowa, Alaska, Arkansas, Washington, West Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah and three cities in Wisconsin - in Clark, Marinette and Polk counties).
Small settlements
- Bobr village in Belarus,
- the village of Novobobruisk in the Pravdinsky district of the Kaliningrad region of Russia,
- 4 Beaver villages in the USA (in the states of Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania),
- Beaver River Village (" Beaver River") in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada.
Rivers
- Beaver River in Belarus,
- 5 rivers Beaver River (“Beaver River”) in the USA (in the states of New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Utah),
- 4 Beaver Rivers in Canada (in the provinces of British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta and Yukon).
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