Critter Class Beavers

Critter Class Beavers Happy Beaver by Stevehdc December 5, 2011 MVK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X0y8hg4s-w Comment: Yea! Leave it to Beavers!! Comment: I LOVE Beavers. So cute. Comment: I like that video. It was closed captioned for the hearing impaired. HEEEEEE HEEEEE MVK: YAHOOOOOO MVK: The beaver is North America's largest rodent. Adult beavers normally weigh 40 to 50 pounds, but exceptionally large animals may weigh up to 80 pounds. They range in length from 35 to 50 inches, including the tail, which normally is about 10 inches long. Beavers have short legs, strong digging claws on the front feet, and large, powerful, webbed hind feet used for swimming. The broad, scaly, paddle-like tail is used as a rudder when the beaver swims, and also helps steady the beaver when it stands on its hind feet. Although beavers communicate principally by using whines, grunts, hisses, and a variety of nasal sounds, they will slap the surface of the water with the tail as a warning to alert other beavers of potential danger. The tail also acts as a storage organ for accumulated fat to be used as a reserve energy source during the wintertime. Per Virginia Cooperative Extension - Va Tech MVK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXwNE7x_WVk&feature=related Comment: The beaver appears to have the same face as the porcupine. Are they related? Thanks. Comment: Hi MVK! I don't think I'd want to meet up with a 90 pound beaver! Wow! Critter Class – Beavers 1 12/5/2011 MVK: Beavers are known for their natural trait of building dams on rivers and streams, and building their homes (known as "lodges") in the resulting pond. Beavers also build canals to float build materials that are difficult to haul over land.[2] They use powerful front teeth to cut trees and other plants that they use both for building and for food. In the absence of existing ponds, beavers must construct dams before building their lodges. First they place vertical poles, then fill between the poles with a crisscross of horizontally placed branches. They fill in the gaps between the branches with a combination of weeds and mud until the dam impounds sufficient water to surround the lodge. Per Wikipedia Animal Diveristy Web MVK: They are known for their alarm signal: when startled or frightened, a swimming beaver will rapidly dive while forcefully slapping the water with its broad tail, audible over great distances above and below water. This serves as a warning to beavers in the area. Once a beaver has sounded the alarm, nearby beavers will dive and may not reemerge for some time. Beavers are slow on land, but are good swimmers, and can stay under water for as long as 15 minutes. Per Wikipedia MVK: Beavers are herbivores, and prefer the wood of quaking aspen, cottonwood, willow, alder, birch, maple and cherry trees. They also eat sedges, pondweed, and water lilies.[3] Beavers do not hibernate, but store sticks and logs in a pile in their ponds, eating the underbark. Some of the pile is generally above water and accumulates snow in the winter. This insulation of snow often keeps the water from freezing in and around the food pile, providing a location where beavers can breathe when outside their lodge. Per Wikipedia Critter Class – Beavers 2 12/5/2011 Stump chewed by beaver Comment: So, what do we need to know about Beavers??? MVK: Both beaver testicles and castoreum, a bitter-tasting secretion with a slightly fetid odor contained in the castor sacs of male or female beaver, have been articles of trade for use in traditional medicine. Yupik (Eskimo) medicine used dried beaver testicles like willow bark to relieve pain. Dried beaver testicles were also used as effective contraception.[47] Beaver testicles were exported from Levant (a region centered on Lebanon and Israel) from the tenth to nineteenth century.[48] Claudius Aelianus comically described beavers chewing off their testicles to preserve themselves from hunters, which is not possible because the beaver's testicles are inside its body. European beavers (Castor fiber) were eventually hunted nearly to extinction in part for the production of castoreum, which was used as an analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and antipyretic. Castoreum was described in the 1911 British Pharmaceutical Codex for use in dysmenorrhea and hysterical conditions (i.e. pertaining to the womb), for raising blood pressure and increasing cardiac output. The activity of castoreum has been credited to the accumulation of salicin from willow trees in the beaver's diet, which is transformed to salicylic acid and has an action very similar to aspirin.[49] Castoreum continues to be used in perfume production. Much of the early European exploration and trade of Canada was based on the quest for beaver.[50] The most valuable part of the beaver is its inner fur whose many minute barbs make it excellent for felting, especially for hats. In Canada a 'made beaver' or castor gras that an Indian had worn or slept on was more valuable than a fresh skin since this tended to wear off the outer guard hairs. Comment: Hi MVK...hope you had a wonderful Monday..Hope you are still happy,happy, happy!!Beaver, was gonna ask if it was in the playtypus family, ? same kinda tails Critter Class – Beavers 3 12/5/2011 MVK: American beavers are rodents, a subgroup of mammals that includes woodchucks, chipmunks, pocket gophers, squirrels and prairie dogs. The closest living relatives to beavers and other rodents are the lagomorphs, a group that includes hares, rabbits and pikas Per animals.about.com MVK: Lagomorphs: small four-legged herbivorous vertebrates (about 60 species) with dense fur, a short or absent tail and three pairs of incisors. Per Webster Comment: Wahooo Beavers - love the way they chew. Good evening MVK and All..what a good night we are in for! MVK: Family life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beaver_2.jpg A beaver pair The basic social units of beaver social organization are families consisting of an adult male and adult female in a monogamous pair and their kits and yearlings.[42] Beaver families can have as many as ten members in addition to the monogamous pair. Groups this size or close to this size build more lodges to live in while smaller families usually need only one.[42] However, large families in the northern hemisphere have been recorded living in one lodge. Beaver pairs mate for life; however, if a beaver's mate dies, it will partner with another one. Extra-pair copulations also occur.[42] In addition to being monogamous, both the male and female take part in raising offspring. They also both mark and defend the territory and build and repair the dam and lodge.[42] When young are born, they spend their first month in the lodge and their mother is the primary caretaker while their father maintains the territory. In the time after they leave the lodge for the first time, yearlings will help their parents build food caches in the fall and repair dams and lodges. Still, adults do the majority of the work and young beavers help their parents for reasons based on natural selection rather than kin selection. They are dependent on them for food and for learning life skills.[42] Young beavers spend most of their time playing but also copy their parents' behavior. However while copying behavior helps imprint life skills in young beavers it is not necessarily immediately beneficial for parents as the young beaver do not perform the tasks as well as the parents.[42] Critter Class – Beavers 4 12/5/2011 Older offspring, which are around two years old, may also live in families and help their parents. In addition to helping build food caches and repairing the dam, two-year olds will also help in feeding, grooming and guarding younger offspring.[42] While these helping two- year olds helps increase chance of survival for younger offspring, they are not essential for the family and two-year olds only stay and help their families if there is a shortage of resources in times of food shortage, high population density, or drought.[42] When beavers leave their natal territories, they usually do not settle far.[43] Beavers can recognize their kin by detecting differences in anal gland secretion composition using their keen sense of smell.[44] Related beavers share more features in their anal gland secretion profile than unrelated beavers.[44] Being able to recognize kin is important for beaver social behavior and it causes more tolerant behavior among neighboring beavers Per Wikipedia Comment: I guess humans aren't the only ones who can store accumulated fat in their posterior region for a reserve energy source :-) MVK: The habitat of the beaver is the riparian zone, inclusive of stream bed. The actions of beavers for hundreds of thousands of years[not specific enough to verify] in the Northern Hemisphere have kept these watery systems healthy and in good repair, although a human observing all the downed trees might think that the beavers were doing just the opposite. The beaver works as a keystone species in an ecosystem by creating wetlands that are used by many other species. Next to humans, no other extant animal appears to do more to shape its landscape.[16] Beavers fell trees for several reasons. They fell large mature trees, usually in strategic locations, to form the basis of a dam, but European beavers tend to use small diameter (<10 cm) trees for this purpose. Beavers fell small trees, especially young second-growth trees, for food.

Load more