Why do beavers eat trees ? You are familiar with the classic tongue-twister that asks, “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” However, instead of woodchucks, let’s substitute beavers and ask “why.” This is the article for you to read if you want a digestible yet accurate explanation of the reasons why and the process by which beavers tear down trees.
Why do beavers eat trees ?
The beavers fell the trees in order to make their food source more accessible, to prepare a place to live, and to store fat for the winter. The lodges and dams that they construct also serve as a shield against both natural and human-based dangers. In general, it takes a beaver around 8 minutes to chew through the trunk of a fully grown tree.
Before we continue our discussion on why do beavers eat trees ?(and how exactly they do it), let’s take a closer look at what exactly a beaver is.
What Is A Beaver?
The beaver is a huge rodent that lives in semi-aquatic environments and has a long tail that helps it swim. It also has strong teeth that enable it successfully break down trees.
Castor is the genus that contains these animals, and within that genus, there are two kinds of beaver that are most frequently encountered: the Eurasian beaver and the North American beaver.
According to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, the protective coating on a beaver’s teeth causes them to look orange, and this covering allows the beaver’s teeth to continue growing throughout its lifetime. This is most likely due to the fact that they consume such large amounts of wood and would otherwise entirely wear out their teeth if they continued to do so.
Beavers have front paws that are clawed and can be utilized more readily to travel on terrestrial surfaces, whilst their rear paws are webbed and much more analogous to those of an aquatic animal. This allows them to live in both the water and on land.
Beavers are capable of swimming at speeds of up to 6 miles per hour, which is almost three times as fast as the typical human swimmer. This may come as a surprise to you (though Olympians sometimes swim at a similar 5-6mph.) When they are on land, these animals have a more clumsy gait due to the fact that their front paws are clawed while their bigger, webbed hind paws are used for walking.
Be assured, however, that the beaver’s incredible speed and lung capacity more than make up for whatever difficulty they may have when living on land. We would venture to suggest that the beaver’s ability to swim underwater for around a quarter of an hour is far longer than that of the great majority of other rodents.
Beavers have vision that is not nearly as good as other rodents, therefore they rely on their whiskers and ears to help them feel out (and essentially ‘hear’ out) their surroundings. This is something that comes in useful due to the fact that the dams and lodges that beavers make are not only safe but also extremely gloomy.
Because of the thickness of the wooden walls that make up a beaver’s home, it is possible that the beaver is oblivious to the passage of time during sunset and morning. It is fortunate for beavers that they do not have exceptional vision because their burrows almost definitely would not provide them with adequate visibility even if they did.
Additionally, in contrast to the tails of the vast majority of other rodents, beaver tails are rather wide. Depending on the species, beaver tails may be shorter and broader or longer and more slender, but the fundamental shape of the tail is pretty consistent.
