Beavers, the misunderstood rodent
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Beavers are and always have been very misunderstood creatures. Most people foolishly think of beavers as "those little swimming rats who eat trees." To those of you thinking like that, I’d like your home address so I can go over and slap you, you misguided simpleton. Here's one last chance to become enlightened.
Like any good modern family, beavers tend to live in families of four. Two parents and two kids. Obviously, the laws of nature wouldn't allow 3 parents and one kid (for those of you reading this who don't know what I'm talking about, why don't you go look up some other animals, such as the birds and the bees?). Baby beavers, called kits (just like kittens minus the -tens), are born with instinct and lots of it; they don't learn too much in their life. It's much more practical than the "superior" humans, who need at least 22 years to figure out how to adequately survive on their own. Kits leave the dam at the ripe old age of one, when their hormones are raging and their bodies are undergoing massive changes (if you're still confused, I once again highly recommend finding out about the birds and the bees).
Beavers are very social creatures. Helping neighboring families build dams among other things shows that beavers are more advanced than humans in yet another area. Humans usually shun and disregard their annoying neighbors, never helping them with a
dam thing, yet beavers rise above that and give 'em a hand. Now don't you feel guilty?
Being aquatic rodents, they can stay underwater for 15 minutes with a fur coat specially made for water resistance. They also have very broad, waffle-like tails which are used for propelling and, in the case of danger, slapping against the water. The slap can be heard from a mile away. Technically, it can also be heard from outer space (when you ignore the fact that sound can't travel in a vacuum), but it would be such a soft sound and take so long to get there that any beavers in outer space will have already died of the impending danger, if not of asphyxiation, by the time they figure out that bad times are a'coming. Besides, how many beavers are actually up in space anyhow? Maybe that one that was left over from that NASA expedition is still there and is now desperately trying to signal Earth. If the whole world gets a Seti@home screensaver (http://www.setiathome.com) then we might be able to save one poor beaver's life. Then again, it might not be there in the first place and a few Mhz of your computer's proccessing power will go to waste searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence instead of a beaver.
Beavers are the second largest rodents on the Earth, next to the caybara. In prehistoric times, beavers were much larger, about the size of grizzly bears. In case you didn't figure it out, grizzly bears are considerably larger than caybaras. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, caybaras.
For those of you who are slightly slower in the thought process, beavers build dams to block up water in the area where they live. The dams are built with logs, sticks, rocks, mud, clay, etc. Beavers get to eat at the same time because they eat wood. Humans create fairy tails talking about "magical gingerbread houses," yet beavers have had them for centuries. They eat some fruits and some other plants as well, but mostly wood. Woodchucks have attempted to eat wood, but they're just cheap rip-offs of the real thing and should go back to eating tangerines like good woodchucks.
Beavers down trees as if they were toothpicks. You can tell a beaver has chewed a tree if A) the top of the stump is in an upside down cone shape, or B) the beaver has some tree stuck in it's teeth. This brings us to our next point: beavers' teeth. They're very strong and always growing (the teeth, not the beaver). They're also colored orange and need to be constantly whittled down (once again, I'm referring to the teeth, not the beaver). The front teeth are the strongest and are often referred to as "buck teeth." But, to get back to main point of this paragraph (I distinctly remember there once was one), beaver dams are what they are most noted for. The longest beaver dam in existence is about 1000 feet long on the Colorado river. Many beavers died under its construction. Their deaths were not in vain as they are now martyrs of the beaver world, and many are considered saints of the dammed (For those of you slower than the rest of us, we're using "dammed" as a pun, not a typo).
Beavers live in Europe and North America, but are almost extinct in Europe due to trapping. Beaver trapping was the main reason Canada was settled, and to commemorate and give them the glorious status they deserve, Canada has decided to name it's gas stations after the Beaver. Here in the US of A, we tend to call our gas stations Texaco, Exxon, and the like because we have a fascination with the letter "X" (Probably the reason for all those odd "XXX" signs I've seen. They don't look like any gas station I've ever seen. Must be a foreign brand) But that has absolutely nothing to do with anything relevant to the main point, which I've lost once again. Ah, here it is; the point is that beaver trapping is the reason Canada was settled. A couple hundred years ago, beavers were becoming extinct in North America as well as in Europe. This trapping was done mostly by the French because beaver hats and coats were, and still are, very popular. Those French people simply can't deny fashion, the dammed murderers.
Beavers are very hardworking animals, hence the phrases "busy beaver" and "eager beaver." Every now and then you hear "busy as a bee." You’ll see, of course, that that is a fraudulent and a blatant rip-off seeing how you’ve done your required reading, correct? Those bees and those woodchucks got together one night and decided to rip off beavers. But, it never worked, and there is not yet a gas station named "bee" or "woodchuck," though there is one named "Lazy Bob's Quick Gas" in Illinois.
One final fact: beavers sometimes build canals for easy access to trees. This useless, out of place piece of trivia was brought to you by laziness and disorganization.
In conclusion, the end.
This article was written by Sridhar Ramesh, who grimmaced when writing the periods inside the quotes (go to http://www.h2g2.com/U38464 and it'll explain everything), and Thomas Romano, who didn't, but still wants a link to his H2G2 page (http://www.h2g2.com/U98945).
Like any good modern family, beavers tend to live in families of four. Two parents and two kids. Obviously, the laws of nature wouldn't allow 3 parents and one kid (for those of you reading this who don't know what I'm talking about, why don't you go look up some other animals, such as the birds and the bees?). Baby beavers, called kits (just like kittens minus the -tens), are born with instinct and lots of it; they don't learn too much in their life. It's much more practical than the "superior" humans, who need at least 22 years to figure out how to adequately survive on their own. Kits leave the dam at the ripe old age of one, when their hormones are raging and their bodies are undergoing massive changes (if you're still confused, I once again highly recommend finding out about the birds and the bees).
Beavers are very social creatures. Helping neighboring families build dams among other things shows that beavers are more advanced than humans in yet another area. Humans usually shun and disregard their annoying neighbors, never helping them with a
dam thing, yet beavers rise above that and give 'em a hand. Now don't you feel guilty?
Being aquatic rodents, they can stay underwater for 15 minutes with a fur coat specially made for water resistance. They also have very broad, waffle-like tails which are used for propelling and, in the case of danger, slapping against the water. The slap can be heard from a mile away. Technically, it can also be heard from outer space (when you ignore the fact that sound can't travel in a vacuum), but it would be such a soft sound and take so long to get there that any beavers in outer space will have already died of the impending danger, if not of asphyxiation, by the time they figure out that bad times are a'coming. Besides, how many beavers are actually up in space anyhow? Maybe that one that was left over from that NASA expedition is still there and is now desperately trying to signal Earth. If the whole world gets a Seti@home screensaver (http://www.setiathome.com) then we might be able to save one poor beaver's life. Then again, it might not be there in the first place and a few Mhz of your computer's proccessing power will go to waste searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence instead of a beaver.
Beavers are the second largest rodents on the Earth, next to the caybara. In prehistoric times, beavers were much larger, about the size of grizzly bears. In case you didn't figure it out, grizzly bears are considerably larger than caybaras. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, caybaras.
For those of you who are slightly slower in the thought process, beavers build dams to block up water in the area where they live. The dams are built with logs, sticks, rocks, mud, clay, etc. Beavers get to eat at the same time because they eat wood. Humans create fairy tails talking about "magical gingerbread houses," yet beavers have had them for centuries. They eat some fruits and some other plants as well, but mostly wood. Woodchucks have attempted to eat wood, but they're just cheap rip-offs of the real thing and should go back to eating tangerines like good woodchucks.
Beavers down trees as if they were toothpicks. You can tell a beaver has chewed a tree if A) the top of the stump is in an upside down cone shape, or B) the beaver has some tree stuck in it's teeth. This brings us to our next point: beavers' teeth. They're very strong and always growing (the teeth, not the beaver). They're also colored orange and need to be constantly whittled down (once again, I'm referring to the teeth, not the beaver). The front teeth are the strongest and are often referred to as "buck teeth." But, to get back to main point of this paragraph (I distinctly remember there once was one), beaver dams are what they are most noted for. The longest beaver dam in existence is about 1000 feet long on the Colorado river. Many beavers died under its construction. Their deaths were not in vain as they are now martyrs of the beaver world, and many are considered saints of the dammed (For those of you slower than the rest of us, we're using "dammed" as a pun, not a typo).
Beavers live in Europe and North America, but are almost extinct in Europe due to trapping. Beaver trapping was the main reason Canada was settled, and to commemorate and give them the glorious status they deserve, Canada has decided to name it's gas stations after the Beaver. Here in the US of A, we tend to call our gas stations Texaco, Exxon, and the like because we have a fascination with the letter "X" (Probably the reason for all those odd "XXX" signs I've seen. They don't look like any gas station I've ever seen. Must be a foreign brand) But that has absolutely nothing to do with anything relevant to the main point, which I've lost once again. Ah, here it is; the point is that beaver trapping is the reason Canada was settled. A couple hundred years ago, beavers were becoming extinct in North America as well as in Europe. This trapping was done mostly by the French because beaver hats and coats were, and still are, very popular. Those French people simply can't deny fashion, the dammed murderers.
Beavers are very hardworking animals, hence the phrases "busy beaver" and "eager beaver." Every now and then you hear "busy as a bee." You’ll see, of course, that that is a fraudulent and a blatant rip-off seeing how you’ve done your required reading, correct? Those bees and those woodchucks got together one night and decided to rip off beavers. But, it never worked, and there is not yet a gas station named "bee" or "woodchuck," though there is one named "Lazy Bob's Quick Gas" in Illinois.
One final fact: beavers sometimes build canals for easy access to trees. This useless, out of place piece of trivia was brought to you by laziness and disorganization.
In conclusion, the end.
This article was written by Sridhar Ramesh, who grimmaced when writing the periods inside the quotes (go to http://www.h2g2.com/U38464 and it'll explain everything), and Thomas Romano, who didn't, but still wants a link to his H2G2 page (http://www.h2g2.com/U98945).
