Originally posted by soundtrack
can i order a beaver with a side of beaver and beaver?
Starting out life, kits, or baby beavers, are born to parents who have probably been together for years. Beavers are known to mate for life, and with a life span of about eight years, (there have been those aged as old as nineteen years) a male and female will produce many litters of kits throughout their lives. Beaver mothers are often kept busy, as they often have both a new litter and a ‘teenage’ litter from the year before underfoot. Kits are able to swim almost immediately at birth, but are not usually swimming about daily until about a month old, and with an average litter ranging from two to four kits, and some litters as large as eight, this alone is much work for the mother. When the kits are between three and six months old, mother beaver starts to wean them. With a new litter soon to be on the way, this is necessary for both her health, and the health of the new litter. Only as a kit reaches two, or two and a half years old, and his mother is again expecting does he move out on his own. His first accomplishment that he sets out to do will be to find his own mate. Together, they will move onto a new area and build their own den, or it has been known that an addition to the main lodge be added on, making a sort of ‘condominium’ for the new couple. That a beaver is family oriented is obvious.
Originally posted by drunk_nazgul
you should be a science teacher, so everyone would hate you.
Everyone already hates me, so why would I need to work harder?
A beavers den, or lodge, will be built on a stream or slow moving river. Even after seeing one up close, it still amazes one to know that an animal built it. Constructed of timber, commonly aspen and birch saplings, they felled and moved themselves is a feat in itself. Together with mud and stones, they will build a lodge that can last for many years. I have heard that a beaver can rebuild in a matter of days a lodge that was destroyed, but to build new will take a pair about a week for an average sized lodge to be completed.