For thousands of years, beavers have played a key role in the numerous wild species of Eurasia. However, they were once hunted as "pests", fur sources and game meat, and even became extinct in many countries and regions. Nowadays, people have realized their importance and have begun to introduce them. Because the beaver, as an "ecosystem engineer", plays an irreplaceable role in nature and is a very valuable species.
Beavers, also known as beavers, are the largest of our country's rodents. He is fat, with a small and blunt head, a short neck and legs, and looks close to a mouse, but a beaver is much larger and much smarter than a mouse.
Beavers mainly inhabit temperate and subarctic forest river areas, and usually build their nests close to water sources to create a safe and comfortable environment for themselves. Beavers are good at swimming and diving, come and go freely in the water, and move slowly on land.
The most impressive thing is the beaver's strong teeth and construction ability, teeth to chew trees and then barrage to build dams, because of its excellent construction ability, but also known as the "animal kingdom civil engineer", has a lot of experience in architecture. Beavers have four sharp front teeth, and the front teeth grow extremely fast, which is the main tool used by beavers to live and produce.
Beavers feed mainly on plants, with young shoots, leaves, bark, and many water-dependent herbs as their food sources.
How strong are the teeth of a beaver?
According to some data, a beaver can put down a large tree with a diameter of about 13 centimeters in just a few minutes.
According to reports, the largest tree that the beaver has put down since the record is a poplar tree in Norway, which is about 20 meters high and more than 1 meter in diameter! However, the researchers believe that this is not a masterpiece of a beaver, but that multiple beavers have visited the unfortunate tree at different times at the same time.
While seeing the strength of the beaver teeth, you may have already discovered through the pictures that the beaver's front teeth are orange, right? This is not because of the personal hygiene problems caused by their "not brushing their teeth". It's because they need super strong teeth that would otherwise not be able to bite off the trunk.
Their tooth enamel contains real iron, which not only makes the beaver's teeth unusually hard and sharp, but also appears different from our orange color. The orange enamel on the front of their teeth wears out more slowly than the white dentin on the back, so the process of beavers chewing trees is more like "sharpening the knife", and the teeth are sharper and sharper.
Beaver teeth were so good at cutting wood that they became one of the tools used by early humans. It is believed that many of the oldest wooden statues were carved from tools made of beaver teeth.
Beaver's teeth, like most rodents, are constantly growing, growing about 120 centimeters a year! That's longer than an adult beaver! So if you don't want to be killed by your own teeth, grinding your teeth is almost a daily necessity.
However, although beavers are "ecosystem engineers", "civil engineers of the animal kingdom", and have sharp wood cutting tools, they are obviously not qualified "loggers". Because beavers generally start to nibble from the roots of trees, and when they chew on trees, they will break, but they can't seem to judge the direction of the trees, so some beavers are killed by the trees they have broken...
Where there are beavers, there are they build, and the levees they build are like a wetland reserve that is difficult for humans to replicate. They are born with the ability to manipulate the environment and can transform the natural environment from one state to another.
By converting trees into timber for damming, beavers have fundamentally changed the composition of woodlands, meadows and streams, creating new wetland habitats. These habitats, in turn, bring many benefits to other species, from mammals to birds, from fish to invertebrates.
Beavers provide ecosystems with a range of services, including filtering silt and water pollution, reducing the risk of flooding downstream, and increasing water retention, among others.
Of course, due to the characteristics of beaver teeth, sometimes they gnaw trees not only to build dams, but also to grind teeth, so it will inevitably cause some unnecessary death of trees, but compared with the one they can bring, it is almost negligible.