Historically, beavers have been hunted for their fur, meat, and castoreum. Beavers can also recognize their kin by their anal gland secretions and are more likely to tolerate them as neighbors. Beavers hold territories and mark them using scent mounds made of mud, debris, and castoreum-a liquid substance excreted through the beaver's urethra-based castor sacs. After their first year, the young help their parents repair dams and lodges older siblings may also help raise newly-born offspring. Adult males and females live in monogamous pairs with their offspring. Their infrastructure creates wetlands used by many other species, and because of their effect on other organisms in the ecosystem, beavers are considered a keystone species. Dams restrict water flow, and lodges serve as shelters.
They are herbivorous, consuming tree bark, aquatic plants, grasses and sedges.īeavers build dams and lodges using tree branches, vegetation, rocks and mud they chew down trees for building material. Beavers can be found in a number of freshwater habitats, such as rivers, streams, lakes and ponds. The two species differ in skull and tail shape and fur color.
They have stout bodies with large heads, long chisel-like incisors, brown or gray fur, hand-like front feet, webbed back feet, and tails that are flat and scaly. Beavers are the second-largest living rodents, after capybaras, weighing up to 50 kg (110 lb). There are two existing species: the North American beaver ( Castor canadensis) and the Eurasian beaver ( C. fiber populations in Mongolia and northwestern China, as well as reintroduced populations in the United Kingdom) īeavers (genus Castor) are large, semiaquatic rodents of the Northern Hemisphere. canadensis populations in Europe and Patagonia, but missing C.
Range of the living beavers as of 2016 (including introduced C.
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