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Beaver | |
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| Kingdom | Animal |
| Phylum | Chordata |
| Class | Mammilia |
| Order | Rodentia |
| Family | Castoridae |
| Genus | Castor |
| Species | canadensis |
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Description of the Beaver |
| For an adult beaver they are 22 to 27 inches long. It's weight is 30 to 68 pounds. It has five toes just like us and its hind feet are webbed. Also the second toe on each hind foot has two claws. It has two ears that are short. Beavers have two kinds of hair. They have the (inner hair) that is short soft hair that is reddish and light brown and longer (outer hair) tough hair that grows through the (inner hair) and is dark brown. Its tail is 12 to 16 inches and is broad with black scales. They also have two incisor teeth that never stop growing and has four rootless molars. They also have a pair of transparent eyelids. |
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The habitat of the beaver |
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The beaver lives in streams, rivers, marshes, ponds,
and lakes. They live in lodes of mud and wood that they made.
They live in colonies.
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| To create a habitat, beavers build a dam in a stream, flooding an area of the woods and creating a pond in which the beaver can build a lodge. The lodge is located away from shore and has an underwater entrance. That makes it difficult for most predators to enter the lodge. In winter, the water around the lodge usually freezes, protects the beaver almost completely. Some beavers live by rivers and do not need to build dams. Instead, they live in burrows that they build on the river bank. |
 http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/mammals/BeaverMap.gif |
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Range |
| Other than Vermont the beaver lives in all of North America except for extreme north parts of Canada, deserts of the south west of the United States, Mexico and Florida. |
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| The beaver is a herbivore. It eats the bark off of the poplar, aspen, birch, cherry, willow, maple and alder. It's favorite foods are the aspen and pond weeds. In the winter, the beaver eats mostly bark stored at the bottom of the pond. Some of the beavers predators are the lynx, wolves, foxes, otters and hawks. |
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The beavers life cycle |
| The beavers are born in May and June. The gestation period is about 107 days. They can swim within a few hours of being born. They are weaned at one month old. At two they are forced out of the colony and can also reproduce. Beavers live to be about 12 to 20 years old. |
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Survival |
| To survive the beaver needs a source of water with trees surrounding the water. The beavers are hunted by humans for their pelts. Other wise they don't have a lot of predators. Some of the beavers predators are the lynx, wolves, foxes, otters and hawks. |
http://www.cof.orst.edu/cof/fr/research/win/yellowstoneimages/beaver.jpg |
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Interesting facts |
| 1.They can close their nose and ears while under water.
2.The largest beaver ever recorded was 110 pounds. 3.Beavers can stay underwater for fifteen minutes. 4.They can also cut down a tree in five minutes. 5.The average speed for them swimming is five mph. 6.They also have a pair of transparent eyelids. |
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http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/faculties/SS/GEOG/Virtual/Animals/beaver.gif |
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The human impact on the beaver |
| Humans are the most dangerous threat to beavers. Beavers were nearly extinct but the there was a law that people can only hunt beavers one month a year. A wide variety of factors can disrupt a beavers natural ecosystem. Most often, disruption and destruction of the natural river environment is a result of human activity. Pollution, physical alterations, removal of native vegetation, hunting, deforestation and unmanaged recreational activities share most of the cause of the human impact of the humans on the beavers . |
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Works
Cited Anderson,
Rebecca .Animaldiversity. 2002. 22 Jan. 2004 <http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/index.html>.
"Beaver."
World Book. 2002nd ed. Chicago: World Book Inc., 2002.
Forseth, Alan. bcadventure. <http://www.bcadventure.com/adventure/wilderness/animals/beaver.htm>.
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