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How do beavers build dams — and why?

Imagine you are building a fortress. Do you have an axe? No. Nails? No. A map? No way. Just your teeth and paws. Now imagine: you have built a building 850 meters long — that’s almost the length of 10 football fields. It can be seen from space! This is the dam that beavers built in Canada, in Wood Buffalo National Park. It was built by three generations of beaver families over 50 years.

A typical beaver dam is 20-30 meters long. A beaver works at night: with its sharp, chisel-like front teeth, it can cut down a tree in 20 minutes (a thick tree in one night). Its teeth are orange! This is because of the iron, which makes the enamel stronger than steel. In addition, its teeth grow throughout its life - they wear down from work, but they never end.

Why do beavers need a dam? There is a trick here. Beavers don't know how to run well on land - wolves and bears are waiting for them there. But in the water they are like Olympic champions: they swim at a speed of 10 km/h, they can hold their breath for 15 minutes. So they dam up the river, form a huge lake - and build their hut in the middle of it. The entrance to the hut is underwater, from the side of the lake. No predator will get there!

And beavers are heroes of nature. Their lakes save forests from fires, provide water for deer, fish, and birds. Scientists say: one beaver helps hundreds of other animals. A small builder with orange teeth holds an entire forest on itself.