Why Do Beavers Build Dams

In the time after they leave the lodge for the first time yearlings will help their parents build food caches in the fall and repair dams and lodges. Beavers build their dams to create a pond of deep quiet water where they can build their home or lodge. To build their dam beavers choose their location and gnaw away at nearby trees and branches.

why do beavers build dams

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Because of the dramatic effects their dams have on surrounding ecosystems these mammals are considered a keystone species.

Why do beavers build dams.

Beaver dams or beaver impoundments are dams built by beavers to provide ponds as protection against predators such as coyotes wolves and bears and to provide easy access to food during winter.
These structures modify the natural environment in such a way that the overall ecosystem builds upon the change making beavers a keystone species.
The beavers do not build dams in areas with fast deep flowing rivers and streams but build dams in areas with shallow slow flowing water to prevent the blockage of the underwater entrance to their lodges by ice in winter and also to create a water body with sufficient depth to hide themselves from their predators.
Beavers and their dams play an important role in nature.

The lodge can only be entered through underwater tunnels making it extremely hard for predators to get inside.
The simple answer is that beavers build dams to deepen watercourses so that they can create lodges that can be better defended from modern predators including bears wildcats otters and other mammalian forebears with whom the beavers shared prehistory.
It seems that deep water is particularly important to beavers.
The dam slows down the flow of the river so that the beavers home does not wash away.

However beavers can become a big headache for farmers and landowners a problem well examine later in this article.
Ideally the wood falls directly into the river cutting off the flow of water.
He noted that beavers living in ponds and lakes and along rivers never build dams so this compulsive beaver barrier building business was not a result of their busy nature since non dam building beavers found an outlet for their busy ness in some way other than dam building.
Why beavers build dams.

Dam building is synonymous with beavers the ultimate aquatic engineers.
Using branches from trees they have felled these large rodents dam lakes to create moat like ponds of still water where they construct islands known as conical lodges out of timber mud and rocks.
Still adults do the majority of the work and young beavers help their parents for reasons based on natural selection rather than kin selection.
Those pieces of wood create the basic structure for the dam.

By constructing dams they create wetlands lush environments which attract fish ducks frogs and other creatures.

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