American Beaver

Here's an American Beaver I met on New Year's Day. (Like most of you, I spent New Year's Day looking to get some nature pictures. 😉) With a name like American Beaver, you've probably guessed that there are non-American beavers out there, and you'd be right. Eurasia has its own beavers, the aptly named Eurasian Beaver. Together they comprise the true beavers. (The beavers don't like to talk about the Mountain Beavers, which are really more closely related to squirrels.)

Relationship confusion isn't limited to Mountain Beavers either; despite being the 2 most well known aquatic rodents in North America, and despite some visual similarities, they also aren't particularly closely related to Muskrats. 

I met this beaver at the tail end of a fairly uneventful walk at Duke Island Park. As I was approaching the pond near the parking lot I saw something brown that I couldn't identify. A bush shouldn't have been that dark. My 1st (very distant) look through my binoculars made me wonder if it was a bear cub, but then I realized no cub would be that small this time of the year. As I got closer, the size had me thinking "beaver", but it wasn't until I got a rear view of the tail that I was certain I wasn't looking at a surprisingly large Muskrat.

January 1, 2023 at Duke Island Park
Photo 251773652, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here's the rear view:
It's a Muskrat if the tail is of a rat.
It's a Beaver if the tail is flat.

January 1, 2023 at Duke Island Park
Photo 251773693, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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