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Animal Themes
Mammals
Freshwater

Beavers

Beavers
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 3 to 6
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   7.84

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    additional, barks, clamp, eyelid, farewell, hence, naturally, propel, species, vegetation, doubt, upright, mates, underwater, entire, natural

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Beavers   
1     Beavers are, without a doubt, among the best civil engineers of the entire animal kingdom! Living in rivers, streams, lakes, marshes, and swamps, beavers love to take on large-scale construction tasks. Indeed, while many animals (like bees) build homes of complex structures, no animals other than beavers ever attempt to use tree branches, stones, and mud to block the entire waterway. That's right! Beavers are specialized dam builders! Working together, members of a beaver family put up a dam to stop the water flow and create a self-made pond perfect for a new home.
 
2     A typical beaver home, called a lodge, is in the middle of the pond that forms behind the dam. It has several entrances and one central chamber (room) for nesting. The central chamber, about 8 feet wide and 3 feet high, stands a little above the water level, while the entrances are underwater. Having their doors below the surface is an ingenious idea, because most predators (like eagles and wolves) simply don't know where and how to gain access to this oval-shaped beaver lodge facing them! But, not all beavers like lodges. For beavers living in areas of many natural waterways (such as marshes), they prefer digging tunnels in banks to constructing lodges. Nevertheless, such housing still retains the clever design of keeping its doors submerged.
 
3     Once we have discovered beavers' ability to build dams and lodges, we naturally wonder, "how do beavers do it?" To answer this question, we must examine beavers' anatomy. Measuring no more than 4.5 feet long and weighing less than 90 pounds, beavers have sharp, chisel-like incisor teeth that come with a lifetime warranty. Like their other rodent relatives, beavers never need to worry about having worn teeth. That is because beavers' incisor teeth grow through out their entire life. Additionally, while most mammals use calcium to coat their teeth, beavers use iron. Iron makes beavers' teeth not only orange-colored, but also exceptionally strong. Hence, beavers have no problem using their teeth to cut down trees.

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