Beaver: an overview of the teeth, strength and influence of this beast (12 photos)

Labor and brains made a man out of a monkey. And work and teeth made the beaver the most powerful rodent on the planet! The small beast cuts down centuries-old trees, creates ecosystems, cuts out power to entire settlements, and can even kill a person. And all thanks to four incisors.





Here they are, beaver feeders!

Our heroes are rodents; their incisors have no roots and grow throughout their lives. All representatives of this order of mammals need to grind their teeth on hard food. But only beavers have made their incisors so hard that they grind down the wood of trees faster than it wears down their teeth.



If a beaver doesn't wear down its teeth, they will turn into this.

Research shows that an adult beaver weighing 30 kilos can drop a tree with a diameter of 40 centimeters in just 1 work shift, from 10 pm to 6 am. And his teeth are in no danger at all! Even more than that, daily grinding of teeth is necessary for him.





But such a tree can take an animal more than one week. But he can handle it!

The secret of the effectiveness of the beaver biting apparatus is hidden in the special structure of the teeth. On the front they are reinforced with a thick layer of enamel - the strongest substance that animals have come up with. Even our tooth enamel is not inferior in hardness to quartz, and in beavers it is additionally reinforced with iron. It not only makes teeth stronger, but also reduces the likelihood of caries by tens of times!



The brown plane of the tooth is the same impenetrable enamel. It is costly to the body, because in the wild nature there is no iron lying around on the road. But according to the beavers, it's worth it.

And at the back, the teeth consist of ordinary dentin, which wears off much faster than enamel. But this is not a bug, but a feature. Thanks to this structure, the teeth do not turn into flat stumps, but retain a sharp working surface. All that remains is to use it correctly.



Hello, will you provide wood? Soft like bread!

And here, too, there are secrets. Simply gnawing on wood is terribly ineffective; dam builders are doing it smarter. They stick the upper incisors into the wood and begin to move the lower jaw from side to side at a speed of 5-6 movements per second. This kind of work requires insanely strong jaw muscles. They are so powerful that rodents can bite through people’s arms and legs without any problems; there have been precedents.



It's not just the beaver's jaws that are strong. The animal weighs up to 30 kilos, so it carries branches and trunks to the construction zone without any problems.

The beaver is not very mobile, so it relies on its powerful jaws to defend itself. And it does this for good reason; deep bites are extremely painful and take a very long time to heal. In rare cases, the rodent can even hit a vital artery, and then the person will die in a few minutes.



This is private territory! Get out, or I will be forced to use edged weapons!

Fortunately, this doesn't happen often. Beavers only attack if they perceive an immediate threat to themselves or their home. Which is not surprising, since a home is the most important value for a rodent. The superb teeth and jaw musculature would be nearly useless without the final ingredient: natural engineering talent. Using trunks, branches, earth and silt, animals build huts and dams that can last 150 years!



The inside of a beaver house is not very complicated. A couple of underwater entrances and a single interior room. Only the walls of the hut are so strong that only bears, people and large ungulates can damage them!

Moreover, the dwelling has a modular structure, it can be expanded throughout the life of the beaver family. On average, the length of the fencing structure is no more than 100 meters. But record-breaking beavers manage to create truly large-scale buildings: huts with diameters of 10-12 meters and dams up to 850 meters long!



The most painfulThe largest beaver dam on the planet is in Canada. Local animals have turned a small river into a huge reservoir!

To build competently, it is not enough just to cut down the forest. You need to choose the right place, distribute responsibilities between family members. Someone will work at the logging site, someone will caulk the walls with silt and dirt. Other beavers will be responsible for carrying out repairs: eliminating ducts, strengthening rotten structures.



Yes, this “hut” will be bigger than my apartment!

Yes, it's a lot of work, but the result is worth it. Ordinary and unremarkable streams and rivulets turn into reservoirs rich in life. Beavers create a new ecosystem in which aquatic plants sprout in abundance - a favorite delicacy of rodents. It turns out construction and farming in one bottle!



Luxurious house with a swimming pool in the middle of virgin nature!

But the construction plans of animals are not always agreed upon by human settlements. Rivers with altered beds flood cities and villages, and fallen trees fall directly onto power lines, cutting off power to populated areas. Even if the dam is destroyed, the rodents will set off in a friendly team to repair their creation.



If you suddenly thought that demolishing a beaver dam would not cost anything, we are attaching this photo.

It has not yet been possible to solve this problem: the foreman from the rodent side does not come to negotiations. But for humans, this situation is extremely eloquent: the beaver is the only animal that can clearly show what it’s like when your house is demolished in order to build your own.