Sugar Land Chiropractors | Playing the Devils Advocate?
This content was written for Restoration Health Chiropractic.
Beavers are very interesting creatures. Unless one spends lots of time in the wilderness among rivers and streams then you are not likely to see a beaver. These unique animals spend much of their time building their homes. The staff at Sugar Land Chiropracts enjoy studying beavers.
The scientific name of a beaver is Castor canadensis. They are considered mammals and are herbivores. Beavers live in a colony. They live to be about 24 years of age. Their head and body measure between 23 to 39 inches. Their tails are between 7.75 inches to 12 inches. Beaver generally can weight up to 60 pounds.
Beavers are known to be busy animals and have great engineering skills. Not only will beavers live in dams but when sites are available they will burrow in the banks of rivers and lakes.
Their ability to shape their environment is certainly impressive. The structures they build are called dams. This is probably because they can stop or reroute the flow of the water. However, there are many other interesting facts about beavers. The staff at Sugar Land Chiropractors find beavers to be quite interesting.
During the Ice Age beavers were known as Castorieds and resembled their modern descendants. Although they did not have the characteristic flat tail, they were considered giants. They averaged approximately eight feet long and weigh about 200 pounds. They lived a semi-aquatic life.
Beaver secrete a goo that smells like vanilla and is an FDA approved natural flavoring. The chemical is called castoreum and comes from a beaverís castor sacs. It is secreted as a brown slime with the consistency like molasses. It has the smell of musky vanilla.
A beaverís dam can be vey large. In fact, the largest beaver dam stretches about 850-meter think. It was discovered in the wilderness of northern Alberta after being spotted by a satellite in 2007. Scientists think that this dam was built by multiple generations of beavers. Explorer Rob Mark became the first person to ever reach the dam. The staff at Sugar Land Chiropractors would enjoy seeing a beaverís dam even if it were not the biggest dam ever built.
It is interesting that beavers are monogamous. Dams are usually started by a young male looking for his mate for life. A whole beaver family will live together in a dam. A family of beavers consists of the father, mother, young kids and yearlings.
In 1948 new human inhabitants of western Idaho began to be overwhelmed with the beaver population. The Idaho Department of fish and Game wanted to put these threated beavers in a nearby protected area. However, they had no idea had to get the beavers to this area. Elmo Heter who worked for the Idaho Fish and Game came up with a plan to transport the beavers to their new home. He used surplus parachutes from World War II and dropped boxes of beavers from planes. There were 76 beavers that made the skydive into the protected basin. All beaver except for one arrived at the basin alive. The staff at Sugar Land Chiropractors find this an amazing way to transport the beavers to the new location.
An unusual fact about beavers is that their front teeth are orange. For beavers to gnaw through tree trunks to build their dams they need extra-strong teeth. Their teeth enable contains iron which make them not only strong but very shar and very orange. Because orange enamel on the front of their teel wars away more slowly than the white dentin on the back teeth, a beaverís teeth self sharpens as he chews on wood. The Sugar Land Chiropractors find this fact to be interesting.
There are many reasons why beavers build dams and Sugar Land Chiropractors find this to be of interest. One of the reasons why beavers build dams is that the lake behind it will grow deep enough to ensure that is does not freeze all the way during the inter. This bit of temperature controls is especially crucial because beavers anchor a food cache to the bottom of the lake to serve as sustenance during the winter months.
Most people are fascinated by a beaverís tail and the staff at Sugar Land Chiropractors is no exceptions. A beaverís tail is oversized and leather. It can grow up to 15 inches long and six inches wide. The tail is useful to beavers both on the land and on the water. When swimming a beaver uses his tail as a rudder. They also use their tails as a siren by slapping it against the water to warn other beavers of a predator. When on dry land, the tail acts as a prop to allow the beaver to sit upright or as a counterbalance so he does not tip over while carrying heavy supplies in his teeth.
Until recently the last mention of a beaver sighting in England came in 1789 when a bounty was paid for a beave head in Yorkshire. By that point, the once po=prolific beaver had dwindled due to over-hunting for their valuable pelts and medicinal glands. For hundreds of years, the species disappearance from Great Brittan made everyone there to believe they were extinct. The staff at Sugar Land Chiropractors were pleased to hear that they are not in fact extinct in England. Recently a retired environmental scientist documents a family of beavers living near his home. Although beavers are making a comeback on the continent their population is not estimated to be about 300,000. British official is concerned that the ecosystem has changed too much to accommodate the beavers.
For this mammal to live a semiaquatic life, beavers utilized a host of adaptions that help them navigate the water. Nose and ear valves shut to keep out after while submerged and nictitating membranes or transport ìtheir eyelids act as goggles One of the most useful things about a beaver is their lips which are located just behind their front teeth. The allows the beaver to transport building materials and food without drowning.