KNOWLEDGE BASE

In Norway, researchers tracked 25 beavers to understand their movement patterns in relation to territory size and age. They found that beavers with larger territories traveled farther, spending more time patrolling and foraging closer to the shoreline than those with smaller territories. Older beavers tended to spend more time near territory borders, likely due to a boldness which comes with experience.

This study examined the Eurasian beaver population in Switzerland, revealing that they came from two different genetic groups. Overall, the population had low genetic diversity was observed and the study showed that individuals up to 50 km apart were closely related. No evidence of North American beaver presence was found.

The genetic trace of West Siberian beavers had been found in the population of beavers in Austria, even though these two places are separated by over 3,000 km. This study looked at different types of genetic information to trace this back to a single female beaver which was brought to a Russian nature reserve in 1958.

This study measured and statistically analysed the skulls of male and female beavers from three different parts of Russia: one being a surviving 'relict' population and two being reintroduced populations. The text reported on the measurements and analysed the differences between the different populations. In general, it was found that overall skull length depended on how much the rostral part (the area around the nose) of the skull grew.

In March 2015, a long, thin woodchip was found lodged into the jaw of an adult beaver from Germany. Despite being almost 6cm long, this piece of oak did not appear to be holding the beaver back: it was still able to gnaw wood and had only slight inflammation. No previous reports of similar injuries in beavers existed at the time of writing.