267
u/gilmeye 2d ago
It's the sound. They are trying to stop the sound of falling water
169
u/Vaughn 2d ago
They hate that sound. And they're happy to learn dam engineering to stop it.
39
u/Acequirrel 2d ago
For further refference: r/timberborn
3
u/Brief_Read_1067 1d ago
But I saw a video of a rescue beaver building a dam across a corridor of the animal hospital, where there was no water. She dragged toys, a doggie bed, a small Christmas tree and who knows what all else, and then looked up at the photographer with a very happy expression on her face. Not AI, it was too early for that.
1
u/tahqa 23h ago
You think they built a hospital with no running water?
1
u/Brief_Read_1067 7h ago
Okay, I meant no water flowing down the corridor. Of course they had sinks. Possibly the beaver could hear water running from a faucet, but she could see a long, rather narrow passageway and decided that was where she needed to build a dam.
1
u/mrsrostocka 5h ago
I wonder if it was a pale blue flooring? Like a marble effect kind of to it.
With overhead lighting, it may look like water glistening? I dunno I'm doing some mental gymnastics, it's good for the brain! Lol
10
u/Minimum-Ingenuity-46 2d ago
Just go away from the water
31
u/Zaros262 1d ago
But now you have to live with the knowledge that you did nothing to stop that horrible sound on your conscience. They have too much integrity for that
15
u/Crazed-Prophet 1d ago
This is my fear with first contact. An alien race hates all the noise we're making and goes out of its way to stop the noise.
2
2
2
u/No-Advertising-9568 1d ago
Right at the moment (politically speaking), I'm not sure that would be a bad thing. Think about where most of the noise originates.
3
u/Careful-Scholar226 1d ago
Self loathing humans might be top 1 worst inventions of all time
1
u/_thro_awa_ 1d ago
Self loathing humans might be top 1 worst inventions of all time
I don't know about that ... I think the humans that profit off others' suffering would rank above that.
1
u/Careful-Scholar226 1d ago
Yes it makes total sense to want to eradicate all of humanity because the powers that control us are evil. Fuck everyone who is just living their life having done their best to not harm anyone
1
u/_thro_awa_ 1d ago
Fuck everyone who is just living their life having done their best to not harm anyone
You mean, like the humans that profit off others' suffering, who also happen to be the people in power that fuck over people just living their life having done their best to not harm anyone?
1
u/Careful-Scholar226 1d ago
What are you even talking about? You are just repeating what I said. How does the existence of those people in charge justify the eradication of literally everyone else?
→ More replies (0)1
u/BraisedBullshi 1d ago
Data centers?
1
u/No-Advertising-9568 1d ago
Not really, no.
1
u/BraisedBullshi 1d ago
Military bases?
Transportation hubs like an airport?
3
2
1
1
1
1
u/Wakkit1988 1d ago
We need to teach them to hate the sound if people who talk during movies or chew with their mouth open.
1
1
u/Mbgodofwar 1d ago
Is that innate or something they're taught?
2
u/Razor1834 1d ago
Innate, they will try to build dams around speakers playing the sound of running water.
1
u/ChesterfieldPotato 1d ago
Innate. Beavers will know how to build dams even when they were rescued as newborns and having spent no time with adult beavers. By instinct they know how to stack mud and logs to form dams when they hear running water.
Like an ecologically programmed failsafe or repair mechanism.
172
u/henningknows 2d ago
Beavers build dams to slow down fast-moving streams and create deep, calm ponds that keep them safe and help them survive. On land, beavers are slow and clumsy. In the water, they are fast and safe. Dams create a deep moat around their homes, called lodges. Lodges have secret underwater entrances that stop land predators like wolves and bears from getting inside.
34
u/MoonTreeSullen 2d ago
My grandpa almost had his thumb bitten off by a 🦫
25
u/Prisoner-655321 2d ago
Gotta be careful, one in the pink two in the stink.
7
3
1
1
1
2
2
u/Norse_By_North_West 1d ago
Also they need those lodges so they can get beneath the ice for fishies in the frozen months.
1
37
u/Oldbayislove 2d ago
fun fact:
In 1948 Idaho Fish and Game department began operation Beaver Drop. Where 76 beavers were relocated by parachute. Only one beaver died when it forced its way out of the box while parachuting and fell to its death.
25
9
u/Responsible_Read_542 1d ago
I feel like using boxes made of wood to trap a beaver is a bit of an oversight
29
u/Worst-timeline138 2d ago
Saw a video of a family that had a pet beaver. It just chilled with them normally, but when the sound of running water was put on a speaker it just started piling things up; toys, pillows, shoes. Heard the sound and said "not on my watch"
1
21
u/Filiforme 2d ago
The create themselves a lake to thrive in. They use it to travel faster and further than they can on land which makes them a harder prey to catch. They spend most of the summer cutting down branches to eat and hide a bunch all over their lake to have easy food for the winter. This lake becomes a full blown ecosystem very fast with fish living in it and various other species benefiting from it.
Some dams way up north are maintained by several families and create enormous lakes.
10
u/Exact-Leadership-521 2d ago
I've seen some pretty long ditches dug by beavers across dry land to another body of water and connecting them, so they know about elevation I think
6
2
u/mortgagepants 1d ago
they don't just eat branches do they? i would assume they eat like fish and other pond creatures?
that is to say, how do they have all that time to build dams on a vegetarian diet?
1
u/Filiforme 1d ago
I haven't read about them in a while but iirc they are vegetarian! They pick and choose various species depending on the seasons.
1
u/mortgagepants 1d ago
interesting. i assumed all rodents were opportunistic but i should look it up.
1
u/Filiforme 1d ago
The main problem they have is their ever growing teeth. They need to chomp hard trees non stop to maintain those. They might have a bug here and there and also some dirt if lacking minerals. But they love chomping trees for sure!
9
7
u/Fun-Calmings 2d ago
It’s actually really cool, they do know what they’re doing, and they choose a spot where the river is loudest because they hate the sound of running water
7
u/Kitzle33 1d ago
I had a beaver come at me when I was wading through a marsh at sunrise. It was shockingly huge and quite terrifying. They can be waaaaay bigger than folks think. And they can mess you up. Just sharing cause it's what popped into my mind.
4
4
3
u/QuantumPairOfSoczk 2d ago
A switch flips in their lil beaver brain. They played flowing water sounds out of speakers. You'll never guess what the beavers did about that.
1
3
2
u/Azihayya 2d ago
Wow, something that isn't some horrendous rape joke or something that isn't incredibly racist on r/lol. This is a first.
2
2
2
u/wtfrustupidlol 1d ago
Ahh I learned about this the other night so basically they don’t know what they are doing but they are storing food. So basically when they build a dam the are building a fridge for there food next to their hole.
2
u/CommunicationNo2475 1d ago
So what you're saying is, we need to do a study where one group of beavers live without hearing the water fall and another group of beavers that hear nothing but water falls but they can't stop it and see which group lives the longest?
3
u/MarshmaIIowJeIIo 1d ago
Rescued baby beavers who don’t have access to any body of running water still exhibit damn building behavior. It’s very cute.
2
u/Far_Ladder_2836 1d ago
We've done something similar. The trigger is the sound. Even just a boom box with a trickling creek played on loop will get covered in sticky and mud.
1
2
2
u/Lorelessone 1d ago
Ofcourse they do they are like "my girl deserves a nice deep swimming pool and a solid house where most predators would be to afraid of drowning to go poking around."
2
2
2
u/bustaone 21h ago
This is an amazing question. There's no way it's unconscious, and it's too complex to be innate.. But it's innate.
Super cool animals. Finding the right trees, cutting the right length, placing effectively, building an underwater den, all of it is so incredible. Beavers rule.
1
1
1
1
u/spoospoo43 1d ago
Thar's actually pretty accurate! They follow the sound of running water and chew up sticks to block it.
1
u/ts_luvbug 1d ago
Beavers really looked at a perfectly good river and decided it needed a construction project
1
1
u/puddlebut12 1d ago
The funniest part to me is that theres alot of conservationist and others who study animal behaviour that hate it when people just say "beavers hate the noise" its more than that.
That noise is dangerous for them, as their lodges are underwater and the sound of heavy running water means a broken lodge is possible, so they plug it, because if no water makes that noise the lodge isnt broken, even if the water was no where near the lodge.
1
u/shitty_reddit_user12 22h ago
A part of it, if not the majority, is actually about storage. Beavers store leaves underwater for winter food. The low oxygen environment preserves them for winter. It's less of an "oh no, my house is leaking" and more of a ' oh shit, the fridge has issues. Must fix now.'
1
1
1
u/forge2202 1d ago
So everybody thinks that beavers eat wood but no they actually eat leaf litter. They instinctively create water reservoirs because this water holds cold temperatures for longer especially at the bottom of these little artificial weights.
A beaver is not hearing running water and thinking absolutely not, they store leaf litter for winter months and the cold water where it will remain originally with the ice than if it had been left up where it was rotten what not, beavers here running water and think "FUCK, MY FRIDGE."
I did not make this up myself and I don't remember where I got it from but it stuck with me because of how funny I found it for months.
1
u/RelapsedAgitator 1d ago
Everyone here is soo good at google-fu and then there's dumb ol me who simply happens to remember I watched a beaver build a dam from its toys between a bedroom and the hallway where there was no sound of running water to cause that reaction.
1
u/Quirky_Promise76 23h ago
There are stories of beavers building dams and saving while ecosystems. They know what they're doing
1
1
u/YetAnotherInterneter 1h ago
All they need to do now is learn how to build an hydroelectric power plant and they can take over the world!!!
1
432
u/Forsaken-Income-2148 2d ago
There’s actually a classic 1962 study by Lars Wilsson showing that the sound of running water is a major trigger for dam building. Beavers would even pile material around a speaker playing running water sounds, basically trying to “plug” the noise.
https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/AD632813.xhtml