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 37 a beaver family DHJanzen100911.jpg high resolution
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The result of trapping an entire family of beaver in one night with leg-hold traps and strange beaver castor on mud pies on the banks of an oxbow lake of the Mississippi River in March in central Minnesota. The two victims on the right are 2-year old beaver of about 35 pounds each. The 65 pound large female on the left was about to give birth to six beaverlets (there is no word for newborn beaver, so I made one up). Next to her is the 55 pound colony male (her mate for life, unless she dies, and vice versa). In the center is a 50 pound unmated female, who was most likely an auxiliary mate to the colony male, a female who would have given birth only in some years. About the time that the colony mother would have given birth (April-May), the colony would have driven out the two 2-year-olds (really, about 1.5 year old), who would have wandered solitarily for tens to hundreds of miles up and down the river and its tributaries in search of a mate and a good site to begin a colony (either a bank den in a large river, or a small pond that could be dammed and would have ample food along the banks of what would become the pond). |
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