A beaver is busy building its home on a river in Vermont. It uses its sharp teeth and strong jaws to chop down trees and branches. It’s building a dam out of trees, mud, and rocks.
Dams help keep beavers safe. They stop the flow of water, creating ponds that surround where the beavers live. The ponds provide the beavers with protection from predators like wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions. On land, beavers cannot move fast enough to escape these animals. But beavers are powerful swimmers. They use their flat, paddle-like tail and webbed feet to move fast in water. As long as a dam keeps the area flooded with water, beavers can make a quick escape.
If a dam starts to leak, beavers work quickly to fix it. “They swim back and forth, gathering material to stop the leak,” says Kim Royar, a biologist at the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department. “They keep the dam so strong that it will often last 10 to 20 years or longer!”