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How do beavers learn to build dams?
by sydthrowaway 5y ago
How do beavers learn to build dams?
- coffeefirst 5y agoLast time they were in London they had an elaborate program of apprenticeships, but these days it's mostly YouTube.
- t78623878 5y agoFailing that they can always try Stack Overflow
- andrewflnr 5y agoIt's actually damoverflow.stackexchange.com.
- unwind 5y ago*Felling. There, fixed it for you.
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoThe Worshipful Company of Beavers.
- RonaldOlzheim 5y agoCoffeefirst, I´m trying to connect with you on Linkedin. Can you please contact me? Ronald.
- dugmartin 5y agoThe dams are pretty impressive but more impressive, I think, is seeing the perfectly straight canals they dig. I saw one at least 100 feet long on an oxbow of a river when I was paddling as a teenager. It was dead straight.
- Teever 5y agoA great part of it is instinct: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DggHeuhpFvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DggHeuhpFvg I'm no expect but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some level of 'learning' and 'teaching' that goes on in groups of beavers that lead to different types of dam architecture in different regions. Beavers are really neat to me because they seem like they have the right sort of body type and proclivities to be really expert tool makers. They're one of those species that would probably take over the human ecological niche if the human species just blinked out of existence tomorrow. People always love to talk about tool-making animals like crows and chimps and that's cool but I've always been fascinated by examples of animals that build complicated and vast structures like beavers or ants and termites. It's interesting to me that we've domesticated animals for so many purposes but not for construction. Like we have domesticated animals for eating (cows), for riding (horses), for self defense/hunting (dogs) pest control (cats) but I can't think of an example of using animals for construction. I guess using grazing animals for trimming grass/scrub is maintenance which is similar. What I find remarkable about the video I linked to above is that once that beaver has it's Maslo's hierarchy of needs is met it seems to want nothing more than to collect the appropriately sized/shaped stuff to dam anything that resembles a waterway. If we could some how find some way to harness that, if we could engineer a species of animals that we fed and nourished and they would go out in the wilderness and do remediation work for us, it could potentially be so much more sustainable than using heavy equipment or other alternatives and cheaper than using human labour.
- andrewflnr 5y agoI'm still betting on racoons to replace us, but beavers are an interesting entrant in the contest.
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoI think it's a mistake to assume that any one animal species will replace us. It's much more likely that visitors to earth in a few million years will encounter beavers, squirrels, raccoons and magpies locked in a complex planetary cold war, with shifting alliances.
- jl6 5y agoIt’s probably innate, like how spiders know how to build webs. Evolution has optimized the process to the point where the algorithm is baked into the hardware.
- sydthrowaway 5y agoWhy not use animal brains for self driving cars?
- psd1 5y agoWhat kind of animal would make the best driver?
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoAnts have a very effective convoy mode.
- crakenzak 5y agoHoming pigeons would be the easiest animal to use. Incredibly well shaped by evolution for navigation. Source: https://scroll.in/article/1010703/how-do-pigeons-navigate-complex-landscapes-to-find-their-way-home-our-research-tried-to-find-out https://scroll.in/article/1010703/how-do-pigeons-navigate-co...
- Ourgon 5y agoThat depends on whether you're talking about nature beavers or nurture beavers. Nature beavers just build 'm and as such seem to have been able to massively outcompete nurture beavers, the fate of which has yet to be determined.
- Iwan-Zotow 5y agoThey watched TikTok
- jjgreen 5y agoLondon beavers won't, they'll be rifling through the bins and demanding tit-bits from little old ladies.
- rufus_foreman 5y agoSame way woodchucks learn to chuck wood.
- prawn 5y agoI assume it's a mix of an instinct to "scratch an itch" with their teeth gnawing wood (like a cat with a scratching post), and then reacting to the sound of running water and learning ways to stop it.