The following is my translation of an article called: Beobachtungen über die Lebensweise des Bibers von W-y-n. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1909, Heft 3, Seiten 70-74. The original article is complete with two extremely attractive illustrations, and readers are invited to draw their own. I'm not aware of any previous translation.
Trevor Dykes.

Observations on the lifestyle of the beaver by W-y-n

The largest representative of the species rich family of the rodents, the beaver, is almost extinct in cultivated Central Europe. The reasons for this, apart from the loss of forest and thus habitat, are in the value of its fur and especially particular glandular secretions, which count as expensive medicaments and are dearly paid for as Bibergeil or Castoreum. Its earlier range in Germany can be reconstructed by using place and family names, Biberbach in Württemburg, Biebrich on the Rhein, Bibra in the Province of Saxony, Bober, Bobersberg, Boberfeld in Silesian, Boberka in Galicia (beaver = (Biber in German) Bober in Slavian). Now, it can only be found in Germany in the areas mentioned below, but it also occurs in Russia and, as I learned from a hunting newspaper, Bosnia. The colony housed by the Fürst Schwarzenberg on his possessions in Southern Bohemia, which was displayed at the Vienna World Exhibition of 1873, has since -despite protection against predators, died out. The only area left with these interesting rodents is the Saale, near where it joins the Elbe, and in the vicinity of Magdeburg.

Roughly midway between the Elbe towns of Barby and Schönebeck, the river divides near the village of Ranies into the Stromelbe, which is kept navigable for shipping by the so called Buhnen ('stages') running horizontally to the banks, and the so called Altelbe, an arm of the river to the right and north dammed with a weir at the village of Pretzin, and this weir is only open by high water. The left bank of the Stromelbe and the whole island between the two arms of the river are dyked by 2-3m high dams, and these run parallel with the course of the river. The island now contains the Royal Prussian Oberförsterei Grünewald. This consists entirely of broadleaf forest: oaks, elms, alders, poplars, willows and various bushes at the lower levels. The forest contains many small ponds, named Kolke in the local dialects, which are thought to be the remains of former beds of the Elbe prior to the regulation of the river, and here and in the Altelbe can still be found the beaver, and this is largely thanks to a cabinet order passed by Kaiser Wilhelm I which ensured protection for wildlife in the Oberförsterei Grünewald and the state controlled hunting grounds of the Stromelbe. Thanks to these rules, the beaver population has increased over the years, and neighbouring territories have been populated by emigrating beavers to such a degree, that it was eventually necessary to reduce their numbers in order to protect the forest and, more particularly, the Elbe dykes, which were used by the beavers for the construction of lodges.

During my ten year stay in the area, this background enable me not only to observe the beaver and its progeny in the Oberförsterei Grünewald, but also to bag some in parts of my own hunting grounds, which lie on the left bank of the Stromelbe. The strongest example I despatched weighed 30kg.

The following are some of my own observations and experiences, which may well be of interest to the lover of natures and the hunter. As has already been stated by various other authors, Meyrinck D from Winckell, Brehm and others, the beaver only lives in burrows on raised banks of ponds and river courses, and then builds a large pile, which one can term a lodge, and it will occupy that once it is secure against high water. I had the opportunity to inspect a number of these burrows and all had been constructed in a similar way, in that the entrance always lay under water. There were also branches of 2-3m length, with the strongest end in the tunnel and the other end hanging out free into the water like a flag, and these allow the beaver to dive several metres from the burrow, and then reach its burrow unseen. The tunnel ascends to a chamber dug fairly close to the level of the bank, and this has an opening for ventilation covered by cut brushwood, a very clever method, as the burrow can only be entered from beneath the water with access from above being impossible.

The beaver first leaves its burrow with the fall of dusk, and this is about the time that wild deer emerge from the thicket to browse, which once provided me with the interesting sight of two does and a strong stag swimming though the Altelbe with a beaver, about 2m behind the stag, swimming in the 'keel water', as I watched this meeting from no more than 30-40m distance. Both animals may stay together for a long time, as they do not take the least notice of one another. I only once had the chance to observe a dam, and this was when a pair spent every night consistently blocking up the drainage channel for a rural road, which was designed to allow flood water to run off during the spring and, during their nocturnal labours, the beavers undid all the work put in over the day by road workers. I watched as they built their dam with earth, and this led to the myth of a beaver using its tail (Schwanz in German even in the slang of hunters) as a mason's trowel.

Once I was able to closely follow, by a favourable wind, a strong beaver through the undergrowth close to the bank of a pond, and I was watching it from such close quarters, that my next step could have been onto its tail. During the entire period of observation, more than five minutes, it made a forwards chewing movement like a ruminating cow and, as was clear to recognise, the teeth of the lower jaw landed sometimes in front of and sometimes behind the teeth of the upper jaw. As it took no food, this activity of the chewing apparatus is to be understood as a filing process for its very sharp and strong gnawing teeth. These gnawing teeth, which can reach more than 1cm across for adult specimens, with the front face decorated with orange-yellow enamel, must grow very quickly to compensate for the strong erosion caused by 'cutting' and, while the teeth only extend for some 3cm above the gum, the complete length of the lowers is 10-12cm including the root in the jaw, while those in the upper jaw form a new semicircle with a diameter of 5-6cm and, with a prepared beaver skull, they may be removed from the teeth alveoli like a crooked sabre from its sheath.

The damage beavers can cause is shown by illustration 2, which I photographed in the vicinity of the aforementioned village of Ranies. In order to gauge the thickness of the silver poplar, the picture includes a line representing a metre. The large trunk, the stump of which can be seen to the left of the photograph, has a diameter of 75cm. The beaver only cuts through such thick trunks in order to get the thinner branches, the bark of which it eats. When it has cleared the willows close to its burrow, the bark of which it prefers in all circumstances, it will undertake swimming tours far afield, so as to obtain its food. It understands how to fell large trees so that the tree crown will always fall into the water or close to it, and manages this by always cutting deepest on the side of the trunk facing the water. I made a further interesting observation in the company of the now deceased Revierförster Schadow in Ranies: each night we removed the wood debris so as to observe the progress of wood felling. Suddenly the cutting ceased; a northeasterly wind had arisen, and that could have caused the trunk to tall to the side away from the Kolk; as the wind sprang back to a southwesterly, busy cutting work recommenced and, 3 days later, the trunk lay with its crown in the water.

Despite their solidity beavers will also tackle oaks, and I once found a thigh thick oak lying on the ground with 3 freshly cut oak stumps, just as thick, in the area. The beaver had cut the branches into pieces with 1-2m lengths, and carried them to its burrow. Thinner willow had been cut to a size of half to three-quarters of a metre, and the bark had been cleaned off, and the traces of its work could be recognised from afar by the pieces of de-barked willow lying around.

As can be recognised from the roughly 3cm diameter lumps and the stomach contents of captured beavers I investigated, food consists almost solely of tree bark, and especially willow. Very occasionally, I also found tender shoots of reed, which had presumably been enjoyed as a snack for their sweetness.

Unfortunately, I then had no knowledge of the interesting beetles whose larvae live on beavers, and therefore did not examine the furs of hunted beavers. Should high water enter the bank burrow, then the beaver will desert it, search for a higher area of bank, cut and carry in willow and camp on this pile after setting up a construction of chippings on top of it, so that the beaver can remain unseen. In one year, when the high water of the spring persisted for a particularly long time, there was such a lodge which had a diameter of 3m at its base and a height of 2m, and it was built with a gently ascending ramp on the side away from the current, and this caused more than a little annoyance to the basket weaver who had rented this area of willow. Should the water climb even higher, then the beaver constructs a kind of raft by packing cut wood, as a platform, onto as strong a willow bush as required by this camp. If disturbed, then the beaver crashes into the water with a loud noise, and dives while only breaking the surface for air, so that its presence would only be revealed by a coincidence. It was on rafts such as this that I was most often able to kill a beaver with a bullet. Once, I heard the sound of a beaver crashing into the water, so I remained standing silently under the cover of an oak, and waited for a few minutes until the animal climbed back onto its raft, shook itself and wanted to enter the lodge until stopped by my bullet. I fetched a canoe, and was very astounded to find a large otter rather than the beaver. However, the beaver, which I had undoubtedly heard earlier entering the water -the otter glides in noiselessly- was shot by a fried at the same place.

Beavers copulate breast against breast, as could hardly be otherwise given their physical build, and this has been described by Eymouth and Eringer, and while I have not directly observed this myself, I have nevertheless found an interesting clue which confirms it in the following way: My fired W. shot a bullet at a beaver, which lay on an already mentioned raft, and asked me to search for it as he was unable to do so. Cut hairs and a clump of fat were sticking to the raft, and this, and the flight trajectory of the bullet towards thin willow branches between the raft and the bank, told me that the beaver must have taken a shot across the breast. On another day at the same place, I shot at a large female beaver, and she had a strongly dried clump of flesh sitting in her fur while, from me, she had received a chest shot. Without doubt, and despite its wound, the male had mated and pressed the fat from his wound into the fur of the female.

The behaviour of beavers in the event of strong frost is very interesting. Pack ice does not hinder their swimming in the Stromelbe. They make sure to keep an exit open near to their burrow. In one year, while I was observing as a strong frost occurred which caused the water level to sink, there were a number of thin ice plates stuck fast between the willows. A beaver had its home in this conglomeration of ice, and a number of passages had been made between the upper ice layer and deeper water, and there were a few exists on the bank and 6-8 round holes located about the small island which the beaver knew to keep ice free, in that it came up from beneath newly formed ice and broke through it with its head, spreading ice splinters, where they formed a frozen wall around a large hole with a diameter of 30 to 40cm. If the beaver were scared, then it could escape unnoticed into deeper water, and always find safe holes to snap some air without leaving safety.

As a conclusion come two more incidents which, although they have nothing to do with the lifestyle of the beaver, are well worth mentioning: On a walk along the bank of the Elbe with my friend W. early in the year, we came across an otter track leading to a deserted beaver residence of the type described above. We set an otter trap but did not catch an otter. In the meantime came the spring's high water, and both of us had to depart for elsewhere. After our return, the leaseholder of fishing rights explained that he had found a beaver caught in the otter trap but, due to concerns about being bitten, he had not dared touch it. He hung the trap on his canoe and took it to town. Nobody there wanted to accept the thing because of worries about breaking the laws on beaver poaching from the Stromelbe, and the poor animal was carried here and taken there until it perished.

The other incident happened near Barby. A cat was kept in a fisherman's house on the banks of the Elbe and, as was usual, its kittens had been drowned. Some days later, the cat brought a recently born beaver home, and keenly took on the role of its mother, and this was despite damage inflicted on her by the sharp beaver teeth whilst suckling. Unfortunately, the beaver was taken from her in order to raise it safely, and this promptly resulted in its demise. That cats act out such unnatural maternal love has often been observed; but the choice of a beaver may well be unique!

As an aside, my hunting dog once got involved in a fierce struggle with a young beaver, and only let it go upon reception of a sharp bite in the front paw.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive
kosmostranslations.htm

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.