Something Wild Beaver Studies - labor and social roles

[00:00:00]is this is something that is absolutely unknown to science and that is how do beavers have a division of labor? How do beavers go about working together collectively in a group to accomplish the goals that they want to accomplish?

[00:00:13]And you know, instinct plays a role to a part, but one of the things that we've found here is that beavers are born with a specific uh personality or or sort of a work interest. And we're following them as they grow and we're finding that many of these things persist from the time that they start, you know, exercising some of these behaviors until when they get older. A lot of these interests continue and so we're hoping that just by through the raising these babies and watching them grow, uh we can, you know, start to understand division of labor and how beavers, um you know, make up their mind when it comes to how to get a job accomplished. So, we are getting better at identifying male and female beavers. Um I have been somewhat successful with just feeling on the outside, palpating, um to be able to tell, um you know, male from female.

[00:01:07]Getting better and feeling a more more confident about that. We also, obviously, can shoot x-rays and x-rays will tell us if it's male or female.

[00:01:15]Um but the better we get at that and the better we can we can, you know, um quickly say this is a male, this is a female, we're going to start learning if there are any differences when it comes to behavioral patterns and interest and jobs and work, male versus female beaver.

[00:01:35]And ideally, this could be something that we are able to identify so strongly that even when you're observing wild beavers, you can have a pretty good idea if you're looking at a male or a female beaver. And that's something that would be really, really helpful and useful when it comes to, you know, better understanding the social life of beavers. So, but we're able to do that here and um we're able to start looking at that. And, it that's going to take time. It's going to take data because beavers clearly they all work, male or female. They all have, you know, those types of approaches and interest.

[00:02:13]Um they all territory mark, they scent mark.

[00:02:18]This is something that we're going to get better at over time. The more beavers that come through, the more that we understand, the more we're going to be able to see these patterns emerge, if there are any. And, there may not be. Um these are things that's that's a potential as well. Um but, for now, we know, you know, with Tulip, Stormy, Sprout, Windy, and Willow, we have a pretty decent group of females here. Um and then, of course, we have Blossom, who is the only known male at this time cuz we don't know what the babies are just yet.

[00:02:46]And, so we have a pretty good idea of watching Blossom as the only male, seeing some of the behaviors and approaches that he does, particularly towards the new kits, it's pretty different. Um we also see him um interacting with Tulip differently than Sprout interacts with Tulip. And, so we're learning a whole lot just through that observation. We also have a senior beaver. That's Stormy Rose. Stormy Rose is what appears to be an older beaver.

[00:03:15]Beavers live for 25 years in the wild.

[00:03:18]And, that means they can live, you know, they potentially could live even longer in a human care situation with that care and things like that.

[00:03:26]We know that they fuse their bones when they're 12 years old. And, so we know that Stormy, based on her x-rays with her fused bones, she's somewhere between the age of 12 and 25.

[00:03:37]So, some of the questions that we are asking when it comes to Stormy is is she still reproductive? Does she still have a cycle? These are things that, you know, through observation and potentially one day testing uh hormones, we can identify. Is there a scenario where uh a beaver gets of a certain age where they are no longer reproductive?

[00:04:02]In in some social animals, I I do not like the term these animals are they go through menopause. Menopause is a very human-based condition.

[00:04:14]And animals, however, there are scenarios where older females who have value in the social group through you know, through through knowledge that has been learned over the years, who may no longer be reproductive, and no longer reproductive does not necessarily mean that and I'm going to get a little science-y here. As a reproductive physiologist, I tend to go off on a rant, but reproductive um doesn't necessarily mean that they're no longer cycling. It could be a situation where we do see in older animals where their hormones, although they're still still going, still functioning, still keeping that animal uh you know, going as far as everything that hormones need cuz need to do.

[00:05:05]Hormones play such a huge role regardless of uh in you know, to just strictly reproduction.

[00:05:12]Estrogens, testosterones, all of these things are serving a purpose throughout the physiological system. So, in for example, I've studied older dolphins, and I see that these older dolphins can still have hormonal cycles. However, they don't usually get pregnant.

[00:05:30]And I see this as some kind of a failure at some point down the line where they're no longer able to, you know, implant an embryo, no longer able to carry a pregnancy for whatever reason.

[00:05:42]And nature helps and biology helps take care of this. And so, as an animal ages, it may not be in their best interest to carry a calf or baby if if they are you know of that age where their energy needs to be put towards something else.

[00:05:56]So, any animal that's able to put energy towards their social life, towards territory, resource guarding, sharing knowledge, helping babysit kits, and things like that. That's something that that does play a really important role.

[00:06:13]So, with Stormy Rose, we can ask that question of okay, is this is this something that might be happening in beavers? And it's something then we could, you know, bring to you know, a colony of wild beavers and take a look and see exactly, you know, what's what's happening in there. And being able to identify male versus female from a behavioral standpoint could be something that would be really useful whenever we're making these observations.