Beavers are among the largest living rodents, second only to capybaras. There are only two species of beavers—Northern American and Eurasian beavers—each boasting sealable nostrils and transparent eye membranes for submersion in underwater environments such as lakes, ponds, or swamps to survive in nature. Beavers tend to hunker down near such bodies of water because they require access for survival.
Beavers use an unusual way of marking their territories: both male and female beavers possess two scent glands at the base of their tails called castors that secrete castoreum, an oil-like material produced from these glands and used to mark territories with castoreum, creating their signature scent mark.
Beavers are predominantly nocturnal animals; most of their time is dedicated to eating and building dams to create ponds – their preferred habitat.
Are beavers wood eaters, or do they eat other things? Large-toothed brown-furred rodents with flat tails are frequently depicted gnawing away at trees, and they appear to feed on something other than wood.
What do beavers eat?
Beavers are plant-eating animals herbivores. They use trees not only as homes for living purposes but also to gain food; specifically, they regularly consume the inner bark and leaves of these trees for sustenance.
Beavers feed on the leaves, roots, and bark of aspen, willow, maple, and poplar trees. When vegetation becomes scarce, they’ve also been known to consume sagebrush. They consume some trees while using others to construct dams and lodges for themselves.
Beavers also enjoy aquatic plants such as watermelons, lilies, pondweed, and cattails in their aquatic environments, spending a lot of time there.
Beavers stand apart from other mammals because of their remarkable digestive capacity to break down plant fiber, such as cellulose. Beavers’ unique gut microbes aid them in digesting up to 30% of plant-sourced cellulose consumed as food sources.
Do Beavers Eat Wood?
Beavers do not eat wood. Instead, beavers graze on trees’ inner bark layer, known as the cambium layer, and chew out this inner layer, then discard its contents rather than eating all or part of its tree trunk or root system.
Beavers have occasionally been observed eating the softwood found beneath tree bark; however, their main diet consists of leaves and aquatic plants surrounding their new wooded homes.
Do Beavers Eat Fish?
Beavers are herbivorous creatures; thus, their diet primarily comprises woody, herbaceous, and aquatic plant life.
Beavers are strict vegetarians, avoiding all meat and animal-derived products such as honey or eggs from birds. Their diet predominantly comprises soft vegetation in summer and tree bark in winter.
How Do Beavers Gather Food?
Beavers are known for their hard work. They diligently gather food in preparation for winter. Beavers spend weeks each fall collecting sticks, branches, and debris before transporting and piling it all up in an attempt to stockpile enough bark, twigs and leaves to sustain themselves for months of cold. Put: Beavers store food during fall in preparation for colder climate winter conditions.
Studies reveal that beaver colonies require between 1500-2500 pounds of edible bark, twigs, and leaves for their needs.
How Do Beavers Eat?
Beavers typically eat branches like corn on the cob, turning and nibbling as though slicing off individual kernels with their large teeth visible through closed jaws – just as humans do!
Beavers possess flat white molars at the back of their mouths that grind food for them. They could perish if these teeth don’t wear down over time, rendering their jaws too wide open to close correctly and grind food with these back teeth.
Top 5 Foods Beavers Like to Eat
Beavers Have Evolved from Eating Aquatic Plants
Beavers are semi-aquatic animals that spend most of their time in water environments and feed off aquatic vegetation for sustenance. Beaver food during summer typically consists primarily of aquatic vegetation, while bark accounts for only approximately 10%.
Beavers feed on aquatic vegetation such as cattails, pondweed, woolgrass, and water lilies.
Beavers possess an advantage when food becomes scarce due to their access to aquatic plants. Even after winter has killed off most vegetation on land, beavers still access fresh and green vegetation for sustenance.
Beavers Prefer Soft-Green Vegetation in Summers
Beavers supplement their diet during summer by eating soft-green vegetation such as shoots, buds, and leaves of shrubs and trees in forests near their lodges.
Beavers prefer eating vegetation near the edge of water bodies and aren’t picky about what species of plant matter they consume. Staying close to the vegetation allows them to flee from predators easily while they forage for sustenance.
Tree Barks Attract Beaver
Contrary to popular belief, beavers don’t eat wood – however, they do consume from trees! Beavers feed off both cambium layers and outer bark layers from trees they feed off of, also known as cambia in Latin. Beavers will feast upon any soft underbelly of tree bark known as cambium layers to gain sustenance for survival.
Symbiotic bacteria found in beavers’ stomachs help break down cellulose found in tree bark and branches, providing beavers with fuel to power their bodies and survive in their environment. While you might think beavers will eat any tree they encounter, their preferences include eating Ash trees, Maple trees, Aspen trees, Willow trees, and Cottonwoods in particular.
Vegetables and Fruits are Beavers’ Favorite.
Beavers benefit significantly from any fruits, vegetables, or berries they find while foraging for food. Fruits and vegetables contain important vitamins and minerals essential for good health in beavers.
Beavers feed on fruits found on trees, especially apples and cherries. However, if encountered while foraging, they also enjoy snacking on vegetables with large green shoots or soft, leafy leaves as their favorite sources.
Fungi are Easy to Consume
Fungi and lichen provide beavers with essential nutrition during wintertime, mainly due to their habitually growing on tree bark. Beavers rely on this source for sustenance during cold temperatures.
Beavers quickly devour mushrooms due to their soft nature and abundance on forest floors where they hunt. Furthermore, mushrooms’ potassium-rich composition meets beavers’ salty food cravings, which also meets their desire for salty snacks.
Tips to Feed Beavers
Body size, activity levels, and seasonal conditions all play a factor in how often beavers eat. On an average summer day, an adult beaver requires between 3.5 to 4.5 pounds (1 to 2 kilograms of daily food); during the winter, this number drops significantly – sometimes dropping even below 2 pounds (0.99 kilograms per day!).
Northern beavers store their food near their lodge in deep water and cover it with layers made up of leafy branches to protect it from freezing conditions and keep their supply safe during periods of food shortage. On the contrary, beavers that live in temperate climates rarely need to store any extra provisions for survival.
These rodents typically eat in the late afternoon, and the best time to build dams and gather food is between sunset and sunrise—though within their lodge, they are free to consume food whenever it pleases them.
Food to Avoid to Feed Beavers
As previously discussed, beavers are herbivorous animals who do not ingest meat or fish; however, certain plants they refuse to destroy remain on their menus. Here’s more information on why beavers don’t consume certain species:
- Beavers typically don’t consume tree parts after destroying them. Instead, they prefer cambium (soft inner bark), feeding on cambia cells rather than more substantial parts like bark, aside from cambia cells and certain tree parts eaten directly by Beavers themselves.
- Beavers never consume alder or oak, and they serve only construction needs. Strangely enough, however, Beavers generally avoid Twinberry Cascara Osoberry Trees, most Berry Plants found within Wetlands, and Blackberry Canes, which they tend not to enjoy eating!
- Beavers will consume conifers such as fir, hemlock, Sitka spruce, and pine but do not favor eating these species of trees.
- Never assume that beavers will eat fish, meat, or meat-related products, and you they’re strictly herbivorous (vegan).
- Beavers will never consume the leftovers from your meal because they are not omnivores and because they are strictly herbivores and do not enjoy going through waste containers to find any potential threats to consume.
How Do Beavers Get Food in Winter?
During winter, the Beavers come out of their lodge and go into the water to look for aquatic plants.
Beavers are well known for their hard work, staying underwater for up to 15 minutes at a time and diving up to 7 meters below. Beavers have shown incredible ingenuity when it comes to finding food sources during winter, building lodges on the water with insulation such as tree branches to prevent the water from freezing over. To further ensure they won’t freeze over, the beaver lines the bottom of its lodge with new tree branches in autumn to make sure there aren’t any frozen areas underneath their home and to keep warm and cozy during a cold snap!
Beavers emerge from their lodge when temperatures dip below freezing and swim out through the ice to their branches when hungry. There, they feed on the buds, twigs, and buds of trees such as Birch, Willow, Alder, and Poplar shrubs but only consume the outer bark layers for sustenance.
Conclusion
Beavers are herbivorous animals that primarily rely on plant material and tree bark for nutrition, in addition to grains, fungi, fruits, and vegetables as sources. Learning what beavers eat reveals they’re strictly vegetarian animals who feed off of plants and fruits for sustenance.
Beavers have evolved to produce unique poop that they ingest later, taking full advantage of food nutrition to maximize survival. Their diet can vary from season to season as beavers consume woody vegetation as well as soft vegetation for food sources.
FAQ
Do baby beavers eat trees and leaves?
Beaver babies initially nurse from their mother’s milk for six weeks, after which other foods like leaves, bark, and inner bark become part of their diet. Other beavers in their family provide food until the young beavers leave home to explore on their own.
Do beavers eat meat?
Beavers do not eat meat as part of their diet – all beaver food is plant-based. There’s an erroneous notion floating around that beavers consume animal products as food sources, leading to widespread misinformation that these animals do so.
Do beavers eat dirt?
Beavers differ from other rodents in that they have an affinity for certain foods; unlike most rodents, beavers do not consume dirt or take anything from others’ trash cans.
Do beavers eat wood or chew it?
Although beavers don’t consume wood as commonly believed, they do still eat from trees. Beavers feed off both its cambium layer and outer bark layer – the cambium being the flexible layer directly beneath its bark layer.
What is a beaver’s favorite food?
Apples, grasses, water lilies, clover, giant ragweed, cattails, and watercress are among the many soft vegetation sources consumed by beavers, in addition to woody plants such as trees. When there’s not enough foliage around to drink, they have even been known to consume sagebrush!