How Do Beavers Build a Dam | SLICE
Beavers build dams that are designed to endure bad weather and high waters using logs, branches and stones. Impoundments are crucial for the species as they provide ponds as protection against predators. This advantageous skill is passed on from generation to generation and the beavers of the wet grassland of Wyoming are certainly no exception to the rule.
Extract from the documentary: "Animal Builders"
Direction: Lucas Allain
Production: ZED, France Télévisions, Ushuaïa TV & CuriosityStream
SLICE wants to fill up your curiosity!
Accessible to anyone from anywhere at any time, this channel is your weekly dose of short docs about curious facts, discoveries, astounding info, unusual stories, weird, fun and instructive. Be smart, have a slice!
Subscribe now ►►► / @slicedocumentary
Follow us 👇
Facebook: / slicedocs
Instagram: / slicedocs
Crazy how beavers just see a river flowing and go “well someone has to stop this”
People come up with the best comments I swear
Stolen comment
Theif
Lmfaooooo so true tho
Leave it to beaver
Yo beavers are inspirational af. Your life collapses in front of you and you just keep building? Props to you, mr. beaver.
This should have a million likes!!!!
DOPE ANALOGY!
Beavers are my spirit animal 🦫
Their brains are chemically hard-coded to not give a shit
beaver scream
Look at his tiny hands and how he places rocks with them lol, just adorable.
i knowwwwwww right!
Beavers have no right to be the adorable.
@@mehlessmidori602 What have they done to you?
Might be adorable but man I will be pissed if he starts chapping down my trees.
@@aqeel-3771well there not your trees to begin with assuming you didn’t plant them
I had to notch beaver dams for an old job. Felt terrible doing it so I only took out a bit. Came back the next day and it was repaired, so I notched it a little more. On the third day it was repaired again and I was convinced this animal had day laborers and power tools. With plenty of time and materials to be safe for the winter, i opened that dam right down to the bottom of the pond. On the 4th morning, I found the dam reinforced with two cement blocks and a sheet of plywood. I’m waiting to run into her at the Home Depot at the pro services counter. Nicely done beaver, sorry for the trouble.
that seems like a fairly Canadian experience
Ahhh yes, the modern confusion, and yet back in the real world girl beavers don't build dams.
Nah plywood rotts, it must've been cement board.
Lmfao
::a very very annoyed beaver is sitting there on the 5th day holding a running chainsaw:: "Sir, i need to have a conversation with you about your actions the last few days."
Building another shelter plus having to find a wife in only two months,boy,his hustle is better than mine 🤣
HAHAHHAHA
And we call ourselves smart and beautiful.
Beaver lifemogged me
Inspirational🙏🦫
Really hard working.. he no dey play
"His survival now depends on his ability to design and *flips page* build his territory"
haha i noticed that
2:30 - at least the page-turning sound wasn't included.
Clever editing.. ☺️
Lmao! ya it felt like that
I think about this comment a lot
I remember seeing a video of a rescue beaver who couldn’t be released into the wild, and it started taking objects from around the house and gathering them together in piles. The instinct to build a dam is so strong, I’d imagine they would feel more stressed if they weren’t ever able to build a dam than they would be if their dam was swept away and it had to start all over again.
Yes! That's JB the Beaver! I love their videos.
The children yearn for the mines and the beavers yearn for the dams
Wasn't JB the Beaver the wonderful little guy that stole the Christmas tree to make his indoor dam across the house hallways? That really made me laugh, watching him pull an artificial 4 foot Christmas tree down the corridor! 😊
@@snowysnowyriver this exact video of JB brought me to youtube and to this video right here
@@Glennisalezbian Beavers are addictive......it doesn't take much to become a Beaver Believer! 🙂👍
I don't even know why I am crying 😭. Protect this animal at all costs.
I've been sent to collect your organs, it's the cost of protecting this animals. You dyin on this hill?
@@jakesmerth1919 take all my organs bro.. but promise that you'll protect these animals...
@@stinkyoldmonk8982 beavers are delicious and i mean that in every sense of the words "beaver" and "delicious."
@@jakesmerth1919 okay . ...So what is your point?.
@@stinkyoldmonk8982 Fuck the beavers and the other animals can fuck themselves
The way the narrator says "The damn gives way :)" breaks my heart. Poor little beaver. I hope get got his dam built and started his family
@NotLife River Creep
Dam ,not damn
He’s doing well! Children are all grown up now
@@jasonantigua6825 Yeah. They're in the third grade now.
why is it more motivational than any TEDtalk I've seen?
Because TED is a cringy worthless "talk", mostly talentless people
Because its real.
If beavers were human they would be capitalists. A Democrat can't build anything in life.
Because tedtalks are 99% full of people who are full of shit - and much worse than them is the audience who claps like sheep.
Cause there is an example which you see by ur eyes, not just talking
Hooman : We need architect , mason, interior designer to built a house Beaver : Hold my branch !!
Their so tenacious it’s actually inspiring to watch how intent they are to constantly be working their like the ants of the mammal world.
That’s a good way of looking at them I’m high rn and it makes so much sense woah lol 😆
@@mod19899haha nice bro! Gotta love the revelations
I've never really much interest in beavers before but they are now one of my favourite animals. I never realised how cute they are too!
08:05 "Rebuilding is a question of survival and giving up is not an option" one of the best quotes. That means we can learn a lot of things from nature, that's why I Love Nature.
We are nature. Humans are not separate from nature.
@@paradiso4562 The fact that we can make distinctions between what is/isn't nature places us outside nature imo.
@@Z0mb13ta11ahase Existence is nature. It's impossible to step outside the boundaries of the natural world because we exist inside it. Nature isn't just trees and oceans.
@@paradiso4562 I disagree. We observe nature. Our bodies are natural sure but our minds (the thing we consider "us") only observe some false projection of "reality" nature is the totality of everything as one thing. As soon as you view yourself as separate from everything else you disconnect from nature. Again, in my opinion.
@@Z0mb13ta11ahase I agree to an extent that we are disconnected from nature mentally. But you could also argue that everything that exists in the universe from our bodies to our thoughts and even the creations we invent are all naturally occurring. It seems impossible to actually be outside of nature. Sure we live in climate controlled buildings, get our food from grocery stores, and drive around in 2 ton death machines. But That doesn’t make what we do unnatural. It just seems unnatural because we aren’t a benefit to the ecosystems we live in like basically every other living species.
While humans are fighting wars, beavers are busy building a utopian society
True.
We need to look to the beaver. We tend to mimic the carnivores of the world because that's also what we are.
@@axelfoley1406 u know a beaver is a herbivore right?
@@quindekock2505 woosh
@@jidieo1157 it wasn't a joke but yh he did miss the point lmao
I wanted to cry when his dam broke. What a courageous beaver. Very resilient. I am impressed with his home. My first dwelling after letting the parents get rid of me was not as nice as this beavers.
the way he carries the stones in his little webbed paws is too adorable XD and i felt so bad when his dam broke. so much work only to be swept away, that's so frustrating :(
this is so damn smart. everything about their skills is just unreal.
*dam smart
@@TheKaiserHeld 💀
Just the way the Creator designed them ❤️
@@Xinthose Creator? No way, this perfect animal was made by big bang haha
@@Xinthose Why didn't he make humans this happy and simple huh
Now he understands why the previous owners left the area. The place is prone to strong current
Wasn't in their contract
@@patrickallenpimentel3062 yep they definitely got fkd over probably didn't include that small detail in the ads
@michaelgonzales5599 yup. Heard the beaver went back to school and got his degree. He's doing extremely well
It is amazing how one beaver can build something so well that it take 10 men and modern heavy equipment to take it apart
why do i literally want to cry. beavers are too wholesome.
Love how he got back up and went back to work after all that. No complaining no giving up but got right back to it.
No complaining at all, he's clearly not French.
@@wuw385 or German
Probably was complaining on his IG or Facebook page but as you don’t have him on your friends list you can’t see it!
@@anthonyr587 You should see his problematic tweets.
I've noticed ants are the same way... damage their mound and they just get right back to work rebuilding it... nature sure is resilient.
People wonder how we built the pyramids so long ago but beavers come out the womb as master carpenters.
A beaver moving sticks and twigs does not compare to the moving of giant stones hundreds of miles before the advent of heavy machinery. And it doesn’t even hint at how that was done.
@@boataxe4605 Manpower!
carpenters, engineers, architects,
@@boataxe4605 Slaves. They used slaves.
Sometimes due to the madness of life you forget to stop and appreciate a certain creature like the beaver. What an amazing animal.
I almost teared up when his dam broke. So amazing these beavers are.
I really admire the animal's perserverance!
Everyone admire him , but he must stay in north counties. He may make big changes in south america and destroy maniy animals and trees there.
“Alright ma boy. When I’m gone, yo gon’ take over dis here damn. You gran pappy did it, and some day you’ll be out ‘ere teaching yo boi the ways of dis here damn”
"Damn iM good"
haha I read it giving the proper tone you intended 😂😂😂😂
@@jrviade85 morgan freeman voice?
"Now ma other boy, I hate you. Get out of my house and go build your own dam. And get a girlfriend ya loser!"
Couldn't help but read this in a old Southern Plantation accent.
I lowkey forgot about beavers, good to know they’re still out there doing stuff.
Their numbers have been less abundant, unfortunately. Habitat loss is robbing us of so many amazing creatures.
The sounds they make inside the their den/hut is so adorable for real yo!!
There is a beaver lodge in the woods we hike in. It’s on the edge of a big pond and it is really impressive that a small animal can build such a Complex structure.
There is 1 where we hike. Chewed off trees all over. Heard a loud thump walking near a big hole closeby. Figure it was a beaver tail swat to make us leave.
I mean humans are small relative to the universe and yet we can build nuclear warheads and sattelite flying over space
@@Gilvids We're smart enough too build complex stuff, but so stupid we put our efforts toward building stuff to blow each other up and destroy the environment
@@Gilvids yup
Sucks after two years of age you have to get kicked out of your home, I love how he swims finds his own little place and jumps right back in two fix his dam up! Sad to see all that hard work got washed away! But you see the Fighting spirit he jumped right back into action and started building.
Young beavers are not “driven out” by their parents. Some stay for only a year before going out on their own. Most stay for two years and some stay for three. Parent beavers (one of them) have been observed going with the young beaver to help them find a place to build and then helping them build the new dam and lodge. Also incorrect is the statement that young beavers have to go far to set up their own lodge. Some do go far from home but most only go a little ways down the river, and they visit with their family. Another incorrect assumption throughout the entire video is that males do all the relocating and building. In fact, female beavers also leave home and may also start their own dam. Female and male beavers are the same size and work equally hard to maintain their dams and lodges. Mother beavers work up until birth, and the babies join their parents outside the lodge within days. At about a month old they harvest plants and small trees for food, and within two months they are working to maintain the dam and lodge, and to store food under water near the lodge entrance. This video had beautiful footage - among the best I’ve seen - but whoever wrote the narrative didn’t research nearly enough, and had an unreal male bias.
@@terredee You sound like you know your stuff: I appreciate the time you took to clarify all that information. I agree that the video was stunning, and it's nice to gain a little extra knowledge and clarification, from someone in the comment section.
It looks like the young beavers left on their own gladly! It would suck for the both if they choose to stay at the basement
@@terredee where tf did male bias come from? Males do most of the work and its a fact...
That would be heartbreaking. Imagine spending weeks building a dam you need to survive and have it wash away in a few minutes.
If you think about it, the freshwater wetlands that beavers create by damming rivers are some of the most thriving ecosystems in the world. Humans only remove them because we prefer to build and live on dry land and water inconveniences us usually. Before the eastern US was settled, there was a vast array of river and lake networks all across that part of the country east of the Mississippi and you could go darn near anywhere in that land in a canoe.
We need to know what happens to the beaver!!! You left us on a cliff hanger wtf!!!
Just know that he hasen't given up ! ;)
I need to see what happened.
Never say never. - Justine Bieber
@@videoscissors8561 Justin Beaver*
@@dr_greg_mouse4125 Justine Bieber sing the song " Never say never. "
Oh my gosh the part where he's swimming while carrying branches but keeping his head above water is the cutest thing I've ever seen!
People study for years to understand and learn just a fraction of what the beaver instinctively knows how to do. I sure hope everything turned out well for that little guy!
I never knew beavers were taking down whole trees to build damns 😳
Beavers don't mess around
yeah they bite the bottom to cut it
And people complain when we do it xD.
@@TheUnseenPath I know ur saying that out of fun, but when we do it, we do it on an industrial scale from hell, the beaver's impact pales in comparison
@@TheMrVogue Even more is that the dams that beavers build are absolutely crucial in in providing deeper depth which would let certain fishes live there and the dams they make also make forests much cooler in the hot summer!
"Giving up is not an option". I just learned a lesson from a beaver 😂
Giving up was never even on the Beaver's dictionary
Imagine being a bird that built nest on one of these tree and suddenly at night your home was collapse
Hahahahahha
I feel sorry for the bird that died in front of me🥲😅😅😟🦫🦫🦫
@@thegreatestleaderstalin3369 sigma male grindset rule 105: destroy other peoples lives to help yourself
Well, that's nature's work😉
.
Beavers are actually inspirational. Get adult, build your home, create your family, feed them, keep them safe. I'd maybe like to try beaver in some life.
I don’t think they would taste very good
When I was a kid my brother and I used to go down to the beaver pond in the woods in back of my grand parents home. It was a magical place.
beavers looking at human dams: "very crude and their existence are affront to nature, obviously not made for long term use"
But how did they get cameras in their house 😂😂
Through drilling and the kind of camera (form factor) doctors use to check your colon or stomach. Just my guess
they asked the beavers permission beforehand
@@jrviade85 🤣🤣
They have several motion cameras planted in that environment and get lucky when one of them picks an activity. Some cameras can be there for months before an action occurs.
they ask the beaver if they could get a copy of his cctv duh
Beavers to me are maybe the most amazing mammals. Considering they create ponds and lakes. It's so hard to stop the force of water. They do it without tools or thumbs !
This is so impressive. Beavers are really amazing animals.
7:17 - Beaver be like: "Shiiiitt. Oh well... it was only my life's work."
poor beaver :(
I literally caught myself saying "Dam".
Poor baby, all that hard work gone in a flash. What utterly amazing animals.
baby 😊
Salute you mr beaver.. There are no architect, designer and engineer and w/o knowledge of water engineering, you still manage to build a good dam!
Wonderful :) Congratulations to everyone who made this documentary!!
Thank you 😊
Definitely not worthy of being called a documentary. So dumbed down! I still have no more information on how beavers make a dam then I did before watching this.
It’s really wonderful. I wish it was longer
except it's fake
that made me laugh@@mazdak_
I just like to thank the young aspiring beaver journalist that filmed all of this and showed us his home😊☀️👍🏻
I support Mr. Beaver. I hope he built his home in time for winter 🙏
Him with his rocks is the most adorable thing ever. I can’t. 🥺🥺🥺
You really have to admire their tenacity.
The work ethic of those animals is something to makes you rethink yours….
I read this in animal research report once, and this is so interesting that beavers are highly intelligent like us as well. "In some ways, beavers are similar to humans in that they change their environment to suit themselves. They often place stones at the base and seal the dam on the upstream side with mud and plants. The amazing thing is that *they even make the dams thicker at the bottom and with a shallow slope on the upstream side*. Any engineer will tell you that *this efficiently distributes the weight of the water allowing the dam to hold back huge volumes of water*."
I can’t believe I’m looking up to a beaver. Honestly a mood.
doing something day and night and it still fails it hurts more than enough
My heart broke when he said the dam gives way as he looks on helplessly. 😭
:(
Poor guy, I wanted to help him rebuild. Beavers are incredibly territorial tho. Not that I blame them.
@@John-- I would also have helped him :(
That’s a lot of pressure on the wee beaver lad! My heart broke when he was forced to watch his initial damn break and float down stream! But I have faith in that nugget! He will build an EPIC DAM! 👏🏾 ❤️ 💦.
They are intelligent , Love them . Bless all of them amen
Ah yes... the mortal enemy of Post 10.
There’s literally a seaway system of beaver dams out back of my house. The largest one is like a causeway from the time passing and grass growing on it.
It was wholesome when he was chomping the trees down and retrieving the branches ❤️
I’ve recently realised that Beavers are my favourite animal ❤
That Young Beaver was just like me. His parents kicked him out of the house, and after lots of hard work, he finally made his own home.
We made it.
@@bane4743 Yes we did!
Sure buddy 😂
@@Vuden13 have some faith
Well, we're humans. It's what we're supposed to do, eh?
When life knocks you down again and again, this is something to get inspiration from
You really can't help but smile watching this.
When I was in high school I used to byheart the sentence" beavers builds the dam".... never understood what it was. Now after almost a decade I came to know what's exactly beavers do. Thanks for the video...😂👍
Why pay a engineers when we have beevers to build our dams 😂
Exactly, why should we pay pilots when we have birds who can fly us.
Yes get beavers to build mega dams like the hoover. Okay gotcha
@@Victor_Victory i know right, gosh how dumb of us
Crazy to see that all beavers build exactly the same home 3:38 if you compare this with 1:15 its resemblance is almost unparalleled. This must be the result of ages of perfectioning their constructions which is now embedded in their dna
Wait, no it’s literally the exact same, it has to be the same one, all the stick and log shapes are the same
Its the same footage...
@@jesperengstrom3951 That's literally impossible, you can clearly see the beaver moving to another area to occupy an abandoned different den. How could they fake that?
@@16154123456 youre right, i guess the beavers happened to use the same blueprint when building their home
@@jesperengstrom3951 That must be it! The more you lear!
We need more beavers in this world to fight wildfires and drought. God is really amazing!
I recently saw another informational vid that said that as well... they mentioned that prior to the beaver hat craze, there was maybe 300 Million beavers in the US while today there is only around 15 Million.
4:07 genius
they’re so cute and talented
Notice how he makes an error running right, changes his mind and runs left as the tree starts coming down?
I love a beaver that doesn't quit.
I didn't know that Beavers uses stone for their dams. Amazing.
How they get a camera in a beaver den is magic to me
It's amazing to think an animal can come up with a building level at this scale.
I'm astonished. He used stones to make it strong. Awesome.
River:flows undisturbed. Beaver: "and i took that personally...."
3:59 they picked that line straight out of Game of Thrones
Their camera had confused the beaver to think its stable, when these guys take it out, it left a weak spot on the dam. Costing his chance of survival and weeks of hard work.
It must’ve been a camera which doctors use to view our mouth or stomach or something , they won’t destroy their hard work lol
This is really inspiring to see how he managed to build something so big and didn't give up even after failing. They are smarter than many human beings. This is just beautiful. Human beings can't build a dam all alone in that size proportion. People should learn to take responsibility and give their best. This has inspired me more than anything. This little guy needed some helping hand. Go little rock star ✳️ ... Amazing work!
I recently saw a video on KZhead of a beaver that had been taken in by a human family as a pet. Interestingly the beaver is shown in the video as repeatedly grabbing whatever objects around the house he could to make what appear to be dams all around the house!!!
I love beavers they are so intelligent a master of engineering ☺️
That beaver truly don't give a dam
lol
Im glad that beaver picked the abandoned lodge with the camera in it
In the Netherlands there are some beavers who don't bother building dams, they think we humans have built sufficient dams to stabilize water levels so they just build a lodge.
beavers and ants are the only known creatures to me to have that huge devotion to what they do. truly unstoppables
"left to his own devices" beaver wifi
I’m so mindblown watching this beaver go to work like that shit is so impressive. I know animals are smart but this is just so like. Wow. Nature is so raw
Gives the saying of; "busy as a beaver" a whole new meaning to me
I hope this beaver managed to make hes dream dam and raise a family with a wonderful cute beaveress.
I wasn't convinced of their skills, but now I'm a belieber
We all know what the beaver was thinking as he watched the river wash his hard work away: “Dam it!” 🦫
you`ve gotta give a hats off to the tenacity of the beavers
5:16 aaaa i can't it soo cute 😭😭
It’s a crazy concept that these animals have been doing this for however long and we use the same concept to power cities.
Beavers are excellent engineers!
I always thought Beavers were underrated ,,, they are hard workers and they form many ponds in the wilderness therefore giving water holes or even small lakes for the wild life ,, they are fantastic little animals which people just take for granted ,,, people should protect them and their habitats for they do a great service to all,, even plant life thrives with these ponds here and there ,, we need Beavers ,,, if someone says of you that you work like a Beaver ,, take that as a compliment , or perhaps they are telling you to slow down ,,, Beavers are good to have , in the past , they were hunted down almost to extinctions for different reasons , ,, it's good to see that they are growing back in numbers ,
He is working so hard making all of those trips back and forth. I don't even like making 2 trips to get all of the groceries out of my car 😒
Why are you like this Rachel ? Please.
@@blue123456izationIt was a joke
Lol
@@Rachel-jj7zv so... U just telling ur life and u say it was a joke? Ur life is a joke?
@@soupricemf1260 I think you are responding to the wrong message 🤔. No one gets this worked over this sort of video.