How smart are beavers?

Answer 1

Beavers know enough to pick an area to dam up that is fairly level. This is so the water filled area will spread out enough to give them a large pond.

Many people give beavers a lot more credit than I think they deserve. Once they decide to build a dam, they know enough to listen for flowing water and then to push mud and trash into the flow to stop it up, They know enough to use tree branches and logs to reinforce the dam.

They have a plentiful supply of branches and logs because they have to constantly knaw on trees to keep their teeth from getting too long. This is simply a fortunate thing, since they need the bark to eat. They don't know enough to only choose trees that they can pull back to the dam, which they need to do in order to bury the branches in the mud at the floor of the pond for a source of winter food. I see evidence of this lack of "smarts" when they have felled a large hardwood tree several hundreds of feet from the pond and have not even eaten ANY of the bark off the branches.

Once a pond has been constructed, the beavers simply patrol the perimeter listening for any flow of water. If they hear any, they simply push mud from the bottom of the pond up ahead of them to stop the flow. By continuing this process, the pond continues to grow as long as there is enough water being supplied to the pond to make up for leakage and evaporation.

I don't believe they understand all that; they simply have this built-in directive to "STOP EVERY LEAK" and then take advantage of the results.

The constant growth in size of the pond is fortunate for them, because they are constantly killing all the trees that are anywhere close to the edge of the pond for the tooth-shortening and food supply reasons mentioned above. They need this constantly growing pond so they can get to the farther-away trees without ever being too far from the safety of their pond.

In summary:

(FWIW) Beavers certainly are hard workers, but they do what they do with a few simple built-in directives that happen to work in their favor. Else they wouldn't have survived as a species. I'd say they are no "smarter" than a dog.