Form, Weight, and Special Adaptations
Form, Weight, and Special Adaptations
This chapter provides an overview of the beaver's form, weight, and special adaptations. An adult North American beaver has an average body weight of 40–50 pounds (about 18–23 kilograms). The body including the tail measures about 48 inches in length. Most distinctive for the beaver, the tail is flat and scaly and performs a variety of functions. For example, the tail serves in heat exchange through a countercurrent arrangement of blood vessels, allowing the beaver to reduce the 25 percent heat loss in the summer to 2 percent in the winter. This chapter also discusses the beaver's other organs including the nostrils, ears, eyes, brain, skull, teeth, feet, fur, and digestive tract. It also considers the beaver's excretion, reproductive organs, and senses.
Keywords: beaver, adaptations, body weight, tail, brain, fur, digestive tract, excretion, reproductive organs, senses
Cornell Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
