North American beaver
Behavior
Beavers are active mainly atnight. They are excellent swimmers and may remain submerged up to 15 minutes. More vulnerable on land, they tend to remain in the water as much as possible.[56] They use their flat, scaly tail both to signal danger by slapping the surface of the water and as a location for fat storage.
They construct their homes, or "lodges", out of sticks, twigs, rocks, and mud in lakes, streams, and tidal river deltas.[57] These lodges may be surrounded by water, or touching land, including burrows dug into river banks. Beavers are well known for building dams across streams and constructing their lodges in the artificial ponds which form. When building in a pond, the beavers first make a pile of sticks and then eat out one or more underwater entrances and two platforms above the water surface inside the pile. The first is used for drying off. Towards winter, the lodge is often plastered with mud which, when it freezes, has the consistency of concrete. A small air hole is left in the top of the lodge.
Social behavior
Communication is highly developed in beaver, includingscent marking, vocalization, and tail slapping. Beaver deposit castoreum on piles of debris and mud called scent mounds, which are usually placed on or near lodges, dams, and trails less than a meter from water. Over 100 of such mounds can be constructed within one territory.[42] Beaver colonies with close neighbors constructed more "scent mounds" than did isolated colonies, and the number of scent mounds at each active lodge is correlated with the distance to the nearest occupied lodge.[70]
Although seven vocal sounds have been described for beaver, most zoologists recognize only three: a whine, hiss, and growl. Vocalizations and tail slapping may be used to beg for food, signal to family members to warn of predators, or to drive away or elicit a response from predators.
Sources
Information and Image taken directly from Wikipedia