Beaver Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This beaver trivia quiz has 52 free questions with answers and covers the animal from every angle: the biology (why the teeth are orange, how long a beaver can stay under, what the tail is really for), the engineering (the record dam in Alberta you can see from space, how fast a family rebuilds a broken one), the history (the felt-hat trade that nearly wiped out both species, the Hudson's Bay Company's 'made beaver' currency) and the culture, from Canada's nickel and first stamp to MIT's mascot, Oregon's two-sided flag and the beavers Idaho dropped from aeroplanes in 1948. The first questions are easy enough for a classroom or a family car ride; the back half will test a wildlife biologist. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing something you did not before. Every question has been checked against a primary source, mostly Wikipedia's beaver, castoreum and fur-trade articles, and shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 52 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which animal beats the beaver as the world's largest living rodent?
Capybara
The capybara of South America can weigh twice as much as a typical beaver; like a hippo, it carries its eyes, ears and nostrils high on its head, so it can hide from predators almost wholly under water.
Q 02What gives a beaver's front teeth their distinctive orange colour?
Iron compounds
Iron compounds in the enamel turn the teeth orange and make them tougher than most rodents', so a beaver can bite through hardwoods such as oak and maple without cracking them.
Q 03When a beaver slaps its tail hard on the water, what is it doing?
Warning other beavers of danger
Warning other beavers of danger is the point: at an adult's slap the others dive for deep water, but a youngster's slap is often ignored, because juveniles have not yet learned when to use it.
Q 04What kind of eater is a beaver?
Herbivore
Beavers are herbivores: bark, twigs, aquatic plants and sedges are the menu; the fish are just neighbours in the pond.
Q 05What are baby beavers called?
Kits
Baby beavers are kits; they can eat solid food within two weeks of birth but cannot gather it, so both parents carry greenery home to them.
Q 06Which Canadian coin has carried a beaver on its reverse since 1937?
The nickel
The nickel has shown the artist Kruger Gray's beaver since 1937, with one wartime break: from 1943 to 1945 a Victory design took its place, its rim spelling out in Morse code 'We win when we work willingly'.
Q 07Which US state is nicknamed the Beaver State?
Oregon
Oregon owes the nickname to the fur trade: trappers after beaver pelts were among the first outsiders to arrive, and the animal later became the state's official symbol and Oregon State University's mascot.
Q 08Beavers' dome-shaped homes of sticks and mud are known as what?
Lodges
Beavers build lodges, often in the middle of the pond; the only way in is through underwater entrances, which keeps land predators out.
Q 09The beaver genus name Castor comes from a word in which ancient language?
Greek
Greek kastor meant beaver; when Latin borrowed the word it pushed aside Latin's own name for the animal, fiber, which survives today in the Eurasian species' scientific name, Castor fiber.
Q 10At most, roughly how long can a beaver hold its breath underwater?
15 minutes
15 minutes is the limit, though most dives last only five or six; oversized lungs let a beaver cover more than half a mile under water on a single breath.
Q 11A beaver's tail does the steering, so what mainly drives it forward when it swims?
Its hind feet
Its hind feet are large and webbed and do all the paddling, while the small front paws stay folded against the chest; out of the water those same front paws work like hands.
Q 12The world's largest known beaver dam lies in which national park in northern Alberta?
Wood Buffalo National Park
Wood Buffalo National Park hides the dam in country so remote that nobody knew it was there until 2007, when it was noticed on satellite images.
Q 13Roughly how long is the record beaver dam in northern Alberta?
850 m (2,790 ft)
Q 21What protects a beaver's eyes while it swims underwater?
Nictitating membranes
Transparent nictitating membranes slide across the eyes like goggles; valves in the nostrils and ears close at the same time, sealing the head like a submarine hatch.
Q 22What stops North American and Eurasian beavers from interbreeding where the two species meet?
Mismatched chromosome numbers
Mismatched chromosome numbers keep them apart: North American beavers have 40 and Eurasian beavers 48, so the American beavers released in Finland in 1937 cannot blend with the native species living nearby.
Q 23By the early 20th century, roughly how many Eurasian beavers survived across the whole of Eurasia?
850 m (2,790 ft) is its discoverer's figure, roughly half a mile, and it is recent work: photos of the site taken in 1975 show no dam there.
Q 14Why do beavers dig canals out from their ponds?
To float branches home
To float branches home: a beaver is awkward and exposed on land, so it digs a waterway out to its food trees and tows each load back by water instead of dragging it overland.
Q 15Where do beavers store their winter food supply of cut branches?
In the deepest part of the pond
The cache goes in the deepest part of the pond, out of reach of other browsing animals; when ice seals the surface, the family swims out beneath it and feeds on the pile all winter.
Q 16At what age do young beavers leave the family group to become independent?
Two years
Young beavers disperse at about two years old; as yearlings they stay on to help raise the next litter before leaving to find territory of their own.
Q 17What is true of a beaver's four front teeth throughout its life?
They never stop growing
They never stop growing, so a beaver must gnaw to keep them worn down; left unchecked, the teeth would stop its jaws closing far enough to chew, and it could starve.
Q 18What is the split 'double nail' on a beaver's second hind toe used for?
Grooming the fur
The split nail is a comb for grooming the fur: a beaver uses it to stop its fine coat matting, which keeps it waterproof and warm, and to pick out burrs and parasites.
Q 19What does a beaver's ability to close its lips behind its front teeth let it do?
Gnaw underwater without swallowing water
Lips that close behind the incisors let a beaver gnaw underwater without swallowing water, so it can cut, peel and carry branches while fully submerged; the back of its tongue adds a second seal.
Q 20Besides steering and propping the animal upright, what does a beaver's flat tail store?
Fat
The tail stores fat: beavers eat more in autumn to build the reserve, then draw on it through the winter, when fresh food is locked away under the ice.
About 1,200
About 1,200 survived, in eight scattered pockets between France and Mongolia, after centuries of hunting for their fur and for castoreum, a secretion prized in medicine and perfume.
Q 24England's first licensed wild beaver reintroduction, begun in 2015, used a Devon river that shares its name with which animal?
Otter
Otter: the River Otter Beaver Trial ran for five years, and in 2020 the government let the animals stay for good, centuries after the species had been hunted out of Britain.
Q 25The beavers released into Scotland's Knapdale forest in 2009 came from which Nordic country, where the species had never died out?
Norway
Norway held one of the few beaver populations to survive in Europe; neighbouring Sweden, which had lost its own, began bringing the animal back in the early 1920s.
Q 26How many North American beavers were released in Finland in 1937, a group that grew to 12,000 within 64 years?
7
Just 7 animals founded the population; by the 2000s the imported species outnumbered the native Eurasian beaver across much of Finland.
Q 27Which country's government imported beavers to Tierra del Fuego in 1946, hoping to start a fur industry?
Argentina
Argentina's government shipped in Canadian beavers in 1946; the fur business failed, the beavers thrived, and with no natural predators there they have felled swathes of native forest in both Argentina and Chile.
Q 28Before European colonisation, roughly how many beavers are thought to have lived in North America?
100 to 200 million
100 to 200 million is a common estimate, and some run higher; trapping for the fur trade brought the animal close to extinction, and a century of protection has rebuilt the population to roughly ten million.
Q 29For centuries, European demand for beaver pelts was driven mainly by the making of what?
Felt hats
Felt hats: hatters wanted the soft underfur rather than the glossy coat, because it matted into the best felt, and by the 1580s beaver 'wool' was the main raw material of French hat-makers.
Q 30Which fur-trading company, chartered in London in 1670, set the price of all its goods in 'Made Beaver'?
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company valued everything against one prime beaver pelt, the Made Beaver, to square Indigenous barter with its own bookkeeping; it later struck brass Made Beaver tokens, and four beavers stand on its coat of arms.