My Beaver Colony

Description

...under water and in his underground passages. Consequently the literature as a whole gives an incomplete and in many respects erroneous picture of the beaver. Modern behavior research, or ethology, has opened up fresh possibilities for studying the ways of animals. One method used consists of rearing an animal from a tender age on a bottle, so that it builds up social contacts with its keeper, who then has the opportunity of studying its "inborn" behavior. Since the summer of 1957 I have devoted a large part of my time to the beaver, and since the summer of 1959 my family and I have lived with beavers, which have regarded us as members of their group or as parents. In this book I shall try to tell a little about our experiences and discuss some of the objective observations and evaluations. I hope to be able to show that an animal does not lose its charm if one refrains from humanizing it. Many authors who have written popular books about animals have equipped them with at any rate some of the qualities of the human psyche, but I cannot understand why animals should be considered any more interesting or delightful for it. - Preface - Introduction - A Little Beaver History -- The Beaver and Primitive Man -- The Beaver and Civilization -- The Great Beaver Slaughter -- The Beaver Returns - Elias and the Beavers - Short-term Regulation -- The First Winter of Regulation -- Inventory-taking -- The Second Winter of Regulation - Beaver Studies -- River Lodges -- A Night with the Beavers - Beaver Life at the Outlying Stock Farm - Beavers at School -- The Beaver Class -- The First Lodge -- The Territory -- Digging Without Earth -- Fina and Esmeralda -- Joys and Disappointments - In Pastures Green - Winter: Under Ice and Under Roof - In the Beavers' Nursery - Bachelor Life - In the Artificial Beaver Stream - The End of the Story and the Beginning of Another One - Family Life - "Beaver Pedagogy" - Bibliography - Index