What Animal Look Like a Beaver but Is Not One

What Animal Look Like a Beaver but Is Not One

_{Muskrat (left) and a beaver are frequently dislocated for one another. (Photos via Shutterstock)}

Will County is home to several semiaquatic mammals, so when yous see a furry critter splish splashing effectually in the water it can be difficult to know what animal you are seeing unless y'all get a good look.

Beavers, muskrats, otters and mink are all semiaquatic, and all are brown, making identifying them correctly even more challenging. Otters and mink can be easier to tell apart because both have long bodies. Beavers and muskrats, though, can be more difficult to tell from one another, unless on land, where their features are more easily distinguishable.

Beavers and muskrats are both rodents, the largest order of mammals. Yet, they are not very closely related, and they vest to dissimilar families. Beavers belong to the Castoridae family, which includes just the American beaver, which is the beaver we know in the United States, as well as the Eurasian beaver, which lives in Europe and Asia. Muskrats are a part of the Cricetidae family, a big family of rodents that also includes hamsters, voles and many species of rats and mice.

Although they are not closely related, beavers and muskrats have evolved to have many shared behaviors and traits, a concept known as convergent evolution, according to Mass Audubon. Another example of convergent evolution is sharks and dolphins. Sharks are fish and dolphins are mammals, but they both have flippers, pectoral and dorsal fins and long, streamlined bodies that assist them in pond quickly, TreeHugger reports.

When it comes to beavers and muskrats, ane primary difference between them is their size. Beavers are the largest rodent in North America, and they are considerably bigger than muskrats. A beaver can counterbalance as much as 100 pounds, although they typically are betwixt 35 pounds and 68 pounds, according to the U.Southward. Fish and Wildlife Service. They are betwixt 39 inches and 47 inches long. In contrast, muskrats are much more than lightweight, weighing only betwixt two pounds and five pounds. They are also non as long equally a beaver, measuring betwixt 16 inches and 25 inches in length.

Both animals practise take long tails, with beavers' measuring 10 inches to 13 inches and muskrats measuring 7 inches to 12 inches, the fish and wild fauna service reports. However, beaver tails are much wider — usually three.v inches to 8 inches broad — while muskrat tails are thin and rat-like.

Size isn't the only departure in their tails, either. While a muskrat's long, skinny tail is covered in curt black hairs, a beaver'due south large, apartment tail is covered in scales and has no pilus on it, according to the fish and wildlife service.

While size and tail are two primal differences between muskrats and beavers, neither may be obvious when these animals are in the water, as they often are. If you catch a glimpse of an animal pond, you lot may exist able to tell whether it'due south a muskrat or a beaver by how information technology carries itself in the water. Muskrats typically swim with their heads, backs and tails exposed at the water's surface, while beavers unremarkably keep only their heads in a higher place water, Mass Audubon reports. And because beavers use their tails equally a rudder while pond, you lot won't be able to see it at the water'south surface, as you can with a muskrat's tail.

Another similarity between these two animals is that both alive in lodges, and if you lot happen upon i you may be able to tell which creature lives within because of some tell-tale signs. Beginning, a beaver'due south lodge volition be much larger than a muskrat's. The fabric they employ to build differs likewise, co-ordinate to Mass Audubon. While beavers typically build lodges from wooden material like sticks and logs, muskrats will use other kinds of vegetation, like cattails. In the absence of a lodge, both beavers and muskrats will also dig a burrow into the bank of a river or stream.

And while both build lodges to alive in, only beavers brand dams. Their dams, built from logs and mud, can create new aquatic habitats for both them and a variety of other animals, according to the National Park Service. Beavers will build their lodges either in a swimming created by their dam or in existing lakes, ponds or waterways.

In some parts of the U.s.a., telling the difference between these animals is fabricated even more difficult considering of the presence of a third fauna, the nutria, that looks similar to beavers and muskrats and also shares many of their traits and behaviors.

Nutria are native to South America and were first brought to the United states with the intent of creating a fur farming manufacture, according to the U.South. Fish and Wildlife Service. Some of the nutria escaped and others were released when a marketplace never materialized for their fur, and now these animals, chosen coypu in other parts of the world, alive in many coastal parts of the United states, including the Pacific Northwest and Gulf Declension.

Nutria are also brown rodents, and they are besides semiaquatic. Size-wise, they are between the size of a muskrat and a beaver, weighing between 10 pounds and twenty pounds. They are about xxx inches long, with a x-inch rat-similar tail covered with thin hairs, the fish and wild animals service reports.

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What Animal Look Like a Beaver but Is Not One

Source: https://www.reconnectwithnature.org/News-Events/The-Buzz/What-s-The-Difference-Beaver-Vs-Muskrat