North American Beaver

North American Beaver
アメリカビーバー
Character Data
AKA		American Beaver, Ameve
Romaji		Amerika Bībā
Debut		Kemono Friends (2015 Game)
Animal Data
Scientific Name		Castor canadensis
Distribution		North America, Scandinavia, Argentina
Diet		Herbivore
Avg. Lifespan		24 Years
Read More		North American beaver
Conservation
North American Beaver's Merchandise

North American Beaver

Anime

Season 2

Festival

Pavilion

KF3

Kingdom

Nexon Game

Gallery

North American Beaver is a beaver Friend who appeared in both the Kemono Friends anime and the original mobile game.

Appearance

North American Beaver's current design has light brown hair with side bangs reaching her shoulder which are white at their top, she also has a white hair clip attached to one of them that represents a beaver's teeth. She wears a brown sleeveless jacket which is open to her torso and her belly. complementing her neck, she wears a fur collar. She has almost full-length gloves are covering her arms, and she's also wearing light beige shorts over compression short that have yellow and red lines on them. Lastly, she wears black boots with black ribbons decorating them. There's a black dot in the middle of her hair that represents the creature's nose and a pointy ahoge that goes to the sides.

In her old design, she has short brown hair that fades into dark brown starting from the light brown line on her hair and continuing to the bottom. There's a darker brown mark on her fringe that represents a nose. She wears a brown jacket that is open to her torso and half of her belly. She has orange eyes, red and orange stripes on her jacket, and long brown boots that fade to black at the tips. She wears dark pale brown gloves . She has a smooth ahoge on her hair that goes to the sides.

Series Appearances

Appearances In Kemono Friends Media

Media		Role

In Real Life

A male North American beaver. Photo courtesy of one Steve from Washington, DC, USA, via Flickr (deprecated) and via Wikipedia.

The North American beaver (Castor canadensis) is a medium-sized rodent of the beaver family, being one of two extant beaver species; the other is the Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber). The North American species averages weights between 45–60 lb (20.4–27.2 kg), though exceptional individuals are known to have reached weights of 100 lb (45.35 kg). Beavers exclusively inhabit waterside ecosystems, establishing populations around lakes, ponds, and riparian environments, and boast numerous adaptations for life in the water: thick brown fur which is excellent at retaining heat and repelling water, webbed feet which enhance their swimming capabilities, and their iconic black, hairless tails, sometimes described as being scaly in texture. Broad, flat, and paddle-like, this multi-functional appendage acts as a rudder when the beaver swims, helps the beaver to sit or stand upright, allows for communication in the form of slapping the top of the water—producing a loud slapping sound that can warn other beavers of imminent danger—and acts as a fat reserve for when food is scarce. While beavers don't have the best eyesight, they compensate for this with excellent senses of hearing and smell.

Another signature feature of the beaver is their huge front incisors, which are colored orange due to a coat of iron compounds that lends the teeth superb durability. As is true of many rodents, beaver teeth never stop growing, so they must continuously chew on hard materials throughout their lives to prevent their teeth from overgrowing. To this end, these animals famously use their incisors in conjunction with powerful lower jaw muscles to chew on and topple trees, which are then used as construction material for their homes, called lodges. The term dam is sometimes used to refer to the beaver's constructed home, but this is inaccurate; the dam is a separate structure entirely, serving to alter the local flow of water so as to create deep pools around the lodge—an oven or dome-shaped house constructed of trees, sticks, grasses, and plant materials such as moss, which are woven together and plastered with mud—within which the beavers actually reside. With this deep water surrounding the structure, many would-be predators are discouraged from approaching the beaver lodge; additionally, the entrance to the lodge is under the water, which denies access to most any predator that would attempt to invade the lodge were the entrance exposed.

Beavers are considered keystone species in their native ecosystems, as their dams' alteration of the flow of water has the ability to create, expand, and maintain wetland and riparian ecosystems in which a myriad of other species can thrive; it is for this reason that beavers are known as ecosystem engineers. The dams are constructed according to the speed of the water they are built in; in slow water the dams are built straight, while in fast water the dams are built with a curvature that grants stability and reduces water resistance, which helps prevent the dams from being washed away should the speed or volume of the water increase.

Beavers are pure vegetarians, subsisting solely on woody vegetation such as bark and the softer tissue found just under the bark of trees, which is known as cambium. Their favorites include willow, maple, poplar, beech, birch, alder, and aspen trees. They also eat aquatic vegetation, as well as buds and roots. To facilitate this diet, beavers are able to digest cellulose, which most other mammals are incapable of doing. Beaver lodges feature food caches, which allow for consistent access to food even during times of scarcity or danger.

Beavers are known to be social animals with a strong family structure, living in familial units composed of a mating pair and their current litter of kits; beavers mate for life, so a pair can inhabit the same lodge for quite some time and rear numerous generations within it. In order to protect their access to limited food supplies, beavers do not tolerate unrelated beavers inhabiting their ponds. To mark their territories, they surround their ponds with scent mounds—piles of mud which have been mixed with a special secretion adult beavers emit, called castor oil, which has a strong and sweet smell that acts as a territorial warning to any passing beavers. If deemed necessary, adult beavers may physically attack unrelated beavers or other animals that continue to invade their territory even after being given ample warnings. Outside of territorial defense, and cases of self-defense against predators or other threats, beavers tend to be non-aggressive. As humans continue to expand into the native ranges of beavers, beaver attacks against humans and pets have been increasingly documented, and pet fatalities caused by North American beavers have occurred in the past, though there is no documented case of a human fatality caused by a North American beaver. The beaver's powerful jaws and large, sturdy incisors are highly capable of inflicting serious wounds should they be provoked, so while it is rare for a beaver to resort to violence against an animal larger than itself, a beaver's personal and territorial space must be respected at all times in the interest of safety for both these animals and the humans living alongside them.

Trivia

A beaver dam.

• Beavers' lips are located behind their front teeth, which allows them to close their mouths so as to keep wood shavings out as they chew down trees.
• The beaver was given official status as an emblem of Canada when “An Act to provide for the recognition of the Beaver (Castor canadensis) as a symbol of the sovereignty of Canada” received royal assent on March 24, 1975.
• The longest beaver dam found to date is located in northern Alberta, a province in Canada. The dam has a length of nearly 2625 ft (800 m) and a surface area of approximately 828,821 ft (70,000 sq.m), and was marked down as the record-holder as of October 2, 2007, and is believed to have stood since the early 1970s; as of 2026, this would make the dam over half a century old.
• Beavers were once classified as fish by the Roman Catholic Church. This is believed to have been done so that Catholics could eat them during lent, a time when eating most meat is forbidden for Catholics.