Summary
When Aviva challenges the brothers to build a dam as good as a beaver's, Chris and Martin activate beaver creature powers and discover that beavers don't just change their habitat — they engineer entire ecosystems, creating ponds that support fish, ducks, otters, moose, and countless other species.
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Teaching resources
Discussion questions
Discussion
Beavers are one of the few animals on Earth that reshape entire landscapes — scientists call them "ecosystem engineers."
- What tools does a beaver use to build its dam? What parts of its body are those tools?
- The beaver built a dam for itself — but what other animals benefited? Why?
- If someone removed the beaver dam, what do you think would happen to the pond and the animals living there?
Quick work-a-long
Vocabulary: dam, ecosystem, habitat, lodge, engineer.
Try it: List three animals besides the beaver that live in or near the beaver pond. For each one, write one reason the pond is helpful to it.