They disappear for months 😮
Mike Digout, a photographer in Saskatoon, Canada, has spent years capturing the lives of local beavers. During the warmer months, he enjoys photographing them swimming, socializing, and foraging in their pond. But when winter arrives, the beavers become much harder to spot, as they vanish from view—yet they’re not hibernating.
“They’re actually awake all winter,” Digout shared with The Dodo.
So how do these beavers stay hidden during the colder months? The secret lies beneath the ice. In his first winter observing the beavers, Digout noticed something remarkable. Despite the pond freezing over, the beavers were still active—swimming beneath the ice.
At the beginning of winter, when the ice is still thin, beavers can easily break through the surface to access land. But as the ice thickens with the cold, they can no longer crack it open. Instead, the beavers use their ingenuity to create an underground system that allows them to stay hidden and safe. They construct a pile of sticks and mud at the edge of the river to form a lodge, then dig a tunnel that connects the lodge to the bottom of the pond.
Throughout the winter, the beavers use these tunnels to travel between their lodge and the water, remaining completely out of sight. “We won’t see them for three or four months,” Digout explained. “Once the pond is completely frozen over, they have no way out of their habitat.”
By staying under the ice, the beavers are protected from predators like wolves, coyotes, and bears, while also having uninterrupted access to the food they’ve stored in preparation for winter. “In the autumn, they collect branches and build a large food cache near their lodge,” Digout said.
With their ability to hold their breath for 10 to 15 minutes, the beavers can easily swim between their lodge and food storage beneath the ice, where they remain active but hidden from the world above.
While most people are familiar with beaver dams, these underground tunnels and lodges are even more impressive to Digout. “The engineering behind building a lodge is mind-boggling,” he marveled. “The fact that these little creatures do it instinctively is fascinating.”
Though Digout misses seeing the beavers on land in the warmer months, he enjoys observing their unique winter behavior, especially when he sees them swimming gracefully beneath the ice.
“It’s a real thrill to see them swimming around under the ice,” he said.