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Home » Radio Archive » Daily Show » Giant Beaver Sounds

Giant Beaver Sounds

November 30, 2011
https://podcast.scienceupdate.com/111130_sciup_beaver.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window

BOB HIRSHON (host):

An extinct beaver’s voice? I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.

(SFX: Sound of giant beaver skull)

Could giant beavers in ancient North America have made a sound like this one? It’s produced by blowing air through a chamber in the extinct rodents’ huge skulls, suggesting that the they may have used the structure to communicate. Vertebrate paleontologist Caroline Rinaldi of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine says the creatures were the size of black bears. They lacked the chisel-shaped teeth of modern beavers, so they probably didn’t build dams, but they did live in the water.

CAROLINE RINALDI (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine):

Being able to produce a sound that can be carried above and below the water we think this would be of evolutionary benefit to an animal like a giant beaver.

HIRSHON:

Nonetheless, the beavers went extinct about 10,000 years ago.

RINALDI:

Along with other large mammals like mammoths and saber-toothed cats and wild horses that lived in North America.

HIRSHON:

I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.


Giant beaver skeleton, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago (C. Horwitz/Wikipedia)

 

Category: Daily Show, Station DownloadTag: Animal Behavior, Biology, Genetics & Evolution, Paleontology & Dinosaurs
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