Stuffed Animals Help Baby Beavers

Paws Animal rescue always has the risk of wild animals becoming too dependent on humans.  To save some baby beaver kits, PAWS Wildlife Center in Lynnwood, WA found that stuffed animals helped.

KOMO News.com reports:

“PAWS tries to minimize human interaction, but that’s tough when the kits need to learn everything, starting with how to eat.  For the first two weeks, the staff at PAWS bottle fed the beavers by hand. But to cut back on that human interaction and to better mimic life in the wild, they brought in a surrogate – a stuffed animal beaver with bottles and a hot water bottle tucked inside. It worked.

The kits nursed that way for another couple months before making the transition to solid food. Another stuffed animal helped the beavers learn to swim and dive”.   See full article.

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Published: August 2, 2009