Is a beaver just another dumb animal?

Here’s a snip from some truly fantastic nerdery—it turns out beavers are pretty good at felling trees towards the water. This reduces their exposure to predation and cuts down on the energy they expend dragging branches. I thought this was a pretty cool look at how smart these critters really are.

The thread starts here, and later leads to a different paper suggesting it’s more a matter of them simply approaching from the downhill side.

I’m for both—even if they’re just cutting from the downhill side so they’re closer to the water, it’s still a pretty successful strategy that gets good results.

So…how much do you have to think to be smart?