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In the mid-1800s, a railroad director, entrepreneur, and politician named Lewis Henry Morgan began visiting a largely undeveloped swath of land dotted with beaver ponds in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. What he saw amazed him: "[A] beaver district, more remarkable, perhaps, than any other of equal extent to be found in any part of North America," he wrote. "A rare opportunity was thus offered to examine the works of the beaver, and to see him in his native wilds."
[...] For years, he carefully documented how the beavers behaved and where they built their dams and ponds. Then, in 1868, Morgan published his 396-page beaver bible: The American Beaver and His Works. Folded into each copy was a map, carefully drawn by his railroad's engineers, which detailed the locations of 64 beaver dams and ponds spread over some 125 square kilometers near the community of Ishpeming.
Now, that rare map is giving researchers some new insight into just how busy beavers can be. A new survey shows that many of the dams and ponds that Morgan saw nearly 150 years ago are still there—testament to the resilience of the rodents and their ability to maintain structures over many generations.
All that remains for our energy needs to be met is to teach beavers how to install turbines.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gravis on Saturday December 05 2015, @03:04PM
the title seems a bit deceptive because like it says in the summary, the beaver dams do not last 150 years on their own. however, it is interesting that beavers manage to maintain and rebuild these dams over so many generations
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday December 05 2015, @04:17PM
If a dam gets washed away, wouldn't the location still be a good place to build a dam for another family of beavers, even if it was years or decades later?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Saturday December 05 2015, @05:12PM
If a dam gets washed way that seems like maybe it was a poor place to put it. But it depends on how often the area floods, I suppose.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Interesting) by wisnoskij on Saturday December 05 2015, @05:23PM
The beavers will not remember. As long as the geographical shape of the land remains the same, beavers will continue to think it is a good place to build a dam.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday December 05 2015, @07:05PM
Damn
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday December 05 2015, @08:10PM
The beavers will not remember.
Beavers don't migrate all that far from where they were born. It is their native home territory, so "memory" probably does enter into it to some degree.
Beavers judge the proper water height by the size of their pond, and the depth of the entrance to their beaver houses (which have under water entrances.)
Dams occasionally get breached (Humans are the beaver's worst enemy), but beavers seem to have an innate understanding of water depth, and they quickly locate and start repairing the breach. They have an uncanny ability to detect the location of flowing water, and they will always start filling the largest flow first, and only stop working on flows as the water height returns to their liking.
During low rain-fall periods, beavers will dam up the smallest water flow. When rain is plentiful they ignore these. Its all about the depth.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday December 05 2015, @05:30PM
If a dam gets washed away and there's nobody there to see it, is it still there?
Schroedingers dam.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by ledow on Saturday December 05 2015, @05:13PM
Designing something to last "forever" is a stupid idea and never works.
A truly earthquake-proof building is not built to last forever, or to stay perfectly upright, for example. It's just dumb to try.
You are much better of making something that is adaptable, can survive a vast range of movement, and which can be rebuilt and replaced piece by piece.
Which is why I always wonder why people who tell us to archive data are always looking for some "permanent" storage method. Don't. Just have lots of temporary, flexible ones that you can move forward.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 05 2015, @05:26PM
when it comes to data, making copies is not error proof.
with hundreds of terabytes of data, the cloned data needs independent verification of some sort.
I can certainly see the attraction in writing the data once in a permanent location...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 05 2015, @05:32PM
Most modern data storage are essentially black boxes. You don't know if your computer is lying to you.
I think long-term, basic computer code such as various firmware is going to have to be stored on microfiche or fuse-wire ROMs such that it is open to optical inspection.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday December 05 2015, @10:50PM
Designing something to last "forever" is a stupid idea and never works.
forever is a stupid idea but designing something to last millions of years, that takes genius. if you want it to last, like beavers, you will need something like nanobots to constantly rebuild/repair both themselves and the object you want to last.
Which is why I always wonder why people who tell us to archive data are always looking for some "permanent" storage method.
when it comes to archiving data, what they are really looking for something that is high capacity, inexpensive, exceptionally robust and immutable over the period of your life.
Don't. Just have lots of temporary, flexible ones that you can move forward.
yeah, we figured this out already and it's why we use RAID. however, to really preserve data like that, you want to encode it into the genetic makeup of a self-propagating microorganism that is programmed to self-destruct on the equivalent of a CRC failure. trillions of generations of your little microbe could go by and it could be scattered around the planet but your data would be perfectly intact. not really the kind of thing you want to put your tax returns on though. ;)