Beaver dams are visible from space

Turns out, these furry engineers build structures that astronauts can spot from orbit

By Smartasaurus· 2 min read Wild

Difficulty rating

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The short version

Turns out, these furry engineers build structures that astronauts can spot from orbit
The result is one of the largest landscape-altering acts by any non-human animal on Earth.
You cannot see the Great Wall of China from low orbit with the naked eye.

There is a beaver dam in northern Alberta so large that satellites picked it up before biologists did.

It stretches about 850 metres across a remote stretch of Wood Buffalo National Park. That is roughly twice the length of the Hoover Dam. No human approved it. No machinery touched it. It was built, stick by stick, by a family of beavers and their descendants across decades of patient, obsessive construction.

A researcher named Jean Thie found it in 2007 by scrolling through Google Earth. He was studying permafrost. He noticed a dark, suspiciously straight line cutting through the wetlands. Zoomed in. Realised what it was.

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