Beaver Dam Visible From Space 286
ygslash writes "The
Hoover Dam
no longer holds the title of the world's widest dam.
Satellite photos of northern Alberta, Canada, show that several families
of beavers have apparently
joined forces
to build a dam 850 meters
wide, more than twice as wide as the Hoover Dam."
Was the Hoover Dam EVER the widest? (Score:5, Informative)
The Hoover Dam isn't even a very wide dam (1234 ft)... It's known for being tall.
Was the Hoover Dam ever the worlds widest? (Score:5, Informative)
"The Hoover Dam no longer holds the title of the world's widest dam.
Well, given the fact that the Kuybyshev Hydroelectric Station which was built in the 50's is almost 3000m wide, it's been a LONG time since the Hoover Dam was the worlds widest. Given the fact that the Hoover Dam is very narrow for a its overall size, I'd be pretty surprised if it was ever the worlds widest.
Re:Was the Hoover Dam EVER the widest? (Score:5, Informative)
My car is too... (Score:4, Informative)
My car is also visible from space, via Google Map's "satellite view".
Does that make my 1995 Chevy special?
The biggest tam is Three Gorges Dam (Score:2, Informative)
WE ARE...! (Score:2, Informative)
I bet Beaver Stadium [wikipedia.org] can be seen from space too...
Okay everyone: Google Maps Link! (Score:5, Informative)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=58.270908,+-112.251972+(World's+Biggest+Beaver+Dam)&sll=58.270908,-112.15071&sspn=1.027008,2.469177&g=58.270908,+-112.150710&ie=UTF8&ll=58.271526,-112.253623&spn=0.016047,0.038581&t=h&z=15 [google.com]
Cheers!
Re:850 meters? One word for you.... (Score:5, Informative)
Fox thinks pretty highly of those beavers (Score:5, Informative)
I liked the last paragraph of the article "It is thought that several beaver families joined forces to create the massive dam, containing thousands of trees, and took many months to complete it."
Compare that to the article from the CBC "Biologists estimate the dam would have taken at least 20 years to build. It is visible in NASA satellite imagery from 1990."
Better Pictures (Score:4, Informative)
Not Widest (Score:3, Informative)
....And you Canadians always give us Yanks crap about thinking bigger is better....sheesh.
Perhaps they were trying to emulate this [wikipedia.org] which is an 18km long dam also in Northern Alberta. All they need now is to fill their pond with toxic sludge....
Re:I like beavers (Score:3, Informative)
Actually animals DO modify their tools too. SOME chimpazees are known to fix the end of their twigs to make them better tools for catching termites. Also, some corvids (don't remember the species) in the wild will shape the twigs to make hooks to get the grups from holes in the branches. When in the lab, the birds would find the steel wire left around and also make hooks, sometimes to achieve tasks more complex than just pulling a grup out of a hole. I don't remember the details, just that it involved triggering a mechanism to get to some water. Those stories were posted on Slashdot. Actually, for their size, birds' brains are way more efficient than mammal brains. You get more complex problem solving in much smaller animals than mammals.
So basically, tool MAKING not just using, is not a special human trait either. Most of the basics of what we like to call typically human are there in nature. We have just had the opportunity to accumulate enough of those traits and polish them to a higher degree. It's a matter of degree more than substance. Though, I think we are still the only ones with a written language (and that certainly is a powerful way of compounding those original traits).
Re:Was the Hoover Dam EVER the widest? (Score:5, Informative)
The original article was from Fox News - I'm just amazed they realised it was a damn, and not a giant vacuum cleaner given the quality of their fact checking.
It is, IMO, even more damning than that -- it's a wire feed article that originated with The Sun, England's answer to The New York Post. The closest they get to journalism is printing slightly fewer Bigfoot sightings than The Weekly World News.
Having no actual investigative reporters and blindly publishing things from credible news feeds is one thing (the death-knell of traditional media's role in journalism, for example). Doing the same with a tabloid as your source is even worse.
Re:Fox thinks pretty highly of those beavers (Score:3, Informative)
850 meters??? (Score:5, Informative)
And if anyone cares, here's an obligatory Google map of the beaver dam [google.com] and here's one for Three Gorges Dam [google.com].
Re:850 meters??? (Score:4, Informative)
Which is still half 500m shy of the Zhiguli Hydroelectric Station.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuybyshev_Hydroelectric_Station [wikipedia.org]
No longer holds the world largest dam record??? (Score:1, Informative)
I mean, is that new? In Quebec only, a quick search (no more than 5 minutes) showed that 4 of our dams (Manic 3, Manic 4, Manic 5, La Grande) are bigger than Hoover Dam by far. Manic 3 has been in operation since the 1970s...
This story is 2 years old! (Score:4, Informative)
I coulda sworn I saw this on Slashdot some time ago, but in any case, this "news" is at least two years old...
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2008/04/14/beaver-park.html [www.cbc.ca]
Re:Bigger is Better (Score:1, Informative)
The funnier part is the Fox news site has a link to "read more" that takes you to the original story on thesun.co.uk. That page has the exact story word for word but with a different picture. There is nothing more to read though, Fox copied the entire thing..
Re:850 meters??? (Score:5, Informative)
Whoa there buddy; easy on the capitals there.
The Egyptians put up one 3830m wide (the Aswan High Dam) in the 1960's.
It's Fox News; do you want to fact check The Onion as well?
Re:850 meters??? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:850 meters??? (Score:3, Informative)
The incredible woodland construction is a staggering 2,790 feet in length -- more than half a mile long.
The OP is the one who has confused length and width. And in every case, claiming that Hoover Dam is the largest dam in the world by any measure is just plain wrong.
Re:Bigger is Better (Score:5, Informative)
Funny that beaver dams never break. You would think that since they're made out of untreated wood, that the water would rot them at some random point that beavers can't even foresee....
I don't know if you were joking, but beaver dams break all the time. Usually they're not huge breaches but little leaks, and not usually due to wood rotting but due to mud washing out and sticks coming loose. The little guys are constantly repairing and mending the dams. They have OCD and can't stand the sound of running water -- that's their trigger to fix the dam.
Re:I like beavers (Score:5, Informative)
So? Spiders shit webs that are stronger than steel.
Re:Bigger is Better (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/23446391/detail.html [thebostonchannel.com]
Roads have been closed and homes evacuated after beaver dam breaks.