The Incredible Hulik and His Beavers - The Secrets of Nature

[Music] [Music] [Music] this is the story of an unusual friendship the friendship between a beaver and a young man named Thomas Phillippe [Music] what happened in the wetlands along the river March in Slovakia is a minor miracle for beavers as a rule a shy nocturnal and virtually invisible for long people [Music] our story tells of the meeting of an obstinate researching student and a stubborn beaver and of their subsequent adventures [Music] this is the river March that once marked the dividing line between Eastern and Western Europe and is now the border between Austria and Slovakia this railway bridge is a key location in our story for it stands in the middle of the domain of the Slovakian beavers here was once the Iron Curtain for decades from both sides this was the end of the world today Austrian army boats control the European Union's outer frontier time and again they fish exhausted refugees out of the water who have been abandoned here by illegal traffickers [Applause] the river March is still a sad frontier but at least it now stays open all that remains of the iron curtain as a memorial is a few yards of barbed wire the watchtowers traps and self firing devices have all disappeared the former Death Zone is now a leisure park one fine day in May 1996 Thomas who league was walking through the forest as usual he was a biology student and the wetlands were his open-air laboratory one might say never before had Thomas found himself in such an unusual situation I was pretty shaken but I soon realized that formed into a beaver lodge beavers in Slovakia are asked myself I'd always thought the last beaver had been slaughtered over a hundred years ago [Music] from this day on the young student was obsessed by the idea of finding the Beavers over and over again I found tricks of a fully grown Bieber it had come in from Austria it was the first beaver here on the Slovakian site I could neither see nor hear it but a sense that it was very near [Music] then from a distance Thomas often saw for just a moment a silhouette a tiny movement now he was shown a beaver had indeed settled here in the region and that was something of a sensation no beaver had been seen around here for more than 150 years the sad stuffed corroboration of this fact can be seen in the Natural History Museum in Bratislava it was shot in 1858 one of the last of its species her centuries beavers had been hunted down in Europe with Nets traps steel clamps and even fire they were clubbed slaughtered skinned and eaten [Music] except for a handful of remnant colonies the European beaver had been virtually wiped out by the mid 19th century some 30 years ago however events to her turn for the better the attempt was made to release beavers in old beaver habitats above all in the wetlands of Eastern Austria even though the Animas were handled none too gently the program was a great success [Music] 20 years later Thomas hulex entered on an ordeal he spent the first of endless days and nights in the wetlands summer in this region means immense heat being eternally bathed in sweat billions of flies and mosquitoes sometimes I could hear it at night I tried everything to get a photograph of it but in vain it was very cautious [Music] what Tomas didn't know was that he was sitting right in the middle of a beaver lady's newly staked out domain she had indeed come from Austria and now resided in the enchanted wetlands forests surrounding the railway bridge even though some pond owners stubbornly maintained that beavers eat fish they are really strict vegetarians they eat young leaves and twigs grass or weeds and in winter they make do with bark these huge rodents are more at home in water than on land on land they appear rather clumsy but in the water they are elegant almost noiseless swimmers and can stay under for up to 15 minutes wherever beavers settle they changed the shape of the landscape appreciably they erect dams and canals build up water and redirected step by step creating a network of connected waterworks beavers make paths and short cuts through the undergrowth they much prefer to stay in the water though and remain as unobtrusive as possible when on land the reason for all this Restless building activity is the beavers desire to be able to reach their main source of food young shoots of leafy trees as quickly as possible without leaving the water one looks in vain however for the great beaver dams encountered in Canada or the US the European beavers prefer to live in well camouflaged lodges along the river banks once again many months and a hard unsuccessful winter and passed in the wetlands Tom not only looked older he felt it too and then one day early in summer everything changed just as I was beginning to lose help I heard noises I realized that the beaver was now coming out of his launch during the day as well it suddenly appeared very close to me at last the long-desired first meeting came about in full daylight Tom found himself standing before the mistress of the realm he would call her Rachel from now on the Slovakian word is rattler and it describes the noise of the beaver tail as it slaps the water it was like a kind of a miracle she seemed to have grown used to me and recognized me from now on by my voice I suppose I was deliriously happy [Music] beavers are principally and constantly occupied with the business of feeding themselves if only on account of her considerable size Rachel the queen of this realm so to speak commands respect for she weighs far in excess of 30 kilos the male of the species only appears in the mating season lady Rachel wears the pants in the beaver world with her pungent aroma rachel has marked out several hectares for her family and her favorite meet any other beaver daring to approach this reserve is driven off fiercely she even chases her own young away when they're 2 years old somewhere rachel has burrowed a den where she raises her children but Tomas has yet to catch a glimpse [Music] Rachel's domain is tucked away in a quiet backwater of the wetland forest a few hundred meters down river at the foot of the ruined castle of Devon the March flows into the Danube on its banks just a stone's throw away lies Slovakia's capital Bratislava it was in Bratislava that Roma celebrated his graduation there were plenty of reasons to stay and the beer was flowing freely but Thomas's thoughts kept drifting up the Danube then did an abrupt turn and landed on the river mulch he had decided to follow the flight of his thoughts and do what he'd done in the nights before and would continue to do in those that followed here he was the only student in the world to celebrate his graduation with a beaver this was the night when it finally became clear that Tomas who leaked was possessed Tomas may have been bitten by the beaver bug but he was far from being crazy for after 100 nights in the swamp he achieved something that no one before him had done he came to within an arm's length of a wild beaver [Music] for a biologist such a degree of trust was a priceless value [Music] only in autumn do passers-by suddenly realize that beavers have moved into the neighborhood [Music] the Beavers tree felling has mainly to do with laying in vittles for the winter their aim is to get at the skin of the tender branches in the trees crowns they're industrious tree felling habit clears a lot of space and promotes the typical fast-growing types of trees bare spots thickets and sparse undergrowth disappear altogether the very things that drive foresters to despair are a blessing for the wetlands rachel prepares her fir for the winter she's carefully cleaning and rubbing her coat of hair with the glands secretion to make sure that no drop of water can penetrate it [Music] the March riverine forest is small and yet a place of extremes in some of the thermometer rises to 40 degrees centigrade and in winter it drops to 20 degrees below zero [Music] I vividly remember very cold afternoon in winter there was absolute stillness in the wetlands and I was photographing beaver tracks I was totally confused at first but then I realized it was a gang of youths illegal refugees running from the police [Applause] [Music] tragedies like this are always happening in the March wetlands refugees are brought to the border by illegal traffickers but when they try to cross over into Austria they get caught and a left stripped of both their money and their hopes [Music] eva's do not hibernate on the contrary in winter they do a kind of fitness workout dragging half the forest back and forth rachel is not splashing about for fun she is constantly breaking the ice to make sure it doesn't freeze over the hole this is imperative as the only entrance to the lodge is below the surface winter reveals a well-kept secret Rachel's young emerge for the first time they were born in May and now they're about half as big as their mother but still as playful as little children beavers can swim in icy water for hours their fur is incredibly dense 15 thousand hairs per square centimetre it guarantees complete water and cold resistance the young beavers have a lot to learn about thin ice for instance and how much weight it can bear [Music] the first signs of spring are already evident in the beaver forest [Applause] a large shoal of young fish seeks the protection of a fallen tree unfortunately the hiding place is known to some predators too this Pike is in his element these Bleek's hatched a short while ago and will soon flit through the old tributaries into the river of thousands only a few will survive as they figure well down in the animal breadline pecking order with the arrival of the first migratory birds the snow melts and one bad weather front follows another there's no dam to hold the march on the Slovakian side and so floods occur regularly in spring in the spring of 2002 the flats in the beaver domain rose uncommonly high and stayed menacingly for a very long time but the Beavers didn't suffer unduly for they had retired to dens that Rachel had prepared on higher ground for this very eventualities the floods and the Swift currents left their marks and not always just stacks of reeds unfortunately now spring can make its entrance [Music] [Music] on the austrian side of the march right across from Rachel's territory the stalks have returned from their winter quarters in Africa on the perimeter of the town of Marche only a few hundred metres from the Beavers is the largest store colony in Europe judging by the number of visible nests anyway some 100 Birds gather here every year [Music] now Rachel again began showing herself during the day Thomas who leaked noticed some days before that something in her behavior had changed and one morning Thomas's suspicions were confirmed while watching Rachel wash herself he saw clearly that her teeths were swollen so she was either pregnant or given birth already she was resolutely fetching branches and small trees to the lodge and Thomas assumed that she was redecorating this time tom was determined not to be tricked he just had to see her young so he stuck to Rachael's heels I saw that she always swam towards the same group of trees and then submerged there was a bed of chewed reeds that looked very like camouflage I was standing on the roof of Rachael's new house then came a moment I shall never forget Rachael was home with a baby at her breast [Music] the younger a week old at the most at first I could only see two but then I heard more calls and squeeze coming from the back of the nest [Music] now it was clear why Rachel had been behaving so oddly [Music] she ate like a horse day and night she had to keep her strength up of course as the baby is constantly demanded more and more milk but Thomas was surprised by the size of her appetite nevertheless just how many babies did she have to feed a few days later I made out three babies in the nest which is nothing unusual for beavers but as suspected there were even more what really surprised me was that Rachel allowed me to get so close to her and her young my presence didn't seem to disturb her at all [Music] [Music] éva babies need a lot of care and attention especially during the first few weeks [Applause] only when the long beard hairs have grown over the wooly fur does their coat become really watertight and they can't swim right away either so they have to practice in their indoor pool [Music] so long as they drink only milk Rachel never has a free minute they begin to eat green stuff when they're four weeks old and are weaned at eight weeks then Rachel can begin teaching them to swim and dive in the big pool too if everything goes well [Music] the tributaries become a bird's paradise in early summer ducks gray and silver herons stalks and occasionally even black storks all gather here for breakfast in the dawning hours [Music] it slowly dawned on me that Rachel was a very peculiar vive indeed normally the bigger young from the previous litter the one year olds and the father to have read the new babies but they were nowhere to be seen in the whole domain there was only one adult Bieber Rachel [Music] meanwhile I had spent around 1000 nights in the wetlands I still had to approach her with care but Rachel clearly regarded me as part of the furniture here we see the legendary beaver teeth that work the front enamel is hard at the inner ones soft and it was down continually so in fact the teeth sharpened themselves while biting how many photos had already taken affair 5,000 10,000 I'd lost count meanwhile who leaked had taken down hundreds of pages of scientific observations and facts written dozens of essays and articles he was still under 30 but he had already advanced to being a leading expert on beavers and yet things continue to happen that surprised me sometimes Rachel was unusually shy and then again one day she even allowed me to touch her [Music] day after day Rachel dragged big branches into the water chewed them into small pieces and lined her den with them inside there was now a non-stop show in progress [Music] this litter was really something at last I was able to count there were five of them only very seldom do beavers have so many babies [Music] [Applause] Tomas was thrilled never before had anyone taken such pictures but he had no way of knowing that these happy days in the swamp were numbered in mid summer 2002 dark thunderstorms suddenly gathered over the country and then it just never stopped raining for weeks there was not even a chink of blue-sky Central Europe was inundated by once-in-a-century floods the last time Thomas saw Rachel she was moving with her brood heading for higher ground he supposed the little village of Dvinsk anubhav age on the river March was now flooded for the second time in a year and the high-water mark reached a new record [Music] alone in the region surrounding the beaver territory hundreds of people lost their entire belongings dozens of houses collapsed or were ruined forever [Music] at the height of the flood tom paddled through the wetlands with his friend and colleague theodore looking for the Beavers rachel's domain was now 6 meters underwater together with the higher dens and lists the young was still not able to swim properly their only chance was the elevated railway embankment but there was nothing but water water everywhere are not a sign of the Beavers by mid-august the floods had receded and Thomas hooli continued his search for the Beavers untiringly he had already seen Rachel she must have kept to the embankment during the floods but where were the young Adam one of them at least survived in the forest not even a distant splash was to be heard [Music] soon even the very last trace of the recent catastrophe had disappeared in the wetlands [Music] Tomas was unable to enjoy the late summer idle however day after day he continued his search with Pia door and refused to believe that five little beavers had all been drowned then another small miracle happened at the bank of a remote tributary are suddenly saw a movement near the bank [Music] two of them had indeed come through they were strongly built and showed not the least fear just how Rachel managed to rescue them though would remain a mystery forever [Music] Eva's become self-sufficient quite quickly as soon as they can swim and dive they find their own food and check out the domain by themselves they stay close to their mother but live and sleep mostly alone in their own dens [Music] [Music] just like their parents they take up their workers master-builders never stopped adapting and renovating their quarters the young depend to a large degree on their siblings for survival nothing is more important than the care lavished on each other's fur the joy in each other's company and the general delight in common games meanwhile the little wetlands forests on the river March has become a picture-book beaver paradise wherever one looks there are dams and water build ups and consequently there is also a colorful variety of flora and fauna [Music] felled dead trees nurture new life and serve to feed countless types of insects [Music] Thomas who League has been studying beaver language for some years already while listening to them Tom discovered that they were quite loquacious they have a whole repertoire of calls and greetings and farewells the young ones in particular in the meantime Tomas has identified some 20 different sounds these two have not the slightest interest in exchanging information at the moment however it becomes apparent that beavers have excellent hearing but bad eyesight [Applause] during the month of September summer begins to wane and a fantastic spectacle takes place the stag wrought two magnificent specimens standing peacefully next to each other for this to happen during the rut is incredible for the contest is held to decide who will be the next king after all around this time the Beavers are very busy - it's time to go wood chopping [Applause] [Music] the starlings take up artistic formations for the flight home while the last summer guests are departing the scene Rachel resumes her work in several stages the trees are stripped and nord all round legend has it that the trees are always felled in expert fashion towards the water but this may be wishful thinking fact is that beavers invariably felled trees growing next to the water the knowing and felling dismantling and dragging takes the whole night Rachel is no longer alone the two one-year-olds have come back to the fold now the United beaver family attacks the trees together [Applause] what exactly is Tom up to after these 1,001 dramatic nights in the school [Music] I'd like to know where the mail goes after the meeting it's as though the earth opens and swallows him up [Music] and I'd also like to know where the young of the previous years have gone Rachel chased them off and where the next lot will go to they are already three four generations we ought to put them out with Brady the film bigger and better than ever before [Music] you [Applause]

Channel: The Secrets of Nature

Views: 9,649

Rating: 4.9574466 out of 5

Keywords: orf universum, documentary, blue chip, natural history, secrets of nature, planet earth, natura, naturaleza, documentales, wildlife, wild earth, nature earth, nature films, wild films, nat geo wild, bbc earth

Id: aAOew8Hm5RM

Length: 49min 14sec (2954 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 16 2019