[sudofail]

Considering beavers make wooden structures for their own benefit and survival, it's not really surprising that ancestors of Homo Sapiens did as well.

[SoftTalker]

I find it completely unsurprising. Many animal species construct shelters/nests using available materials such as sticks, leaves, mud, etc. Humans are smart, so they do it more creatively, but no doubt our less-intelligent ancestors constructed shelters of some sort.

[diogenes4]

> Considering beavers make wooden structures for their own benefit and survival

It's more like they have a compulsion to stack wood where they hear running water. The implication here is intention and a cognizance of purpose, which is not unheard of in the animal kingdom but is fairly rare.

[steve_adams_86]

We don’t know that it’s purely compulsion, do we? Perhaps they know that still pools of water are best for survival so they’re motivated to prevent water from running away. The level of compulsion could be more sophisticated than we imagine. This seems to be true with many mammals. Not long ago in North America, it wasn’t uncommon to think of dogs as meat-headed automatons. Today it’s common to recognize that they have emotions and personalities much like we do, and there’s little evidence to suggest otherwise. I’m not convinced beavers are like giant fruit flies trying to plug holes.

[verisimi]

Maybe this one of many half a million year old wooden beaver structures, given that they build in water.