Winter is Coming

Nico Bellucci and Ella Zemler Wu

 This project addresses a side effect of climate change. There are two subsets of North American beavers. Those who live in climates with cold winters and those who live in warmer climates. As global temperatures rise, beavers that live in warmer climates can migrate and live in these historically cold climates. However, these historically cold climates, although warmer, are still susceptible to cold snaps. The beavers from the warmer climates have never had to prepare for winter because the temperatures never got low enough. Because they still don't prepare, when a cold snap comes to their new habitat, they all die off. They can die from a few different ways, such as starvation, due to a lack of food storage, or hypothermia, because they didn't insulate their lodge enough. We decided to address the insufficient insulation problem. Our project is a device that uses compressed air to deploy a net-like lattice on top of a beaver lodge. This lattice has speakers attached that play water leaking sounds. The only way a beaver tells if their lodge is leaking is through sound, so it is really easy to trick them. They then think their lodge is leaking and, in turn, build up more material on their lodge until they can no longer hear the speakers. This results in more insulation on their lodge so they can survive the winter.