In Beaver World by Enos A. Mills

One bright autumn afternoon I peered down into a little meadow by a beaver pond. This meadow was grass-covered and free from willows. In it seven or eight beaver were at work along a new canal. Each kept his place and appeared to have a section in which he did his digging. For more than half an hour I watched them clawing out the earth and grass-roots and lifting it out in double handfuls and piling it in an orderly line along the canal-bank. While I was watching a worker at one end of this line, two others clinched in a fight. The fighters made no sound except a subdued guttural mumbling as they rolled about in a struggle. The other workers, to my astonishment, paid not the slightest attention to this fight, but each attended to his own affairs. After two or three minutes the belligerents broke away; one squatted down breathing heavily, while the other, with bloody tail, dragged himself off and plunged into the pond. This was the first beaver fight that I had ever seen.

Beaver may well be called the silent workers. No matter how numerous, or crowded, or busy they are, their work goes on without a word and apparently without a sign. Although I have seen them at work scores of times, in the twilight and in the daylight, singly, in pairs, and by the dozens, doing the many kinds of work which beaver perform, yet this work has always gone quietly and without any visible evidences of management. Each one is capable of acting independently. Since the quality of his work improves as the beaver increases his experience, it appears natural and probable that each colony of beaver has a leader who plans and directs the work. I am familiar with a number of instances which strongly indicate leadership. In times of emergency, when an entire colony is forced to emigrate, a beaver -- and usually an aged one -- takes the lead, and wherever he goes the others willingly follow.