Meet Timber, The Large Beaver Who 'Looks Like A Capybara' (& You Can Feed Him!)

Many people think of beavers as being relatively small, resembling a groundhog or muskrat, but in reality they are quite big, just like this guy Timber who lives at the Turtle Bay Exploration Park in California. He's so big, in fact, he could be mistaken for a capybara because of his enormous size.

According to Turtle Bay Exploration Park's Instagram post, Timber is a North American beaver who is 12 years old, weighs 48 pounds, and serves as an "animal ambassador" along with other non-releasable animals who offer a unique story to hopefully help inspire a respect for wildlife. To that end, visitors can schedule a personal encounter with the oversized rodent, who will sit on your lap and eat food out of your hand — a little more interactive than the sleepy capybara whose snoring earned the nickname "capysnora" on social media.

In the comments, one person replied to a "capybara" mention saying, "Funny enough they're a cousin to the capybara. Beavers are the second largest rodent right behind their cousin." And another admitted, "As a [Canadian], I'm ashamed to say that I had no idea they get this large. I mean, I knew they were chonky, but 48lbs?!" Now, imagine one sitting on your lap! For perspective, Timber's 48-pound weight puts him around the heft of a typical kindergartener, making his size even more surprising for a rodent that many people assume is small. Hey, at least he's tame and docile enough to be considered one of the friendliest wild animals that love humans! 

Beavers, which are technically part of the rodent family just like capybaras, can get surprisingly large. There are two species of beaver, the North American beaver and the Eurasian beaver, which come from exactly where their names suggest — North America and Europe/Asia, respectively.

The North American beaver, like Timber, is the continent's largest rodent, typically weighing 35 to 65 pounds and measuring up to 4 feet from nose to rump. Its broad, paddle-shaped tail can add another foot or more in length, too. A full-grown North American beaver can be comparable in size to a medium-breed dog, making it much larger than most people expect. The Eurasian beaver boasts a similar size and length, too.

A beaver's size usually varies with age, food availability, habitat, and genetics, but most healthy adults have stocky, muscular bodies suited to life in and around water. Their substantial build supports a busy lifestyle that includes swimming, gnawing down trees, and building dams. While today's North American beaver is eye-poppingly large for a rodent, it was once dwarfed by an extinct relative, the giant beaver, which lived in the same region until about 10,000 years ago and could grow to around 7 feet long and weigh as much as 200 pounds. Yikes!