Standing at the Shoreline

He knows you didn’t write that yourself. Hey Alexa, how long can a beaver hold its breath? I’m asking because I was kayaking last night at Totier Creek off the James River and I spotted a beaver swimming from one bank to another, his little head sticking up like a thumb and his body and paddle of a tail cutting a V through the smooth water. And suddenly he went under and never came back up. Believe me, I watched for him in all directions for, like, 10 minutes. The thing was gone.Alexa didn’t care much about my explanation for the question, nor my decision to call the animal a “he,” but she did tell me beavers can hold their breath for up to 15 minutes on a single dive, plenty of time to get across a waterway without being bothered by a curious human in a kayak who was hoping for a closer view.For stuff like that, this AI thing is awesome. It may not have all the answers yet, but it has a lot of them and at least when typing your question into a chatbot you can insist on a certain type…