But the beaver had other ideas and quickly lunged at the girl. The attack was filmed by the girl's father, Marcus Handler, who was standing ten metres away.
"What I was seeing through the camera seemed unreal. I just screamed 'no, no' and rushed towards Matilda. Then the beaver started attacking me instead but I managed to jump out of the way and grab hold of Matilda," he told the Östersunds-Posten newspaper.
With his daughter bleeding profusely from one of her wrists and one of her thighs, Handler flagged down a passing car and had the girl taken to a nearby clinic for treatment.
The beaver can stand on its hind legs and balance with its flat tail to chew wood and gnaw bark. It holds the wood with its upper teeth and chews the wood with its lower teeth.
While most mammals use calcium to coat their teeth, beavers use iron. Iron makes beavers' teeth not only orange-colored, but also exceptionally strong. Hence, beavers have no problem using their teeth to cut down trees.
The Beaver's teeth do grow all the life of the beaver because gnawing wood wears the teeth down.