Australia, a place where all foreign animals will flood.
Ordinary dogs have become "wolves" here, and ordinary cats have become "tigers" here.
Studies have pointed out that the domestic cats that invaded Australia have begun to grow in size, and some people think that if they continue like this, they may actually become tigers.
Koalas: My invading neighbors
How did Australian cats come about?
Why are they getting bigger and bigger?
Will Australian wildcats evolve into tigers?
Why is Australia so susceptible to species invasion?
Australian wildcats are infested, and if humans don't stop it, can they eventually evolve into tiger-like beasts?
Australia's wildcats
Attacking wildcats
There are no native cats in Australia, and the current Australian wild cat is the domestic cat brought by the British colonists.
Because they escaped or were abandoned, these domestic cats entered the Australian wild and gradually rewilded.
Most parts of Australia are dry and rainy, which is actually very suitable for cat breeding, because the ancestor of the domestic cat is an animal that lives on the edge of the desert and later enters the life of humans.
Australia's top predators, such as the ancient monitor lizard and the thylacine, have become extinct, so the descendants of these domestic cats have settled here, become wild cats, and flooded the Ecology of Australia.
Australian feral cats that have been completely wild
They prey on birds and some marsupial pups, but according to scientists, Australian wildcats are much larger than their domestic cat ancestors.
It is difficult for the average domestic cat to exceed 5 kilograms, but the Australian wildcat often weighs about 7 kilograms, which can subdue more than a dozen kilograms of rock monitor lizards.
In this way, the Size of the Australian Wildcat will grow larger and larger, and it is likely that the red kangaroo will not be able to escape.
Why do the same offspring of domestic cats, Australian wildcats, grow up to be so big?
Large Australian wildcats caught by hunters
Australian wildcats are huge
There are two main reasons for the huge size of Wildcats in Australia, the first is caused by the geographical environment of Australia itself, and the second is the influence of The Australian Wild Dog.
Although Australia is geographically called a continent, it is surrounded by the sea on all sides, which is actually an island, but the size of this island is particularly large.
Animals on islands are very susceptible to a phenomenon called island giganticism, such as the extinct Mauritius dodo, New Zealand moa and so on.
The island is a representative dodo from Dahua
Australia has also seen island giants in its history, such as the ancient monitor lizard that was extinct by humans.
This is because the environment of the island is very closed, and many animals have no natural enemies or will survive in later evolution, and the last one is dominant.
Without predators and competitors, intraspecific competition intensifies, resulting in larger members of the population gaining more resources, larger genes passed down from generation to generation, and generations stronger than each generation, eventually becoming behemoths.
Ancient monitor lizards of Australia's past
The ancestors of these Australian wildcats were domestic cats brought by british colonists, and there were originally many different breeds and sizes.
After about 200 years of breeding, the population of wildcats in some areas has been basically saturated, and their competition for the same kind has begun to intensify.
Larger feral cats have more resources, and they have a better chance of leaving behind offspring.
At the same time, the Dingo also plays a role in this choice.
Australia's "Village Head Rhubarb"
The Dingo came to Australia with a group of Southeast Asian immigrants about 5,000 years ago, and for some reason the group of immigrants left, but did not take their own dogs with them.
So they lived here and became Australia's top predators.
They prey on Australian wildcats, and the larger the wildcat, the less likely it is to be preyed upon by dingos, which somewhat accelerates the size of the wildcat.
Scientists believe that at the current rate of feral cat colossalization, it is likely that one day, the Australian dingo alone will not be able to help.
So, if the Australian wildcat evolves like this, can it become a beast like a tiger?
Can a cat turn into a tiger?
Cats evolved into tigers?
If humans don't intervene and allow wildcats to evolve at the rate they are doing, it's likely to evolve into a big cat, a tiger-like top predator that dominates Australia's biological chain.
But it should be noted here that the Australian wildcat evolved into a giant cat with the same ecological niche as the tiger, rather than directly evolving into a tiger, which is essentially different.
Cats can never evolve into tigers because they are two different species.
Tigers and cats are two different species
It has been rumored that the cat is the original model of the tiger, and the tiger is a cat evolution is wrong!
Cats and tigers are indeed both felines, and they share a common ancestor.
But the history of the cat family is also about 35 million years old, and has long been divided into the leopard subfamily and the cat subfamily, the tiger belongs to the leopard subfamily Leopard genus, and the domestic cat is the cat subfamily Cat genus.
So the Australian wildcat cannot evolve into an Australian tiger, but it will evolve to a certain extent in size to become a medium big cat.
Member of the leopard subfamily
Just like the North American mountain lion, it is actually the American golden cat genus of the cat subfamily, not a lion, but a large body, and is the top cat predator in North America.
Scientists believe that the Australian wildcat continues to evolve and may be somewhere between the lynx and the mountain lion.
When the time comes, it will feed on kangaroos and human-raised sheep.
But don't ignore the premise, without human intervention.
Mountain lions are not lions that live in the Americas
Tiger lions, or mountain lions, the largest members of the cat subfamily, could not be interfered with by humans when they evolved, so they could evolve into today's size.
The Australian wildcat began to grow in size in more than 200 years, a long time before the wildcat reached the top of the local food chain.
Australian wildcats need at least tens of thousands of years to make their size huge to a certain extent.
But will humans allow australian wildcats to continue to grow?
Australia's feral cat body size is a threat to humans
Of course not, the colossal feral cat is a potential threat to humans, not only to livestock, but also to the safety of people themselves.
Australian wildcats eat about 2 billion animals a year, and 12 species in Australia have gone extinct as a result of the Australian wildcat, which has caused serious ecological damage to the local area.
Every year, Australia organizes special hunters to hunt cats and reduce their numbers.
The wild cat is not the only invasive species in Australia, in addition to it there are hares, foxes, aforementioned dingoes, and even camels are all flooded in Australia!
Why is Australia so vulnerable to biological invasion?
Australia hunts camels by helicopter
Fragile Australian ecology
Looking closely at these invasive species, they all have one thing in common – mammals of the euphrasiaceae, which is what we often call placental mammals.
Australia's native animals are almost all post-theropods, which is what we often call marsupials.
In terms of biological evolution, the post-theropod subclass is more backward than the euphrasiacian subclass, and the post-theropod subclasses of other continents have basically become extinct, leaving only some small marsupials, such as possums.
There are marsupial possums
Only the Australian post-theropods survived, probably because the euphrasia had not yet spread there when Australia separated from the Pangea supercontinent.
In short, Australia became the last pure land of the post-theropod subclass, and it was not until about 40,000 years ago, when humans landed here, that it ushered in the long-lost true mammals.
Then, around the 18th century, another group of people arrived in Australia, who were the British colonists.
The colonists brought their own animals, including rabbits and domestic cats that would later flood, and Australia's ecological nightmare began.
Flooded Australian hares
These flooded animals have few natural predators in Australia, and with strong reproductive ability, they soon spread in the local area with lightning speed and became invasive species.
In fact, not only the Australian wild cat has become huge, but the Australian hare and fox are larger than other places.
Because getting bigger is always a two-way street, predators and predators will grow larger to varying degrees, which is called popular science law.
For example, the Tyrannosaurus rex in the early Cretaceous Period was only as tall as one person, but by the late Cretaceous Period, its size was already a 6-meter-tall giant.
Its food triangular dinosaurs were also, the original triangular dinosaurs not only had no horns, but also the size of a small pig, and as a result, by the end of the Cretaceous, it became a land chariot weighing several tons.
The largest domestic cat is the Maine cat
If humans don't interfere with Australian wildcats, perhaps by the end of this century, the largest domestic cat will not be a Maine cat, but an Australian wildcat.