In addition to the spicy rabbit head in Sichuan, the Australian rabbit is also famous. But The Australian rabbit is not known for its cuisine, but in unimaginable numbers. Do you know? By 1926, the number of Australian hares was approaching 10 billion.
The Australian hare is also not a native species. I came to Australia because of a man named Thomas Austin, and it is estimated that the locals will have a headache when they hear his name. In 1859, he brought back 24 rabbits from England, raised them in his backyard, and often used them as targets to practice hunting. The rabbits that are now flooded in Australia are generally believed to be the descendants of this group of rabbits according to genetic judgments. He probably didn't expect that these rabbits would rapidly breed to tens of millions of rabbits in less than 10 years, and what was more frightening was the spread of 130 kilometers a year in the south of Australia. Completely uncontrolled, these rabbits, in 1920, reached a direct peak of 10 billion.
Rabbits' reproductive ability is one of the best in the animal kingdom. Female rabbits have two wombs, each of which matures and is capable of reproduction at 3 to 8 months. They can generally produce 4 to 12 rabbit pups per litter. There is no breeding period, you can give birth to up to 6 babies a year, the gestation period of each fetus is about 1 month, and you can get pregnant again immediately after giving birth to a child. The newborn rabbits are employed and have the ability to reproduce after a growth period of about 4 months. Coupled with their strong adaptability to the environment, the number of rabbits is increasing and completely uncontrollable.
Rampant rabbits began to rage in Australia, most affected by the local environment.
The number of Australian hares has gone from 24 to 10 billion that were once difficult to control. Rabbits multiplied and raged throughout Australia, and it took only 70 years to "occupy" the whole of Australia, which saddened the locals.
These raging hares have almost eaten all the grass, and the local sheep can't find grass to eat, resulting in the grass not being able to catch up with the speed at which they eat, resulting in serious degradation of the local land in Australia. And because of their large numbers, some local herbivores have no food source at all, threatening the survival of some local species. They also like to punch holes, and the pits everywhere affect the local soil, and even the newly grown grass will be destroyed by them.
Under such damage to the breeding industry and the environment, in 1887, the local people began to exterminate rabbits. In the 150-year-long Human Rabbit War, they basically used all the methods they could use.
The first thing they think of is hunting. But the rate at which local people hunt and kill simply cannot keep up with the rate at which they reproduce. So they built a fence belt to limit the rabbit's area. But before the fence was finished, the rabbits had already crossed and had to continue to extend, but for the rabbits who could burrow, no matter how long they were, it was difficult to stop them. This method does not work and they introduce rabbits as predators of foxes. At first, it was still effective, some of the rabbits were destroyed by the foxes, but the good times did not last long, and these rabbits gradually evolved their skills against the foxes, so that the foxes had to retreat to catch animals such as wallabies, which the local people did not want to see. In order to kill rabbits, Australians had to use poisoning, but this method was basically to kill a hundred self-inflicted wounds, and Australia's local ecosystem was seriously damaged.
So how are these rabbits, which number as high as 10 billion, handled? In the mid-20th century, when the attention of rabbit extermination in Australia turned to biological methods, scientists introduced a virus called myxoma. The virus is transmitted by mosquitoes and does not affect humans and other organisms, but produces a myxoma that can kill them in their natural host rabbits. The virus spread rapidly in rabbit populations after its introduction, with a mortality rate of 99.9%. To a certain extent, the number of rabbits is well suppressed.
However, in recent years, with the emergence of resistance in rabbit populations, the fatality rate of the virus has been decreasing year by year. So Australia had to continue to work on new biological weapons for rabbit extermination.
This is what many people may have to ask, using so many methods, why not just eat them? The first point is that you can't finish eating at all, and eating three meals a day may not be useful. Then there are the australians who don't have the habit of eating rabbit meat, they don't like it very much, and they don't know how rabbit meat will be more delicious when cooked. But the main reason is that the poisoning method used in the previous extermination of rabbits has led to a large number of rabbits that may carry viruses, regardless of whether they are harmful to people, as long as they hear the word "virus", Australians do not dare to eat at all.
The alien species of hare has gone from 24 when they first arrived in Australia to 10 billion at their peak because there were no natural enemies. This is also a big wake-up call to the impact of alien species on the local area.