Wen 丨 Captain of the rowing team
When it comes to Australia, many people first think of "the country riding on the back of a sheep" and "the country sitting on a mining cart". In fact, Australia is also a "country that steps on rabbits".
In most people's impressions, the little rabbit has always been a well-behaved and docile, harmless small animal. But in Australia, it has become the biggest threat to the locals, and the human-rabbit war in this land of Australia has lasted for more than a hundred years, and it is far from over.
So, what exactly caused this human-rabbit war? Why has it been fought for a century and not divided into victories and losers? Today, let's talk about this story.
◇ Thomas Austin, father of the Australian rabbit plague
In 1859, an English farmer named Thomas Austin came to Australia, and this buddy liked to hunt as a farmer, so he brought more than 20 rabbits to his estate, and when the rabbits raised more than it, he could use these to hunt and enjoy life.
At this time, Australia was a British colony, and no matter what it carried to circulate in its own territory, it naturally did not need to declare customs. At that time, human beings were not very clear about what species invasion was.
But more importantly, the colonists at that time were still proud of domesticating animals and modifying natural ecology. They believe in the theory of evolution, which holds that species that can survive locally can survive elsewhere. Among them, an avid domestication enthusiast named Frank Buckland even said that the only option for humans is to slightly rearrange nature to suit his own needs.
Therefore, since the 18th century, Europeans have begun to domesticate animals and plants in colonies around the world, and when Queen Victoria ascended the throne, there were 8 novel botanical gardens in the city of London, which were planted with novel species from all over the world.
Since someone brought animals and plants to Britain, someone brought British things to the colonies, Australian sheep, monkeys, sika deer are all from British colonists, and it is natural for Thomas Austin to bring two rabbits.
◇ Rabbit is a famous fertility machine in the animal kingdom, the female rabbit has a double uterus, when the female rabbit enters the pregnancy period, one side of the uterine mouth is closed and ovulation stops, the other side of the uterus can also receive eggs and sperm as usual. That is, a rabbit is an animal that can continue to conceive during pregnancy. In addition to this, the female rabbit can come into heat at any time 365 days a year. In order for the population to reproduce, it only takes 3 seconds for the male rabbit to impregnate the female rabbit. Mating is possible even when running for your life. Rabbits will seize every opportunity to increase the likelihood of breeding offspring.
However, the rabbit breeding speed is world-famous, it can mate in heat all year round, the gestation period is only 1 month, each litter can produce 4 to 10 rabbits, in theory, as long as it can provide enough Indian god oil for breeding rabbits, a female rabbit only needs a few years to reproduce hundreds of millions of rabbits. What's more, in Australia, rabbits happen to have no natural enemies, and creatures such as snakes, wolves, and foxes are difficult to find in Australia, so the spark of the fertility revolution is ignited.
From 1859 to 1866, the descendants of these rabbits spread in all directions at an average rate of 130 kilometers per year. By 1907, rabbit territory had spread across the Australian continent, and by 1926, the rabbit army had reached its peak - 10 billion. At that time, Australia's population was only about 6.5 million, and the number of rabbits was more than 1500 times the population.
◇ Rabbit map of Australia
In terms of pasture consumption alone, 10 billion rabbits eat more pasture than 1 billion sheep. Australia has also gone from being "a country on the back of a sheep" to a "country riding on the back of a rabbit". The rabbit plague has not only caused major losses to Australia's livestock industry, but also caused soil erosion and soil degradation, which in turn has led to the extinction of dozens of native animals on the Australian mainland, and these rabbits are difficult to bring any economic benefits to Australia, because they seem to create no other value than serving as dishes.
Seeing the rabbit flood, the first task must be eliminated, and the first way that comes to mind is simple, that is, hunting. Whether you are a hunting enthusiast or not, as long as you can pull the trigger. For a time, Australian men, women and children went into battle to deal with the flooded rabbit army.
◇ Some rabbits eliminated by the Australian people
This method is still immediate, as long as it is an area of human activity, there are indeed many fewer rabbits. Note, however, that there are only fewer rabbits in the human area, and not a single rabbit in other areas, and once the human hunt stops, they will soon return.
Moreover, Australia was sparsely populated, and Europeans, as colonizers, mainly concentrated in the coastal zone suitable for human survival, and there were not many settlers in the vast Australian interior at that time. So the locals quickly noticed that there were so many rabbits and lived in such a remote place, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't kill them cleanly.
In fact, in the face of the laws of nature, the wall is the most useless thing, Australia spent huge manpower and material resources, built three fences through the Australian mainland, want to isolate rabbits in the desert area, did not think that rabbits will make holes, build walls for them at all.
◇ It is useless to build three fences
◇ Rabbit plays tennis with a fence
Later, someone came up with "natural enemy therapy", which introduced the rabbit's natural enemy, the fox, to control the rabbit population. However, I never expected that the rabbit ran too fast, and the fox soon did not bother to chase, and began to attack other Australian native small animals that ran slower than the rabbit, and finally worsened the ecological balance of Australia.
When many traditional methods did not work, people began to use scientific and technological means.
The first is bacteriological warfare, using bombers to drop bombs on large areas above the rabbit herd, which, of course, is not explosive, but poison. The effect this time is quite significant, the rabbit was poisoned a large piece, but this "kill eight hundred, self-damage one thousand" style of play, even with a lot of "impartial and law-abiding" good poultry and beasts also pitted, those cattle and sheep because of eating poisoned grass appeared in a large area of death, Australian farmers took the carcasses of cattle and sheep to the door of the court to petition, the Australian government had to make an apology and lose money one-stop service.
It was not until the 50s of the last century that the Australian government finally came up with a fairly reliable countermeasure - myxoma virus. It is a virus originating in the Americas, transmitted by mosquitoes and, most importantly, harmless to humans and other livestock, but effective to rabbits.
◇ Evolution of rabbit myxoma virus: strong virulence myxoma virus is used to treat rabbit infestation, the virulence of the virus decreases in the short term, but the average virulence increases over a long period of time The picture is from "Transmission is better than SARS, do you need to worry about new coronavirus mutation?" Author: Li Qingchao
Grasping this life-saving straw, Australia's rabbit plague has finally been effectively alleviated, and once the virus spreads, the death rate of rabbits has reached more than ninety percent. But the rabbit problem has not been finally solved, because after all, there are still a few rabbits who have survived, just like Darwin's theory of evolution, these few rabbits have trained their immunity through cruel "natural selection", and their offspring have gradually evolved the ability to resist the myxoma virus.
In 1990, the population of these rabbits immune to myxoma virus recovered to about 600 million again, and there is a great tendency to make a comeback, and now Australian scientists are racking their brains, introducing a variety of viruses, and constantly trying various biological control methods to prevent a repeat of the disaster.
From the mid-20th century to the present, Australia has spent hundreds of billions of Australian dollars to eliminate rabbits, and this number is still growing exponentially, but the rabbit army is still thriving, thinking that Thomas Austin for his own enjoyment, let Australia suffer such a disaster, it is really "lifting a rock and shooting yourself in the foot".
◇ A manga that reflects the flood of cacti
Coincidentally, Australia's ecosystem has collapsed once, but this time because of a plant.
In 1860, Australian farmers introduced cactus seeds from South America to use as fences around their estates in order to save trouble, and as a result, Australia was simply paradise for cacti, and the local climate was simply tailored for cactus breeding. In the end, the whole of Australia was covered with cacti, and the Australian ecosystem almost collapsed.
After painstaking research by scientists, a night butterfly that can contain cacti was finally discovered, and finally the ecological balance was restored. In general, Australia and North and South America have long been isolated from Eurasia, and their ecosystems are extremely fragile, and once animals and plants from Eurasia land, it will be a fatal blow to the local ecology.
However, from a sociological point of view, a long-standing civilization is similar to Australia's fragile ecosystem, and if you do not open your eyes to the world, you will fall into the trap of arrogance. Such examples are not absent in history, such as the Indian civilization in the Americas, who faced European colonists as helpless as Australian farmers faced wild breeding rabbits.