With the progress of human industrial civilization, it has indeed brought great changes to our lives, however, it has also had a great impact on the environment we live in, and people's indiscriminate hunting and killing have had a huge impact on some biological species in nature, and even many species have reached the point of extinction and endangerment.
Therefore, many countries have enacted relevant laws to protect some animals, so that many endangered species can continue to breed, but some extinct species can no longer be seen from the world.
Extinct passenger pigeons
The pigeon should be a bird that most of us see every day, and in ancient times it was also used as a tool to transmit information, and now it symbolizes more "peace", "friendship" and "holiness". There are many types of pigeons in the world, we commonly belong to domestic meat pigeons, this breed of pigeons have a short breeding cycle, which is better to keep.
In the 10s of the last century, there was a pigeon called a passenger pigeon officially extinct, in 1914 in a zoo in Ohio, USA, the last female passenger pigeon on the earth in captivity died, which also means that there are no more passenger pigeons on the earth, it will also be called a species that once existed on the earth along with dinosaurs, antarctic wolves, Jamaican hamsters and other animals!
Passenger pigeons are a kind of pigeon species that is accustomed to living in groups, generally hundreds of thousands of pairs nesting together, the breeding period is 3-9 months, and the hatching period is about 12-13 days, and the life span of passenger pigeons is basically 30 years, which is a species with strong vitality and reproductive ability. Passenger pigeons are found only in North America, generally around 32-41 cm in length, and look very similar to today's wild doves, except for differences in the color of their feathers.
Once "prosperous"
Passenger pigeons were once "very prosperous" in the world, and no one who saw them could have imagined that such a species would face extinction by the twentieth century. Passenger pigeons, like many birds, migrate every season, and they are all in flocks, even large enough to be in the air for three days and three nights, and the density is like a "locust plague". The flocks of pigeons seen in tourist attractions are dense enough, think of the shock of about 100 million passenger pigeons flying overhead?
It is reported that before the arrival of Europeans on the North American continent, this place once had a staggering number of passenger pigeons, which can be said to be very large, and these passenger pigeons are grouped together, which is also conducive to breeding.
According to records, the 5 billion passenger pigeons that lived on the North American continent accounted for about 40% of all birds on the continent, which means that four out of ten birds on the North American continent at that time were passenger pigeons, which is such a group of species, who could have imagined that it would officially face extinction in 1914?
Today's "disappearance"
How "prosperous" it used to be, how "deserted" it is now, and today's Australian crayfish "flood" no one to eat, the original passenger pigeon can be said to be a delicacy on the table of many people, because of the delicious meat, plus they are in groups together, since the nineteenth century, the local people have hunted passenger pigeons on a large scale, and the price of sale is not high, so that the original people in order to fill their stomachs, they use passenger pigeons as their main meat.
The five billion number seems to be very large, but under the situation of being culled and eaten for decades, hundreds of years, the number of passenger pigeons has also declined, and the initial trend is not particularly large, but because it has not paid attention to this species, when I think of protecting them, it is already a completely uncontrollable situation.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the number of passenger pigeons was almost low, and finally in 1897 the American team Michigan banned the hunting of passenger pigeons for ten years, but unfortunately almost no one has seen them in the wild since then.
In order to continue the breeding of this species, passenger pigeons were bred in captivity. In 1898, a professor from the University of Chicago gave all the passenger pigeons he had rescued to the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio, USA. Sixteen years later, in 1914, the last passenger pigeon in the world, named Martha, died.
From 0 to 5 billion, it took more than a billion years
As mentioned above, since the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, there were as many as 5 billion passenger pigeons in North America, that is, before that, this species took more than a billion years to reproduce to this point, with the arrival of European colonists, everything changed, they not only turned many parts of the American continent into their own colonies, but also extended their hands to passenger pigeons, after all, such wild and delicious meat, in that era will definitely be scrambled to grab.
Initially, passenger pigeons were killed with guns from the air during their mass migration, but this method was laborious and time-consuming, and the number of captures was not large. Later, these trappers found a better way, because of the special call of passenger pigeons, it is easy to attract the arrival of the same kind, so they use the captured passenger pigeons to attract the arrival of the flock, so as to carry out large-scale catching.
From 5 billion to no trace, it took only 100 years
To be precise, it was in the 17th century that passenger pigeons were culled and eaten, while the real decline in passenger pigeons began to decline in the 19th century, when passenger pigeons became "commercial" and were culled and sold by hunters and merchants. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the last captive passenger pigeon died, just over 100 years later!
Take five billion passenger pigeons and 100 years, an average of 50 million passenger pigeons die a year, such a speed and number can be said to be quite terrifying, most of which fall into people's tables, more ironically, in the original Americas, because of the delicious taste of passenger pigeons and many people's love to eat, related restaurants opened one after another.
Of course, the decrease in the number of passenger pigeons does not exclude the influence of the external environment, such as the spread of some viruses, etc., but remembering that before the nineteenth century, the number of passenger pigeons can gradually develop to about five billion, which is enough to prove that the reproductive ability and survival ability of this species is very strong, and the main reason for the eventual extinction of the species is people's hunting, otherwise in just one hundred years, such a large number of passenger pigeons will not disappear.
You must know that when the passenger pigeons migrated en masse, they could fly through the air for three days, and in the nineteens and nineties, the shadow of passenger pigeons was rarely seen in the wild, and this gap was still very large, think about how devastating humans are to this species!
People's hindsight
The killing and sale of passenger pigeons was carried out in the early nineteenth century, while the legislative protection for passenger pigeons for the State of Michigan was in the late nineteenth century, which means that it took about a century for people to become aware of the protection of passenger pigeons. Of course, in the fifties of the nineteenth century, some scholars also put forward proposals to start protecting passenger pigeons, after all, at that time, the number of passenger pigeons had already declined greatly.
However, the committees of the Legislative Council at the time refused to legislate for the passenger pigeons on the grounds of their large numbers, and it took half a century to pay attention to this issue, and if the problem had been realized earlier in the mid-nineteenth century, I am afraid that the extinction of passenger pigeons would not have occurred.
In the forties of the last century, perhaps to make up for the cruel injury of human beings to passenger pigeons in the past, a park in Wisconsin, USA, also specially erected a monument for passenger pigeons to commemorate this extinct species.
People's desires
In about 100 years, the extinction of 5 billion passenger pigeons actually shows people's desires, for what they want, in order to achieve the goal, human beings will do whatever it takes and regardless of all the consequences.
Perhaps, before those 100 years, no one would have thought that such a large number of passenger pigeons would completely disappear from this world, just as the expert who looked up at the sky on the ground and saw a group of black pressed passenger pigeons flying through the air together, he would never have imagined that later people would fall in love with this taste and make it a staple food on the table, for enjoyment, to fill their hunger.
It took half a century to raise awareness of this problem, and if the problem had been realized earlier in the mid-nineteenth century, it probably would not have caused the extinction of passenger pigeons. Perhaps many people will think that eating only once or only one will not cause a lot of impact, after all, there are many similar things, but if everyone in the world has such attitudes and ideas, in the face of a larger population, no amount of things is enough.
Therefore, the extinction of 5 billion passenger pigeons is caused by people's endless greed and desire, but when this thing has no upper limit and no one stops it in time, let alone 5 billion, I am afraid that 10 billion is difficult to maintain. Moreover, when many people do these things, most of them do not think about the future and the future, but only think about the present and only want to satisfy their desires.
Human beings have never been the only "protagonists" on this earth, and it is not only human beings who enrich this world, whether they are animals or plants, they are all part of this earth, and we have no reason to deprive and take away their right to exist in this world. If we blindly harm and destroy nature, to harm other lives, perhaps it is ourselves who will be unlucky in the end.
summary
Since the existence of the earth, many species have faced extinction, some before the existence of human civilization, and some species extinction after the existence of human civilization, and the passenger pigeon belongs to the latter. According to records, the number of passenger pigeons declined sharply, just after the European colonists landed on the American landing, they were merciless to the colonized people, not to mention this bird, and then formed a large number of hunting behavior, resulting in the eventual uncontrollable.
However, for these extinct animals, we are already powerless, what we can do is to care for those animals that are still alive, and there are still many animals that are in the stage of extinction, such as the mainland's Yangzi crocodile, Yunnan golden snub-nosed monkey, elk, giant panda and so on. In order to protect these precious and endangered animals, the state has also issued relevant laws and regulations, which have also made people pay attention to and realize the seriousness of the problem.
Of course, the establishment of the law is only one aspect, in order to really protect animals, protect the environment, but also have to fundamentally change people's psychology and ideas, "less trading, less harm", now many people in pursuit of taste pursuit, like a lot of "wild" things, so there are a lot of culling and selling these animals, so for a long time, will definitely have a great impact on these animals.
The extinction of the passenger pigeon is the reason, after all, its meat quality is too delicious, many people love other tastes, like the Australian crayfish flood before, because Australians do not like to eat this thing, otherwise where there is still a flood, I am afraid it will also be eaten to the point of extinction.
Therefore, we need to start paying attention to the protection of the environment and animals, and we don't want to see animals like passenger pigeons disappear from the world again!