Have you ever seen a giant mouse more than 1 meter long? Some people will say that it is nonsense, and it is not a mouse that has become a sperm, what can grow to such a large size by eating, but in British towns and cities, this giant mouse is about to flood, what is going on?
In the UK, there is a small town called Tenby, which was originally a tourist attraction in southern Wales with some of the best beaches in Europe and a popular walking spot, Castle Hill. But since 2015, the town's residents have been afraid to go up the mountain, not because of taboo legends, but because rats have dug many holes in the mountain.
These underground caves are numerous and complex, and the mountain structure is already unstable and even at risk of collapse, which seriously affects the local tourism industry. Not only that, in order to find food, rats have long left their original habitats and migrated to the towns where people live.
In October 2015, when a resident of the town was resting in the living room of his home, he suddenly felt something hitting his calf, he opened his eyes and saw that it was a mouse the size of a cat trying to climb on his trouser tube, he jumped on the sofa in fright, and the mouse was also frightened, fled into the corner and disappeared.
Not only are rats in and out of residents' homes, but even in the town's most bustling Parliament Garden, there are many dark rat holes scattered across the land and hills. The rats rest in the caves during the day, and at night they come out in droves to feed, and the place they pass is a mess, their appearance is disgusting and terrifying, making people dare not approach easily.
Giant rats like this are not only found in the town of Tenby, but also residents of the British town of Aldershot, who have been invaded by rats, and one baby has been bitten. The largest rat captured by the residents weighed eight pounds, and it can be said that the cat was scared to run away when it saw it.
In a small town in Southampton next door, people can easily catch 30 centimeters of mice in the grass, and their slender tails don't count. In 2016, in bushes near a London playground, a natural gas engineer even saw a giant dead mouse measuring 1.21 meters, the titan among rats.
In fact, the giant rats that flooded the town of Tenby are actually the brown house rats common in China, only because they migrated to Europe with human activities. In China, the average adult brown house mouse is between 13-23 cm in length and slightly smaller in females, but in the UK, these mice have more than tripled in weight.
The fact that these giant rats are rampant in the UK has sparked concern and panic, and despite being the same species as common rats, their unusually large size has raised concerns about whether they carry disease, bite humans or other animals, and potentially cause damage to the environment.
Researchers were called in for a systematic analysis, and experts believe that the reason why the mice were able to grow so huge may be that they were given richer and higher-calorie food in the UK, and they survived and reproduced better without natural predators. In addition, some scientists say that the mice may have genetic variations that cause them to become larger.
Local residents said that these rats grow so big and are inseparable from humans, because the town of Tenby is a very famous tourist attraction in the UK, so the number of people who travel every year is very large. In addition, the British have an unhealthy diet, often eat some high-oil and high-sugar foods, and are treated as kitchen waste and thrown away in open garbage cans when they can't finish eating, and mice also like to eat these foods very much. Therefore, these trash cans are their main source of food.
And tourists often feed those wild seagulls or animals, resulting in a lot of residual food being thrown on the ground at random, which finally allows the rats to take advantage. And the survival ability of rats is very strong, they lie dormant in the darkest corners of the city, only a little food can survive for a long time, it is difficult to starve to death.
In addition, mice and humans have lived together for a very long time, and in the past, humans basically relied on poison and bait to eradicate mice, which also made mice unable to survive for a long time. It has long mutated to become resistant to traditional rat poison, and it is basically possible to distinguish that rat poison thrown by humans cannot be eaten, and this gene has been passed on.
As one of the oldest mammals on Earth, mice are very adaptable, although they have many natural enemies, but they adapt to human society faster than snakes and eagles, so that there are basically no natural enemies in the city.
And now cats are also fed by humans to degenerate wildness, even stray cats because of their cute or pitiful appearance, they will often be fed by humans, so that they can live well, naturally will not concentrate on staring at mice.
When rats have enough food, they will slowly evolve and grow, and experts once said that if the world's large animals were extinct, mice with sufficient food and no natural predators could even grow to the size of an adult ram.
At present, the local government of the town has set up an inspection team, allowing people to use traps and even thermal weapons to deal with these rats. And, according to the experts' recommendations, implement closed-loop management of the town's garbage collection system, so that the rats do not have enough food. In tandem, the rodent infestation is gradually decreasing.
But this also brings new enlightenment to people, that is, every creature on the earth is the product of the creator, and it has its own balance, and the balance of nature cannot be broken because of human excessive activities, otherwise it is still human beings themselves who will be punished in the end.