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Text|Fanghua Historical Theory
Editor|Fanghua History Theory
When it comes to rats, everyone will get goosebumps, and the saying "rats cross the street everyone shouts and beats", although it is very small, but it can spread viruses and bacteria.
But have you ever seen a giant mouse that grows to more than 1 meter? It is huge, weighing more than 5 kilograms, and its body size is almost as long as that of a large dog.
Some people are curious where these giant rats come from, and what do they eat to grow so big? Unexpectedly, the hometown of these giant mice turned out to be China. Could it be a contamination mutation?
01
The source of the Big Mac mouse
In Britain, there is a group of evil "robbers" who roam the streets and run amok and almost dig up the mountains by the sea.
These robbers turned out to be from the mainland, which are ordinary house mice. Some people will be curious to ask, the mainland rats are generally 10 cm, how did they become so huge in the UK?
The average house mouse prefers to inhabit damp and cold places, especially those that have fallen into disrepair and no one lives. Most of the common mice in normal mainland China are mainly small house mice, yellow-breasted mice and brown house mice. These giant rats that traveled to the UK are brown house mice.
The brown house mouse is about 15-20 cm long, which is thicker than other mice, and is the larger of the house mouse.
Small but harmful, just like Jerry in "Cat and Mouse", house mice are very sharp and clever, and it is difficult to catch. Mice's sense of smell and taste is very developed, and most of the animals are color blind, so they rely on their sense of smell to find objects and identify directions.
Mice are no exception, relying on their sense of smell to quickly find food hidden by humans, and can identify toxic impurities and pollutants.
Their sense of hearing is also extremely keen, they can hear ultrasound waves from 40 kilohertz away, and they themselves can emit ultrasonic waves, and mouse cubs rely on sound waves to find the direction of the hole.
Although cute in appearance, it is a parasite that can spread various viruses, and there are more than 30 kinds of viruses transmitted through mice, and it is often said that the culprit of hemorrhagic fever and plague is rats.
So what exactly did they grow so big on and what big meal did they eat in England?
02
Why do rats grow so big
These Big Mac rats flooded the small town in southern Wales, England, and according to the owner of the bar in the town, these big guys have been living here since he can remember, and in order to get rid of them, the government has set up a rat-catching brigade, but it has no effect at all.
The rats they caught were bigger than dogs, which made the local people very puzzled, why? In the end, the reason why they have grown so big is that humans are to blame.
Take the town of Tenby, for example, a small city near the sea, where most of its economy is based on tourism, with millions of tourists coming and going every year.
Seeing the soaring seagulls by the sea and feeding them by the way is also an indispensable fun thing to visit here. But most of the British food is high in oil and sugar, and these things fall on the beach and slowly accumulate.
In the arms of mice, their love for these high-calorie foods is really not said. In addition, all kinds of garbage left by people, such as stone peels, plus kitchen waste poured out by restaurants or bars next to it, have become their mouths.
And the method of the rat catching brigade to deal with these "big cleverness" is nothing more than drug spraying, putting poison bait, for a long time, they have long been familiar with these routines, and find ways to avoid, and even evolve anti-drug genes, slowly these tricks have no effect.
Mice are viviparous animals, just like kittens and dogs, giving birth to 5 or 6 cubs per litter, and sometimes even 10.
In the case of brown house mice, this mouse will give birth to about 5 litters per time, but as the number of births increases, each litter will add one pup, and their gestation period is only more than 20 days.
Until the number of litters of the mother mouse reaches 15, the number of litters will be reduced by one each time, and when it is reduced to 5 or 6, that is, when the mother mouse stops breeding, according to statistics, each female mouse can breed 1,000 cubs on average.
03
Giant rats are infested
There is a castle hill beloved by the sea in the town of Tenby, where everyone likes to take a walk after dinner. But it has become a base for the big guys, and no one dares to go to Castle Hill again.
Today, Castle Hill has become unrecognizable, and the side facing the sea has loosened and collapsed at any time. This is because the inside of the mountain has long been leaked by sieve. The rats make holes in it, and the size is large, the hole is big, dense, and the mountain is about to collapse.
Not only by the sea, but also the streets of the city have become a stage for their performances. These rats come out for a walk every evening, and residents often see rats half a meter long on the street.
Their tails are as thick as a twine, so if they don't come out, they should not be able to hide at home. It would be a big mistake to think so.
Even at home, these big guys will appear. In an interview, a woman said that not long ago, a rat the size of corgi popped out of the restaurant at home, and she wanted to go to the refrigerator to get a drink, but it suddenly appeared, hit her leg, and frightened her and jumped on the table, her hair standing up.
The rats also bit a child, as has happened in other parts of the UK besides the town of Tenby. In another small town, a group of giant rats once broke into the house, they were larger than adult cats, the largest one exceeded 5 kilograms.
They also like to play in the playground, a rat catcher once caught the largest mouse in the playground, but it was only the corpse of the mouse, plus the length of the tail, the mouse was 1.2 meters long.
Generally speaking, the body length of more than 55 cm is a large dog, the common Samoyed, Demu, Labrador is only 60-80 cm long, this mouse far exceeds the large dog, is simply the king of rats.
04
Major events caused by rats
Rats have long been common in the mainland, and there are many anecdotes about rats. Legend has it that a strange incident occurred during the Song Dynasty, when there was a switch between animal species due to rising prices.
According to ancient records, during the reign of Emperor Gaozong of Song, there was no rain in Guangdong for many years, and the drought in Shaoguan, Yingde and Qingyuan counties was the most serious, and there was also a rat plague.
The most bizarre thing is that each animal transforms, and birds, fish and insects all turn into mice. A farmer caught a mouse, and upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a snake pattern in front of its chest, and the fish caught by the fisherman in the river became a rat in an instant, and such strange things became more and more and more strange, and it was not over until the autumn of the following year.
This anecdote came from a small monk of Bao'en Temple, and it is impossible to verify whether it is true.
There have also been tragedies caused by rats on the mainland. In a community on Binjiang Road in Guangdong, the gas stove in Miss Zhong's house suddenly caught fire, the reason is unknown, when she returned home and saw this scene, she also had a foggy mind and called the gas company.
Even if the repair personnel arrived at the scene, they could not find out what the cause was and whether there was a gas leak. But there are already signs of burned pipes.
After careful investigation, there was no gas leakage, but the pipe was already half burned at this time, the stove began to blacken, and suddenly an explosion occurred, and there were many burns to the people present.
It was these rats who bit off the pipe, causing the leak that led to the disaster. Similar incidents occurred in Hangzhou, with 130 incidents, more than 20 of which were caused by rats causing pipe breakage.
05
Megafauna
There are many behemoths like the UK, all over the world. These behemoths attract the attention of the people and make people marvel at the magic of nature.
There is a crab called spider crab in Japan, also called giant crab, which, just like its name, looks like a hybrid of crab and spider, and is the largest crab living on Earth. It has an orange-red appearance and has 10 legs with white spots on the legs.
Half active in the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Taiwan, living under 10-15 degrees of seabed silt, the world's largest spider crab is 3 and a half meters long and weighs more than 20 kilograms.
Although it looks scary, spider crabs have a very good temperament, and generally do not actively attack humans, but will only lazily lie on the bottom of the sea.
This crab is a very popular delicacy in Japan, so their number has been greatly reduced due to predation.
Crocodiles have always been a fierce animal, if the body size is larger, it has become a stand-in for dinosaurs, in the zoo of the Philippines, there is a large crocodile more than 6 meters long, weighing more than 1,000 pounds.
The giant crocodile was captured off the coast in 12 years, and its tracks were spotted before it was captured, and experts followed it at sea for weeks, spending more than a hundred people to catch him, biting off the rope several times along the way. It is said that the crocodile was almost 60 years old at the time.
Not only animals, but also giant plants. In the forest park of Oregon, USA, there is a giant honey ring fungus. This is a mushroom that is monolithic on the surface and becomes a whole when it goes underground.
These honey rings occupy an area of 10 kilometers. According to surveys, these honey ring bacteria have been growing for nearly 2400 years and will continue to grow in the future, perhaps becoming the future, largest fungus organism on Earth.
The largest plant now known is not a mushroom, but a seagrass called Posidonian seaweed. This 4,500-year-old seagrass stretches for nearly 200 kilometers and covers an area of more than 200 kilometers. In the long years without external interference, constantly cloning itself, it can continue.
The reason why rats in the UK are flooded is still due to people's lack of hygiene awareness, littering, and not paying attention to food hygiene. In contrast, with regard to the prevention of plague, the mainland has done a very good job, not only the popularization of scientific health knowledge, but also everyone's awareness of prevention.
Nature never plays its cards according to the routine, and every appearance it makes will surprise mankind. Every creature is a product carefully created by nature, do not break the laws of nature for the sake of human selfish desires, and delusionally become the sole master, otherwise only human beings will be punished.