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«——[·Preface·] ——»
In 1935, Australian pests were rampant, and these pests had no small impact on the sugar cane they grow.
To solve this problem, an Englishman heard that sea toads were natural enemies of these pests and brought back 105 sea toads from the Americas.
Unexpectedly, they were deceived.
These sea toads not only do not work against pests, but also breed everywhere, even Australian native crocodiles have to take a detour when they see them.
Faced with this large pile of toads, Australians have one head and two big.
What's so magical about these seemingly ordinary toads? Can you actually take a place in Australia, which is rich in species? What did the Australians do after that?
The troubles of Australian farmers
As a large agricultural country, sugar cane has always been Australia's third important crop after wheat and barley, and the area and total production of sugar cane have increased every year since the 50s.
And the biggest headache for Australians is the pest problem of sugar cane!
At the beginning of the last century, Australia's sugarcane farming industry was severely hit by pests, and many sugarcane roots were bitten off, affecting the growth of entire sugarcane forests, which worried local farmers.
They do not plan to spray pesticides on a large scale because the negative impact of chemicals on farmland is too great.
Later, the local pest became more and more serious, and the local government set up a special organization to solve the problem of sugarcane pest.
Hawaii and Puerto Rico, also big sugar cane farmers, introduced sea toads to kill pests in sugar cane fields.
And the effect is also remarkable: since the introduction of sea toads, pests in sugar cane fields have visibly decreased.
This also made other sugar cane countries start to move, including Australia.
They sent entomologists to study, and after seeing the results, the local government decided to follow their example and introduce sea toads for biological control.
What is the divine nature of the sea toad?
The sea toad, the largest poisonous toad on Earth, is native to South and Central America. Although there is a sea character in the name, he does not live in the sea, but in open meadows and forests.
Sea toads, also known as South American giant frogs, are several times longer than ordinary frogs, and the largest can even grow to 30 centimeters; It is the largest toad on Earth.
Sea toads have been found to have the ability to remove sugarcane pests, so they are also called "sugarcane toads".
Before the introduction of the "cane toad", Australians were confident in its effectiveness in controlling pests.
However, they overlook that sea toads are not only extremely adaptable to grass and forests, but also to the ocean!
Before people had over-destroyed nature, sea toads and sugarcane pests were indeed natural enemies, and sugarcane pests were almost invisible where there were sea toads.
But as the living environment became more and more harsh, the territory of sea toads continued to shrink, and they began to find new ways to survive, and gradually no longer relied solely on preying on pests.
So to the surprise of the local government, the "pest" nemesis sea toad not only did not eliminate the pest after arriving in Australia, but spread wildly, poisoning many local animals.
In this way, the sea toads introduced by Australia not only did not fulfill their responsibilities, but began to look for opportunities to thrive in Australia from other negative sides. Sea toads have invaded Australia and now number 1.5 billion.
On Australia's roads, the remains of many sea toads that have been ruthlessly crushed by cars can be seen every day.
The reason why sea toads are called poisonous toads is because they can secrete hallucinogenic venom, and other animals will appear insanity after licking.
For this venom, scientists do not currently have a good way to deal with it.
And many native animals have not dealt with sea toads, thinking that they are just ordinary amphibians, so they relax their vigilance and suffer as a result.
How poisonous is a sea toad? Not only can it poison a crocodile, it can also eat snakes.
Sea toads are poisonous since childhood, from the time they were born as little tadpoles.
Many people have died because of eating sea toads or toad egg soup.
When they grow up, sea toads are much more toxic than when they were young, and they have a pair of coin-sized poison glands behind their eyes that can produce venom.
If threatened, the poisonous glands of the poisonous toad will spew out milky white venom, the toad toxin.
Toad toxin has 14 different compounds, including the toad tryptamine.
This venom can affect the central nervous system and has hallucinogenic effects. Therefore, it is not only small animals that die at its hands, but also slightly larger animals such as cows, sheep, kangaroos and so on.
And his brutality is not limited to this, every breeding period, a large number of male sea toads begin to fight, court, hold eggs. However, the proportion of local female sea toads is indeed very small.
This also shows a rare picture of a toad riding a snake. A large number of male sea toads climb on pythons and even crocodiles to lay eggs regardless of the need.
And many pythons and crocodiles have also tried the power of toads, and they are helpless for this behavior, and finally they have to let them come.
After the introduction of sea toads in 1935, crocodiles and pythons in Australia plummeted by more than 70%. Even the number of birds in the air has drastically decreased. Everywhere you go, not only animals suffer, but so do people!
It has to be mentioned that the life span of sea toads is also very long, under normal circumstances, they can live to 15 years old, and in captivity, they can even live to 35 years old.
The Australian environment is better for sea toads than the South American living environment.
The gritted teeth of the Australians tried to stone them to death while trying to prevent their flying venom from hurting themselves.
How exactly should it be governed?
Australians are not without thinking about governance measures, but the results are very unsatisfactory each time.
In order to "protect the ecology", the Australian government has introduced relevant policies to kill them and come up with a series of humanitarian practices.
For example, freeze them to death in the refrigerator, or kill them in a gentle way.
The government has also invested heavily in research into ways to deal with biological invasions, but has never been able to find a suitable solution.
Coincidentally: rabbits have also posed a threat to Australia
Here I would also like to mention the magical country of Australia, there is a saying in the mainland that no rabbit can leave Sichuan alive, just like no donkey can escape Baoding smoothly!
Rabbits were once infested in Australia.
In our opinion, rabbit meat is not only delicious, but rabbit hair can also be used to make clothes.
And many medical students use rabbits for experiments, and it can be said that rabbits are simply in short supply on the mainland.
However, in the eyes of Australians, rabbits are as hateful as sea toads.
In 1857, Buchanan stocked many rabbits on the Olebay Ranch, and by 1859, Thomas Austin had released 24 hares into Bawang Park near Victoria.
Before this, he had never thought that these cute rabbits would pose a threat to them.
The rabbit species they stocked were not the same, so much so that these different rabbits came together to begin crossbreeding and create more viable offspring.
In 1866, the offspring of these rabbits began a breeding spree in Australia.
What kind of exaggerated situation did it end up in?
Forty years later, these rabbits are almost all over Australia! Some scholars have counted that there are 10 billion of these rabbits!
The most troubling thing is that Australia has no natural enemies of rabbits.
So with super reproductive ability and lack of natural enemies of excellent living environment, Australian hares breed wildly, and they are even labeled as invasive species.
At the time, many people said that it was because of a disaster caused by 24 rabbits.
Seeing that there are more and more rabbits, the Australian government has finally decided to do something to stop their flood. In order to eliminate these rabbits, the Australian government began to hunt them on a large scale, but people's efforts are nothing compared to the speed at which rabbits reproduce.
Forced by helplessness, the Australian government decided to find the natural enemies of rabbits according to the food chain, trying to "one thing down one thing".
In order to better eliminate these rabbits, the Australian government has introduced many red foxes and released them into the wild.
But red foxes will not only prey on rabbits, but also on other species, which will also affect the local ecological balance over time, which is not worth the loss. So they had to interrupt the approach.
After battling invasive species, the Australian government was exhausted, and it was not until around 1950 that they found a suitable and effective way to eliminate the rabbits.
Authorities have created a "myxoma virus" that only affects rabbits and is harmless to humans and other animals.
Luckily, Australia finally won the rabbit this time!
If this happened on the mainland, maybe these rabbits will be eaten by us very quickly, and you may be wondering, why don't Australians eat rabbits?
The reason is that they think these rabbits are hares and are not clean.
They had poisoned these flooded rabbits earlier when dealing with them, and although they did not have a devastating effect, it is unknown whether the poisons would mutate the hare's genes.
After the Australian government released the myxoma virus, many rabbits were affected, and rabbits infected with the virus would grow tumors on the body, and the fatality rate could reach almost 100%.
So the locals are afraid to eat these rabbits.
But no matter how useful the method, there will be fish in front of 10 billion rabbits.
Over time, these rabbits became drug-resistant, and myxoma virus didn't work for them.
Later, Australia also tried K5 virus, RHDV and other viruses, but these were not enough to make these hares extinct.
There are countless cases of poisonous toads and rabbits in Australia, which seems to have been vulnerable to alien species.
In the early 20th century, a cactus was brought to Australia, and the rate of reproduction was so alarming that the cactus occupied about 24 million hectares.
epilogue
Human activities have caused great damage to the earth's ecological environment, such as the disruption of ecological balance, the extinction of a large number of species, soil erosion, and desertification of oases.
Although the invasion of species sounds like a simple and trivial matter, its negative impact is unexpected to all, and it can be seen through what we talked about earlier.
For the invasion of alien species, we should take scientific and effective measures to prevent and control it, protect the ecological balance from being damaged, and also protect the integrity and biodiversity of natural ecosystems, so as to provide a good living and development environment for human beings.