When it comes to the "Black Death," I don't think most people will be unfamiliar. The "Black Death", also known as the plague, is formed by the infection of the human body by the plague bacillus, is an ancient and fierce infectious disease, which has been circulating in the world for nearly two thousand years, and there have been three major epidemics that have taken the lives of about 300 million people around the world.
The most famous one was the "Black Death" that occurred in Europe during the Middle Ages, which directly harvested one-third of the population of Europe, and until now Europeans are afraid of this period, calling that period the "Dark Middle Ages".
However, although most people know the severity of the "Black Death" in the European Middle Ages, few people know that this terrible "Black Death" was finally ended by a group of rats fleeing from Asia!
This matter also began with a major earthquake in India, probably in the early 18th century, there was a big earthquake in India, this earthquake caused great damage to the local people, but at the same time forced another group to leave the country, it is the Indian brown rat.
Indian brown rats originally lived in a large number of caves under india, but the earthquake shook their "home", and in desperation, the Indian brown rat group could only climb up to the surface to survive.
However, India, which has just experienced a major earthquake, is in a state of great injury, so these Indian brown rats have not only not been eliminated on a large scale after climbing to the surface, but have achieved great development by feeding on a large number of human remains that appeared after the earthquake, and the number of populations has increased several times.
However, such a "good time" naturally did not last long, the reaction of the Indian authorities immediately began to fight back against these brown rats, and the brown rats also because of the number of populations can not survive normally, under the double pressure, the brown rats can only migrate all the way to the west, hoping to find a new home.
Unfortunately, this spectacular biological migration in biological history has not been passed down without any material that can fully reflect its overall process. Only a small amount of material can be used to roughly reconstruct how this group of brown rats entered Europe.
According to the foreign language magazine Scientific American, in Astrakhan in 1727, a large number of brown rats waded through the Volga River for several days, and then entered the territory of Ukraine many times. The brown rats first crossed the Dnieper River, and finally crossed the Bug and Transnistrian rivers, and finally entered Europe after many hardships.
In general, such a large number of brown rats "invading" Europe will definitely cause strong resistance from Europeans, in fact, at the beginning Europeans did have the idea of eliminating these brown rats, but soon they found that with the arrival of these brown rats, the "Black Death" that had plagued Europe for hundreds of years began to weaken!
What's going on?
The answer to this question was naturally difficult to come up with at the time, but after entering the modern era, with the tireless research of a large number of biologists and medical scientists, the truth of the matter was finally found.
Because the onset of the "Black Death" is caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis (also known as Y. pestis). This bacterium generally parasitizes a flea called the "Indian Rat Guest Flea", which in turn parasitizes the black house rat in Europe.
In the Middle Ages, due to the poor sanitary conditions in various parts of Europe, the distance between people and black rats is infinitely close, and the "Indian rat flea" can be easily transferred from the black rat to the human body, so that the plague Yersinia parasitic on the "Indian rat flea" can naturally easily invade the human body, causing the "Black Death".
But the arrival of the brown rat changed the situation, for the simple reason that the black rat could not beat the brown rat.
Compared with the black rat, the brown rat is stronger, witty and aggressive, and the brown rat is good at teamwork, and the ability to adapt to the environment is stronger, so as soon as the brown rat comes, the European black rat is beaten to the head "rat", and the number begins to decrease sharply.
Although the brown rat can also carry Yersinia pestis, its carrier for carrying Yersinia pestis is a fleas called "horned leaf fleas", which has a big difference from the "Indian rat fleas" on the black family, that is, "loyalty" to the host.
The "horned leaf fleas" are "loyal" to the brown rat and will never parasitize other creatures, even if the brown rat dies, it will only find another brown rat to live, and will never find other kinds of creatures. So Yersinia pestis was locked up in the brown family book group and could no longer spread outward.
As a result, the original basis for the spread of the "Black Death" in Europe was completely destroyed, and the "Black Death" that lost its transmission foundation gradually lost its terrible power and eventually fell silent, and Europe also ushered in the dawn of civilization.
It can be seen that there is indeed a certain truth in the recent popular saying, "The general thing that beats you is not a peer, but a crossover!" If there were no brown rats running thousands of miles to "make trouble", the black family members in Europe would not necessarily be arrogant to what time!