I believe that many small partners in the daily diet are inseparable from a kind of meat - beef, compared to the pork we most often eat, beef has a unique milk flavor, and the taste level is more abundant, so high-quality beef has always been sought after by diners.
The best A5 grade beef in the Japanese Wagyu beef grade in the market can sell for thousands of yuan for a small piece, which is enough to prove the "noble status" of beef in the ingredients.
But because of the high quality and commonness of beef, everyone seems to have gradually accepted that cattle are all farmed, just as there can be no white feather chickens in the wild, and bison seem to have completely disappeared in our country's ecosystem.
At least we can often hear the name of the wild boar in life, but the bison is like a creature unique to the African savannah, but is this really the case, of course not?
China also has a herd of bison, I believe that the question that readers are thinking about now should be, where are these bison? Can I eat it?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > bison herd on the East Island of Paracel</h1>
If you mention Xisha East Island, I believe that not many people will be impressed, because it is actually a small desert island, there is nothing special in itself, if there is no accident, then it will be the same as other islands located in the South China Sea region, nameless.
The name of this island is called East Island, and the origin of this name is because its location is on the east side of the Paracel Islands, and from such a random name, it can be known that East Island itself is an island that is not much cared about.
But the discovery of the bison herd has brought the island into the researchers' field of vision. In fact, the islands on the ocean, because of their almost isolated geographical environment, often appear some strange ecosystems, for example, our country has a famous four major animal islands: bird island, snake island, monkey island, butterfly island, now it seems that there is more than one cow island.
Among these animal islands, Bird Island and Butterfly Island are formed for a simple reason, these two animals can fly, especially birds, can easily cross long distances of the sea, live in the guide island with no natural enemies and abundant food, and butterflies can also fly or follow fishing boats, drift to the island with the sea breeze, and live freely in places where there are no natural enemies.
The formation of monkey island and snake island is more special, as a land creature, it is reasonable not to appear on the island, and the main reason why these two special islands appear is that they are artificially brought to the island, so they will flourish in the island.
As long as the animals on the mainland go to the island, the marine life provides food for it, the ocean currents guarantee its temperature, and the monotonous ecosystem of the island produces almost no natural enemies, so the living materials and safety of these animals can basically be guaranteed, so there will be a flood of single organisms in this island.
Judging from the sources of the four major animal islands, the bison herd of more than 400 bison on Xishadong Island is obviously also formed by human beings who brought them to the island and bred freely. Of course, some people will also want to argue, why must it be man-made, can not be the island was once connected to the mainland, and then geological activity caused a group of bison to be trapped on the island?
Unfortunately, this speculation is impossible, because the East Island is too small, only 1.7 square kilometers, which is not enough to allow creatures as large as cattle to naturally evolve on it. There is also a reason that the bison on the East Island is not a biologically sensed bison breed, and its breed is consistent with the most common cattle in Hainan. So we can first determine that these cattle were brought to the island and then continue to breed to form a herd of bison, and the question is, when were these cattle brought to the island?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > where did the bison herd come from? The answer has been found</h1>
Compared with islands such as Snake Island Monkey Island, the research value of bison herds is greater, which is not only a successful case of rewilding domestic livestock, but also an important sample for large species to reproduce for a long time in isolated environments on islands.
Figuring out the origin of the bison herd has been of great help to the research work, so since the discovery of the bison herd on the east island of the Paracel Islands, the controversy over the origin of the bison herd has not stopped.
At first, no one found actual evidence, and could only speculate based on historical circumstances, and at first some people thought that these cattle were Zheng He's voyage to the Western Ocean, and when he stopped at the East Island to rest, some cattle slipped away from the fleet, and then formed the current herd.
Then some people speculate that more than 2,000 years ago, the Han Dynasty's Fubo general Ma Yuannan conquered the Paracel Islands, so he herded cattle here, so these cattle gradually rewilded to form the current bison herd.
Some people even think that this is the last century, 1907, the Qing Dynasty's Guangdong Admiral Li Zhun, when surveying the Xisha Islands, herded cattle in the Xisha Islands to swear sovereignty, and used the Qing Dynasty stone stele of the Xisha Islands as one of the evidences.
It may be true that these people have been to the Paracel Islands and even landed on the East Islands in history, but none of this can confirm exactly what they left behind. Scientific research pays attention to accuracy and facts, and only accurate data can obtain real and effective research results.
From the many speculations above, we can know that it is impossible to accurately find the time when the cattle reached the island based on historical events alone, so we have to start from other directions.
Scientists chose to go to Xisha East Island for field investigation, look for evidence, and observe and study the growth of the East Island bison herd. During the survey, the scientists first found that there was a crescent-shaped freshwater pond in the middle of the East Island, and it was precisely because of the presence of this pond that the bison herd had enough fresh water to replenish.
So the whole island, a dozen herds of more than 400 cattle, will definitely go to this pond to replenish fresh water, and this pond is the sacred place for these bison.
In other words, the first batch of cattle that came to the island also drank water on this pond, and as long as we find where they once existed, we can find a way to find their remnants, such as bones, and then confirm their age by carbon-14 measurement.
Unfortunately, searching for the bones does not quickly find and confirm which is the oldest bison carcass, which is actually a stupid method, requiring the mud around the pond to be turned over and excavated to achieve the goal.
And scientists have come up with a smarter way to find cow dung. On most islands, there are seabirds inhabiting, so the surface of the island itself will deposit a large amount of bird feces, and the amount of feces produced by bison as a large organism is very amazing.
After these cattle appeared on the island, there must be obvious faults in the fecal deposition on the island, so scientists only need to dig a few pits near the freshwater pond and collect samples of sedimentary feces to find the earliest cow dung.
Then measure the carbon-14 decay state of cow dung to accurately determine the time of existence of this cow dung on the East Island, and also get when the first cattle came to the East Island.
In the end, the scientists determined through this method that the cattle came to The East Island of Paracel 1300 years ago. At that time, it was the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and the situation was turbulent, so it was likely that some coastal fishermen transported them to the East Island in order to escape the war, or wanted to live on the island for a long time, or simply wanted to hide it from being robbed.
The origin of the bison herd has finally been revealed, and scientists can finally study the information about the bison herd in more depth.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the survival of bison herds on the island</h1>
As mentioned earlier, the most important premise for the survival of bison herds in the Paracel East Island is the stable supply of fresh water, which is solved by the presence of crescent-shaped ponds.
In addition, bison also need a large number of herbs as food, and with adequate bird droppings and cow dung supplementation, the growth of plants on the island can be said to be very rapid, so the food source of bison is relatively sufficient.
Animals survive in the wild, in addition to the need for adequate food, the presence of predators and predators, also affects their survival. On the island, because of its small size, it is impossible to support the evolution of any large organism, let alone any predator.
So the bison, a large species that arrives unexpectedly, stands directly at the very top of the island ecosystem, so there are no creatures that can pose a threat to the life of the bison.
The purpose of survival of all living things in the world can be reduced to two: survival and reproduction. When survival issues don't need to be considered at all, bison will of course begin to multiply wildly and increase their populations.
So 1300 years ago, there may have been only a few bison, but eventually they multiplied into the current super-large population of more than 400. But as the number of breeders increases, the bison herd faces another existential threat.
First of all, the area of the East Island is too small, and the plants growing on it are simply not enough to feed too many cattle, and the number of cattle has reached its upper limit a long time ago, and if it continues to reproduce, the newborn cattle will only starve to death.
In addition, this herd of bison they all have several common ancestors, that is, their genetic diversity is not enough, continue to reproduce, will lead to more and more genetically defective cattle, and eventually the entire bison herd is destroyed.
When these bison were discovered by humans, they had become more and more short and deformed due to long-term inbreeding, and in the 1960s, scientists introduced fine breeds of cattle to ensure that these bison could continue to breed, and this genetic defect gradually disappeared in the bison herd.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > why protect the bison herd? </h1>
Many people still can't understand why some of the original domestic cattle have survived and multiplied in the island for more than a thousand years and then become bison in need of protection.
In fact, from the introduction of cattle to improve the genes of bison in the last century, we can know that these "bison" are not reproductively isolated from domestic cattle, that is, physiologically, they are still cattle, no different from the cattle we see every day.
The real bison is actually only distributed in the southern part of Yunnan Province in China, and the bison in Yunnan has been listed as a first-class protected animal by the state. These bison are scarce and the entire herd of bison is on the brink of extinction, which is the species that we need to take care of.
In fact, the research value and importance of the two kinds of bison are different, the bison in Yunnan is mainly due to the scarcity of its genes, which makes it important, while the herds of wild cattle on the West Sand East Island are made so important because of their special breeding experience.
The peculiarities of the island environment have already been described above, and in this semi-enclosed environment, the cattle herd can survive and reproduce in it for more than a thousand years.
And now in the frontier of our human science, one of the most important directions is deep space exploration, the development of the later stage, deep space exploration will definitely require astronauts to survive in the spacecraft for a long time, this situation will be very similar to the bison herd in the island, so the study to understand how the bison survive in a closed environment, and even provide theoretical support for our aerospace technology.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
In fact, the application of the East Island bison herd to spaceflight is a bit out of touch with reality, after all, our space technology is still far from reaching the level of manned deep space exploration.
However, the bison herd can also provide corresponding theoretical support for species protection, invasion of independent ecosystems, and species reproduction.