Kittens are cute creatures, but you might not have thought that cats would lead to the extinction of living things. In Stephen Island, New Zealand, there was once a species of insect-fed finch called the Stephen Island heterophyll.
Due to the carefree life on the island, this bird has lost its ability to fly and become a chocobo. Until one day, a lighthouse keeper came to the island, and in order to get rid of loneliness, he brought a kitten as a companion.
Unbeknownst to him, however, the kitten was pregnant, so a kitten became a group of kittens. This group of cats has no natural predators on this island, and their prey is extremely abundant, especially the flightless Stephen Island eagle, which is simply their best hunting object.
So this precious bird, under the play of kittens, soon became extinct. The island's tower keepers became the only humans in the world who had ever seen a living Stephen Island wrench.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" > the strongest biological invasion event</h1>
Maybe this sounds like a story, but it's actually about the serious catastrophe caused by the invasion of alien species, that is, the extinction of species.
For example, the bullfrog on our table is just a dish for us humans, but in the wild, bullfrogs have basically no natural enemies and are extremely repulsive to other species of frogs. Bullfrogs' diets include insects, snakes, lizards, birds, fish, turtles, and even native frogs.
Moreover, the tadpole of the bullfrog can secrete a special liquid, which can interfere with the growth of other types of tadpoles, which can be said to be very despicable. What's even more filthy is that bullfrogs will be noisy on the side when other frogs are mating.
In short, if bullfrogs are flooded somewhere, then the native frogs will not say that there is no way to live, but they will definitely become rare species.
However, the above two are pediatrics, and the really powerful case of biological invasion is the Australian rabbit war. People always think that they are at the top of the food chain, that everything is under the control of humans, but in some specific cases, humans can't even handle rabbits.
What's even more humiliating is that the Australians and rabbits fought a hundred years of war and ended in a fiasco.
Australia originally had no rabbits, only silly koalas and cute kangaroos. Although there are also large carnivores, after humans landed on Australian territory, these rare predators were basically extinct, leaving only the thylacines that were not very effective.
Soon after, the British began to use Australia as a penal colony for prisoners, and many things, including animals and livestock, were brought to Australia by British ships.
In 1788, the British First Fleet sailed into Australia with six rabbits on board. They were not the protagonists, for there were 568 male prisoners, 191 female prisoners, a British nobleman, and 7 horses, 7 cattle, and 74 pigs. Judging from these members, these six rabbits are the most inconspicuous beings.
In fact, since the six rabbits were all kept in cages, they really didn't have much impact. It's just that many people see others bring rabbits, and this trend has spread.
Since then, more and more people have begun to raise rabbits, one can be used as food, the other can be used as hunting objects. Although rabbits also broke free of their cages during this period, they did not survive in the end.
It wasn't until October 1859 that an aristocratic official named Thomas stocked 24 rabbits in his private park in Victoria.
The official had come to run the prisoners here, but his fanatical hunting hobby doomed him to be remembered by history, and he could never have imagined how heavy a disaster he would bring to the continent.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="19" > thirteen rabbits to perform miracles</h1>
Thomas herded his 24 rabbits, with the consequence that they could mate freely. After playing the hunting game for a while, Thomas suddenly realized that something was wrong, because he had hunted quite a few rabbits, but the rabbits in his private park were not decreasing, but there was a trend of more and more.
Of course, Thomas did not care, after all, these small animals that have no combat power and can hardly pose a threat to humans can be harmful? However, he definitely did not expect that since Australia had no natural enemies of rabbits, thylacines were also wiped out with the efforts of the British, coupled with the favorable climate and abundant water and grass, these rabbits almost came to heaven.
Over the next decade, these burrowing rabbits bred tens of millions, spreading across southern Australia at a rate of 130 kilometres per year. By 1920, the number of Burrowing rabbits in Australia had peaked at 10 billion. What kind of horrible data is this? This shows that at that time, Australia could provide 5 rabbits per capita to the world.
Many people wonder, supposedly these rabbits are bred from those 24 rabbits, such a small population sample, why these rabbits did not perish because of inbreeding? In fact, the minimum sample size for inbreeding is not set in stone.
For example, the Ley Island duck had only seven active populations left in the world in 1912, but it still recovered. If there are only seven whales, elephants, and tigers left, they are basically powerless to return to the sky. And inbreeding leads to biological extinction is not absolute, but will increase the probability of extinction.
Scientists have tested Australian rabbits for their ancestry, and they believe that the ancestors of all australian rabbits originated from thirteen rabbits in the park.
The reason why these rabbits can develop to a scale of hundreds of millions is first of all super luck, which can be said to have the child of destiny aura bonus. The second is because australia's environment is very suitable for rabbits to survive, without predators and abundant aquatic weeds. The last and most important point is that rabbits have a strong ability to reproduce.
How fertile are rabbits? We can list a set of data. Young female rabbits can breed at about five months, giving birth to 4 to 12 pups per litter.
Rabbits, like humans, are not limited by the estrus period, which means that they can make rabbits at any time of the year. The gestation period of rabbits is about 1 month, and it can be conceived again the day after giving birth to rabbits as soon as possible, which humans are ashamed of. In this way, an adult female rabbit can conceive 4 to 7 times a year and can give birth to 30 to 60 pups per year. And the female rabbit life spans up to 9 years, which means that a female rabbit can produce more than 200 pups in her lifetime.
Of course, it is equally important that among the first 13 members of the rabbit ancestors, in addition to the burrowing rabbit and the hare, there are also some domestic rabbits.
In this way, the quality of the genes of the first 13 rabbits is still good. Due to the strong initial genes, coupled with the super reproductive ability, the occurrence of mutations has also increased greatly, so the genetic diversity of rabbits has also been guaranteed, and eventually become an Australian hegemon.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="33" > Centennial War</h1>
When Australian rabbits have multiplied to a certain extent, they finally realize the horror of rabbits. Because of their talent for burrowing, these rabbits can greatly damage grass and shrubs, causing rapid degradation of grasslands and soil erosion.
And because rabbits are too edible, and native Australian creatures have never encountered such a powerful foodie rival, many animals that rely on grassland for survival are extinct because they do not have enough food. Koalas survive because rabbits can't climb trees, otherwise they would have been the first creatures to go extinct.
In addition to causing the extinction of life, Australia's agriculture has also been devastated. Due to the destruction of the soil, it is impossible for people to carry out mechanized production.
Coupled with the unbridled growth of these rabbits, their size is beyond people's imagination, and some giants are even stronger than piglets. The size of their body also gave them the courage to attack other creatures, and many poultry were attacked by rabbits, which, while it sounds ridiculous, is something that has been happening in Australia.
In order to deal with these rabbits, people have tried everything. Originally, it was thought that although rabbits had flooded, as long as humans did it, they could solve the problem in minutes. So people decided to offer a reward for arrest, rabbits were originally brought over because of people's hobby of hunting, and now the reward for catching these rabbits will certainly drive people's enthusiasm for hunting.
However, they underestimated the difficulty of hunting rabbits and the ability of rabbits to reproduce. Just as the so-called cunning rabbit three caves, rabbits are not so easy to catch, so the reward for catching rabbits is basically a drop in the bucket. Then it was decided to build a wall and fence these rabbits to prevent them from endangering the farm for humans.
But they made another mistake because the rabbits could burrow, and even if the wall was built, the rabbits could burrow through from below.
Then people came up with all kinds of strange methods, such as beating rabbits with cannons, bombing rabbits with airplanes, and even dropping a large amount of poison gas to eliminate rabbits. But this practice is easy to hurt the innocent, so that many native creatures have been affected.
Later, a famous biologist finally developed a virus that could inhibit rabbit reproduction, and this virus was only effective for rabbits, which made The Australian rabbit converge a little. But still that sentence, the rabbit's reproductive ability is too strong, and soon some newborn rabbits have antibodies in their bodies, so these rabbits are rampant again.
Of course, people have also thought of using poison to attack poison, introducing rabbits and foxes. But it backfired, because there are so many animals in Australia that are better at catching than rabbits, so these foxes don't pay any attention to rabbits.
In this way, not only were the rabbits not wiped out, but the other animals suffered first. Some people say that to introduce lynx, you must know that lynx can climb trees, and it will not be rabbits that will perish first, but koalas.
Australia's human rabbit war has lasted for a hundred years, and it has not yet found a good way to decide, which is an absolute shame for humans who have always thought they are powerful. However, this phenomenon, on the surface, is a human-rabbit war, but in fact it reflects the laws of nature. Human beings have disrupted the balance of nature and are bound to be retaliated against by nature.
In today's society, human beings have interfered too much in the affairs of the earth, which seems to indicate that the earth will teach mankind a very extraordinary lesson in the future.