The recent incident of the Siberian tiger "Wandashan No. 1" entering the village and injuring people can be described as a boiling noise, and what surprises everyone is not only the lethality of a Siberian tiger, but also the fact that it can gently slap the window glass, but also why such an incident occurs now?
However, in the 1950s, it was common for tigers to enter the village, especially in the south, but at that time, the tigers in the south were relatively smallEr South China tigers (endemic to China). Moreover, this group of South China tigers is not only a village, they are basically in groups, so many people have died in the tiger's mouth.
In fact, in the thousands of years of Chinese history, tigers have always been a "great disaster", and some cases of tigers forming groups to eat people have been recorded in history.
For example, in 1682 AD, during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty.
A Zhixian named Zhang Maoxian went to Rongchang City in Sichuan Province (shortly after the war), and when he walked into the overgrown and sparsely populated Rongchang County with several retinues, before he could react, he was attacked by a group of tigers that suddenly sprang out.
Although Zhang Mao tasted that although he was weak, but his brain was bright, he ran away as soon as he saw that something was not good, but the others were not so lucky, and finally when everyone gathered again, they found that five people in the group had lost their lives.
And this incident is only a microcosm of the entire Chinese history, so in the imperial courts of all generations, "fighting tigers" has always been the top priority, and the reason why there are so many stories of "fighting tiger heroes" in our Chinese history is also determined by such an era background.
After the founding of New China, the tiger plague was not alleviated, and it continued until the 1950s, when the tiger plague was still a very serious problem, especially in 1957, an unprecedented "human-tiger war" broke out in a small village in Hunan.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > first, the contradiction between man and tiger, tit-for-tat</h1>
In the 1950s, in the southern region of China (especially in the southwest), the most conservative estimate was that the number of tigers in South China should be as many as thousands.
According to modern science, the living conditions of the South China tiger are extremely harsh, and the most basic living space of a South China tiger in the forest should be no less than 70 square kilometers, and the herbivores such as wild boars, deer, and rabbits that survive in this ecological circle are the food of the tiger.
And the number of these wild herbivores cannot be too small. If these numbers are below average, tigers will naturally not be able to eat enough, and humans who invade the forest will become one of the alternative targets for tiger food.
After the founding of New China, everything returned to calm, and the previous "foreign war" center also began to make way for economic construction, and under the background of such an era, China's population began to grow explosively.
As soon as the population increases, in order to facilitate the development of production, we will naturally reclaim more wasteland, but this will indirectly seize more ecological resources, so the living space of tigers has been compressed, and the original scattered tigers have also begun to migrate from all over the world.
In fact, in addition to a series of chain reactions brought about by ecological destruction, the direct killing of tiger food sources by humans is also one of the reasons, when farmers who hunt in the mountains have more advanced hunting equipment, hunting efficiency is extremely high, but also led to a large number of wild boar, wild deer and other animals are hunted by humans.
In short, the "food" that tigers rely on for survival is directly or indirectly squeezed, and hungry tigers can only begin to attack humans in order to survive, which is actually quite "forced" in it.
For example, in a newspaper dated February 3, 1956, the Hunan Daily, reported on the injuries of the South China tigers alone, all of which were about the injuries of the South China tigers in five counties and cities in Hunan.
In fact, this is still a direct evidence that we found relatively late.
Earlier, in 1952, when the entire territory of Hunan in China was almost always on the lookout for tiger infestations.
In the "Hunan Forestry Chronicle", it is recorded: "... Near the Yuelu Mountains in Changsha, as far as Yuanling Guanzhuang, Xinhua, Leiyang and other dozens of counties and cities under Hunan have reported tiger infestations. ”
From the coverage of the tiger plague, we can intuitively feel how serious the situation was at that time, so many people also used the words "tiger crazy" when evaluating this incident, and everyone even regarded the tiger as a bandit.
At that time, in just ten years from 1950 to 1960, more than a thousand people died in Hunan Alone, and the loss of livestock was innumerable.
Faced with such a passive situation, the Hunan provincial government had to organize the establishment of the "Tiger Fighting Team".
-- In order to encourage the people to actively participate, for teams or individuals who have made outstanding contributions to fighting tigers, the government will not only award honorary titles such as "hero of fighting tigers" or "model of killing harm", but also give each person a subsidy of hundreds of catties of grain per month.
Moreover, the members of the Tiger Fighting Team do not use cold weapons, but will fire guns and ammunition.
Because humans have firearms and equipment, and also set traps, after having special personnel to lead and plan the round-up, the tiger gradually began to fall into passivity, and was driven away by humans.
Soon, in the face of the encirclement and killing of the tiger team in the Hunan territory, the tigers began to form groups, and at this time, the contradiction between man and tiger had also been intensified to the highest point, so they had entangled together and carried out a large-scale counterattack.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > second, the last battle, Baihuwei Village</h1>
At the foot of Xuefeng Mountain, Gaoping Village, which belongs to Tongdao County, Hunan, is located here.
The village was very small, and the total population of the village was not even 80 people at that time, but because it was in a remote place in the mountains, the mountain goods here were extremely abundant, and people often came here to receive goods.
One afternoon in September 1957, as usual, a merchant from the village who was about 30 years old and named Xie Yaozong came to the village to collect mountain goods. It was already early afternoon when he came, so he had planned to stay there early in the morning.
But what happened next gave him a shadow that he would never forget for a lifetime.
At that time, shortly after Xie Yaozong walked into Gaoping Village, he heard quite a few movements outside the village. Instinctively, he glanced back and found that the cattle that had been outside the village began to run frantically into the village, and at the same time the dogs in the village kept barking wildly, and then there were people at the head of the village who had been desperately banging on the gong...
The sound of "clanging and clanging" resounded almost throughout the valley, and the sound of gongs was accompanied by the screams of the villagers, and later according to the memories of the surviving old people: This should be the most terrifying day in Gaoping Village since the establishment of the village for 223 years!
In the chaos, Xie Yaozong climbed onto the roof, but he was stunned by the next scene: colorful tigers began to appear around the whole village, and soon surrounded the whole village.
The villagers hurried to beat gongs and drums in an attempt to scare away the tigers with their loud noises, but surprisingly, the tigers did not seem to be used to it and did not take the noise seriously. Since there was no effective way to restrict tigers, the tigers gathered more and more, and by the end, the number had exceeded more than a hundred.
Near night, in the face of a large number of tiger sieges, the villagers came up with a way to protect themselves: that is, to light a raging fire on the outskirts of the village to scare the tigers.
I don't know if it was because the "fire attack" had a miraculous effect, in short, these tigers have been surrounding the village and have not continued to attack. The two sides held each other for three days and nights.
But later, these tigers seemed to be really hungry, began to ignore the fire, launched a final attack on the village, the tigers rushed in like cattle, biting when they saw people, killing livestock when they saw them, but all living creatures, as long as they were caught, basically could not escape death.
At that time, a girl accidentally walked out of the house, and after the tiger pounced, he took the little girl away...
Later, a reporter went to Gaoping Village for an interview, and the local old villagers once told the past bitterly: "The tiger sealed the village for three days, the villagers helplessly put the tiger cubs they had captured earlier back, and the tigers launched an attack on humans, eating people was miserable, carrying one on their backs, one in their stomachs, three together with their mothers, and the two who carried them to the mountain were still crying..."
It can be seen from this that the local villagers still have a lingering feeling about what happened that year.
In fact, not only the local villagers, but also one of the experiencers of Xie Yaozong, in the future, whenever he mentioned this matter, he would always show a face of fear, after all, he often went in and out of Xuefeng Mountain, collected mountain goods on it for 8 years, and never encountered a tiger.
But on that day, he saw such a large-scale tiger herd, and it was organized and planned to besiege and attack human villages, which was probably unique in the entire history of China.
The incident later spread to the county, and Yao Rongyi, the deputy governor of Tongdao County at the time, was also surprised, and he immediately found Chen Qifang and began to round up the tigers.
And this Chen Qifang was not an ordinary person, he was very famous in the Hunan territory at that time, and was even known as the "Fighting Tiger King". In fact, he was not originally a hunter who mainly hunted tigers, but after his grandson was eaten by tigers, he embarked on this path.
In the beginning, his tiger fighting team consisted of only three people, namely himself and his two sons, but with the high efficiency of local tiger fighting, his fame grew, and the team grew to dozens of people.
Chen Qifang's team actually has a very good set of fighting tigers, they do not simply rely on force to solve problems, but like to use the nature of tigers and terrain to set traps, and then bury explosives, or use poison-smeared crossbow arrows to strike at them.
If everyone sees this and simply thinks that Chen Qifang is just an "intellectual hero", it will be a big mistake. When encountering a particularly agile and tough tiger, the trap alone will certainly not be able to subdue the tiger, and at this time, it is necessary to add force and courage to solve the problem.
Chen Qifang started fighting tigers when he was 29 years old, and he actually had some achievements in martial arts, so he relied on a combination of intelligence and force to fight tigers.
Later, because of his meritorious efforts in fighting tigers, Chen Qifang went to Beijing to attend the National Model Workers' Conference and accepted a personal meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai, and many of his deeds in fighting tigers were also reported by front-line media such as "People's Daily" and "New Hunan News".
After a person like Chen Qifang led the team to the village besieged by hundreds of tigers, many tigers in Tongdao County were surrounded and suppressed, and the remaining tigers fled to the deep mountains and old forests elsewhere, and since then there has been no trace of South China tigers in Tongdao County.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" >3, cause and effect</h1>
For the "Hundred Tigers Encircled Village" incident, some villagers later analyzed and judged that the tiger group should be commanded by a tiger king, and the tiger encircled the village only launched an attack after three days, perhaps not because the fire attack played a deterrent role, but because the villagers temporarily released the little tiger cub.
In other words, the incident may be that the villagers of Gaoping Village caught the tiger cub and then were attacked by the tiger group "deliberately" retaliating.
In my personal opinion, this is indeed quite a possibility.
Tigers have always been high-IQ animals, and Gaoping Village is located at the foot of the mountain, the people rely on the mountain to eat the mountain, usually into the mountain to catch a tiger cub is also very normal, after all, the trade was relatively free, not to mention that there were rewards for catching tigers at that time.
So the capture of tiger cubs was possible at the time, and what the villagers said was credible.
On the other hand, as we can see from the beginning of the previous article, as early as the Qing Dynasty, there are records: the county order was ambushed and attacked by tigers in the county town.
Therefore, it can be seen that the South China tiger does have a certain group and social nature, especially when facing humans who are extremely dangerous to them, which also proves that the Baihuwei Village actually has a logic to follow.
So why did they choose to attack after three days because of the cubs?
- It is most likely that the South China tiger, after thousands of years of confrontation with humans, was influenced by humans, or its mentality has evolved, and it has this concern of "rat throwing trap". This is actually normal, after all, for any large mammal, cubs are extremely precious in the group.
After fighting tigers in the 1950s, especially with the further destruction of the habitat and hunting food of the South China tiger by humans, the South China tiger gradually faded out of people's sight and slowly disappeared in the 1960s.
In the data of the State Forestry Administration, the last time the South China Tiger was reported was on November 6, 1986, when a juvenile South China tiger was caught in Anren County, Hunan Province, but because the young tiger was too badly injured by the clip, it died after 15 days of rescue.
Since the South China tiger is nearly extinct, in 1989, the South China tiger was officially listed as an endangered species by the state and was set as a national first-class protected animal. But at this time, it is difficult to see the South China tiger in the wild.
From thousands of wild stocks, to later spending a lot of money to find the traces of the South China tiger, the period has only gone for more than 50 years, with more than 50 years, a species that has existed in China for thousands of years has gone extinct, the author does not know how to evaluate and tell.
Of course, we can't simply put the mistake on humans, because at that time they did form a "tiger plague", which posed a threat to human life and property safety, and the villagers at that time called them "four-legged bandits", hoping that the fewer they were, the better it was normal.
But we also can't put the blame on tigers, because in a way they are forced to be helpless, after all, they also need to survive.
In fact, how to choose between environmental protection and human development has always been a very headache, because if it is not handled well, it is extremely likely to be eaten by nature.
However, with the precedent of the near extinction of the South China tiger, we seem to have gradually found measures that are suitable for economic development, but also protect the environment and protect wild animals, that is: rational return of farmland to forests, rational planning of ecological reserves; respect for nature, love nature, rather than forcibly transform nature.
Although there have been incidents of Siberian tigers injuring people now, this does not mean that we humans have returned to reincarnation.
Why?
As we mentioned earlier, the South China tiger has high requirements for the ecological environment of the habitat, and the Siberian tiger is no exception.
——The appearance of the Siberian tiger "Wandashan No. 1" in Jixi, Heilongjiang, fully shows that the ecological environment here is getting better and better, and it is more and more suitable for the Siberian tiger to inhabit and breed here, resulting in the migration of the Russian wild Siberian tiger to our place.
This is two completely different situations from the original South China tiger, which gradually spread to our living area because of hunger. Therefore, the Siberian tiger will not appear at all to form a "tiger plague" like the original South China tiger.
We also hope that this phenomenon can be maintained forever, after all, there is only one earth, but there are many species, and the earth is not just the earth of human beings.