The history of human extinction of wolves
Guo Geng's "Beast Death" - Disappearing Animal Reading Notes
1. The relationship between wolves and humans
The wolf is one of the beasts of prey that overlaps with the human living area, and the relationship with human society is also more complicated, the human ancestors gradually domesticated dogs from the wolves in nature to see the home and assist in hunting, while the livestock and poultry raised are facing the threat of being invaded and killed by wolves, so humans love and hate wolves.
The distribution area of wolves is very extensive throughout history, with more than 40 subspecies of wolves in the world, distributed on land, except for Antarctica, polar mountain peaks, and most islands, and is more common in the northern hemisphere.
According to scientists' research and findings, the history of wolves can be traced back to more than 5 million years ago, when they can be described as at the top of the earth's biological chain, because of their medium and upper size, strong explosiveness, excellent biting ability, good running, good endurance, and good at group combat, these characteristics make them in adapting to natural environmental changes, competing with other carnivores, protecting and breeding offspring, etc., have advantages that most other carnivores do not have. In the face of the extinction of many other carnivores, wolves have lived until now and continue to evolve.
For a long time, due to the relatively low productivity of human beings, the smaller area of activity, and the low intensity of the impact on the natural environment, although the wolf pack has a certain threat to humans themselves, as well as the livestock and poultry raised, but in general, human activities have little impact on the living space of the wolf pack, before the global industrial revolution, the wolf has always been a terrifying existence for human beings.
2. The wolf used to be a symbol of the devil
Legends such as "Mr. DongGuo and the Wolf" ...
Folk songs such as "The little bunny is obedient and opens the door". . . . .
In the song, such as "If the jackal comes, it will be greeted with a shotgun"...
Various literary works, such as "Wolf" in Pu Songling's "Liaozhai Zhiyi". . . . . .
There is no shortage of creepy descriptions of wolves.
Nowadays, the image of the wolf is even more well-known, there is almost no positive depiction, almost all of them are the embodiment of evil, they are ghosts in dreams, they are synonymous with bad people, wolf hearts and dog lungs, wolf-like adultery, jackals are in charge...
The psychological reaction of this animal has long exceeded the real experience of people's actual life.
The worship of wolves by early humans can be traced back to the ancient Greek period, when wolves were associated with witchcraft, in fact, this is a wolf generation, which is a deformation of the human image. The folklore about wolves is also manifested in the hypnotic effect. The Great Bad Wolf is said to be a monster that scares children, and even a vampire retinue. The magic of the power was mainly reflected in the wolf's hairy sense of terror and the sharp teeth of Leng Sensen.
Ancient Scandinavian myths warn the world that the end of the world is the day when the great wolf devours the day.
The medieval holy books ask, "Except for the devil, the devil we can think of is the wolf, and who else can be there?" From the 12th century to the present, although the position of human beings on the earth has undergone a "sharp turnaround", this concept has not changed much.
Although the real great bad wolf is not extinct, in the course of less than a hundred years, humans have made 7 sub-species
The wolf species went extinct, and 4 other wolf-like canines were hunted down. The big bad wolf finally survived
The wheezing continued, and after experiencing the massacre and atrocity of human sweeping, it can be said that it was the rest of his life.
Among the various carnivorous animals, wolves were once widely found in the northern hemisphere, which was quite skinny and flourishing
animal.
In the snow world of the Arctic Circle, wolves can be seen;
Wolves can also be seen in the scorching Gobi desert.
They can survive in tundra, mountains, swamps, forests, deserts and grasslands. Wolves, with their omnipresent versatility, were born and grew up in Si, and exist in a maverick way. Should such a stoic and tenacious and successfully evolved species be extinct at the hands of humans? Are man demons more ferocious than wolves?
Humans know very little about the large, 77-kilogram gray-white Arctic wolf or the gray-brown Arabian desert wolf weighing about 20 kilograms, and even regard these animals as a category. Although, they are at least different subspecies.
3. History of gray wolf population extinction
The gray wolf (Canis lupus), as a species, has a wide range of coat colors from black to white and brown to yellow. same
Similarly, it is generally believed that wolves have an extremely wide range, and there are many subspecies, and even some that are not related to wolves
Animals that look like wolves or don't look like wolves are also called wolves, including the endangered maned wolf on the Great Plains of Argentina in South America
(Chrysoscyon brachyurus), canissimensis, a rare jackal in the Ethiopian steppe, and the extinct Tasmanian marsupial cynocephalus.
In England, the last wolf was killed in 1500, while in Ireland and Scotland, the wolf survived until 1750. Today, france, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark, where there were once wolves, have no trace of wolves. The remaining small group of European wolves (Lanis lupus lupus) lives alone in the mountains of the Iberian and Balkan peninsulas. Amazingly, about 100 more wolves survived in Italy's Apennine Mountains.
It is difficult to determine whether the wolf's situation in Asia is true or false, or it is mysterious, or hearsay, or sporadic reports, and it is probably still alive
It is home to the Indian Gray Wolf, the Arabian Peninsula Wolf, the Asian Ice Wolf, the Central Asian Steppe Wolf, the Chinese Wolf and the Japanese Gray Wolf. The Japanese gray wolf was once found in Japan, and today there are only surviving records on Sakhalin Island in Russia.
Of the more than 30 subspecies of the gray wolf, about 20 are distributed in North America. Due to the common history of wolf hunting in modern times, there are only a few wolves on the American continent today. Obviously, these vicious and stubborn creatures have disappeared one after another. Wolf population densities have always been low, and it is appalling that in the half-century from 1850 to 1900, about 2 million wolves were killed by shotguns, traps and bait. It's not bad that wolves can now reach 1 percent of that number, and about 7 subspecies of North American wolves are doomed to genocide.
In the early 19th century, the Great Plains of North America were one of the most wildlife-rich regions in the world, but since 1880, wolf populations have begun to decline in this vast expanse. Also lost were bison, grizzly bears, antelopes, cranes and prairie hazelnuts, and animals large and small were either shot or poisoned. By 1945, with the exception of Mexican wolves and a few isolated remnants living in Montana Glacier National Park, there were no more wolves in vast areas south of the Canadian border.
How do people poison living beings?
See: A wolf hunter in the 17th century was a skilled hunter if he had succeeded in hunting twenty or so wolves (no more than 30) in his lifetime. In the 19th century, a hunter carrying a bag of strychnine, sulfates and other poisons could hunt 500 wolves in a quarter, which can be said to be full of corpses. Strychnine was considered the best weapon against the scheming and suspicious wolf, whereas in the past, any poison applied by humans had been difficult to deceive the wolf.
This poison is extremely deceptive, in part because it can make the wolf feel nauseous and allergic, and the stimulating effect makes the wolf vomit the food in the stomach, and this slow onset of poison, the killing machine is implicit. In the 19th century, when a hunter could go out with his bare hands without skills, physical strength, or even weapons, put strychnine on a dead animal, go home and wait for a day, and then go out, he could harvest his prey. This way of hunting wolves is completely non-selective, and these ruthless and vicious people have spread poison all over the North American continent, poisoning countless creatures, which is simply shocking. Not only wolves are victimized, but many predators are also doomed, such as jungle wolves, foxes, weasels, jaguars, grizzly bears, skunks, ferrets, squirrels, raccoons, short-tailed cats, badgers, eagles, crows, etc., and even some indigenous Indians.
The consequences of poisoning in the water are often catastrophic, with livestock, dogs and even children can be poisoned before they die
Severe vomiting, diarrhea, cramps, cramps, etc. occur. The poisoning range spreads throughout the savannah, and the toxicity persists
For a year or more, horses, bison, and antelopes were all affected. Finally, by 1900, the authorities recognized the horse
Excessive harm of carizi alkali, abuse is prohibited. But the wolf catcher remained the same until it was completely banned. In its place is a wolf trap, which, although milder than poisoning, takes almost six for each wolf hunted on average
The lives of other animals. The ratio is the same as the number of six companions to catch a chimpanzee.
The reason for the hunt of gray wolves after 1900 is difficult to judge, because almost no domestic animals died in the mouth of wolves at this time, and many sheep were eaten by stray domestic dogs. However, the reward for wolf hunting is still rising, and the government has arranged wolf hunting teams to sweep everywhere, and the moped up is all about individuals who have never seen humans or livestock. As the population increased and the number of wolves decreased, some diseases began to spread. Mutilated wolves appear from time to time. In 1905, veterinarians in Montana began injecting wolves with vaccinations, but this was often in vain, when the epidemic spread, from wolves to livestock, from livestock to wolves, cross-infection occurred.
In 1928, in Arkansas, in an attempt to exterminate wolves from their intractable homeland, residents burned thousands of acres of national forest.
The first North American wolf to go extinct in modern times was the Newfoundland white wolf (Canis lupus beothucus). This is ash
The wolf is a very unique large subspecies with an average body length of 180 cm and a weight of more than 45 kg. The head is large and long, with canine teeth
Wide and strongly curved. The body hair is pure white , and the head and limbs are slightly tooth-yellow.
In 1842, the Newfoundland government offered a heavy reward for wolf hunting. By 1875, the wolf pack remained in numbers against reindeer
A slight predation. By 1900, the wolves were gone, and the shadows of wolves were in the air. By 1911, the last one
Only white wolves were shot. It was a wolf known as the Great Indian Ofothuk of Newfoundland. The name seems to be
Just right. The Europeans had almost exterminated the indigenous people here for an entire century, and then, too
The white wolf pushed into a desperate situation.
The Canis lupus alces is the largest of all wolves. They were once distributed in alaska's Kinai Peninsula and were recorded as being shot in 1915. Kinai mountain wolves weigh an average of 45 to 63 kilograms and are more than 180 centimeters long, and hunting large herbivores such as moose is certainly not a problem, as if they are a pair of specially designed by nature. With the extinction of the Kinai wolf, small Alaskan wolves gradually infiltrated the territory that was once the indisputable territory of the Kinai wolf.
In 1920, two small wolves became extinct, the Canis lupus monstra-
bilis) and new Mexican wolf (Canis lupus mogollonensis). The body color of both wolves is dark and heavy
27 to 36 kg, body length 135 to 150 cm. Texas gray wolves live in the desert and west of Texas
In the savannahs and northeastern Mexico, New Mexico wolves live in the dry mountains of central Arizona and in Mexico.
Perhaps the most famous North American wolf is the Western Gray Wolf (Canis lupus nubilus), which lives in the grass
Originally, it was distributed from South Saskatchewan to Manito and Texas. Known as bison herders, wandering wolves or
The western gray wolf of the treasure hunter was once the most majestic kind of wolf. They feed on large herbivores, even antelopes
Bison are all in the business. The western gray wolf is centered in size, with a body length of 165 cm, a weight of 34 to 45 kg, and a coat color
There is a lot of variation, but it is biased towards light white.
The Southern Mountain Wolf (Canis lupus youngi) was found in Nevada, Utah and Colorado
The state, 1940, was the last year they could be seen alive, and there has been no trace of them since. This is a kind of moderate posture and bias
The large mountain wolf weighs 36 to 49 kg, has a body length of 165 cm, and has a light yellow coat color.
The wolf that became extinct in the later period was the Canis lupus fuscus (Brown Wolf) of the Cascades Mountains. This is a kind of survival in evergreen
The medium-sized wolf in the forest and mountains, like the southern mountain wolf, weighs 36 to 49 kg and has a body length of 165 cm
It is often referred to directly as a brown wolf because its body hair is essentially brownish red to beige. Washington State, USA
The Cascade Mountains and British Columbia, Canada, are the last refuges for this brown wolf, which is crippled
By 1950, the last brown wolf had last disappeared in southwest British Columbia.
In Japan, two species of wolves once survived, both of which are now extinct. One is the Japanese gray wolf known as the "YESO," a subspecies of the gray wolf that, although extinct in Japan, has a small number of individuals in Russia. The other is the famous Japanese booqueur or Canis lupus hodophilax, a wolf known to the Japanese as Shamanu and became extinct in 1905. The French naturalist Tamik, in his book Zoology of Japan, gave the wolf such a Latin scientific name. Although it is listed as a subspecies of the gray wolf, a study in the British Museum (which houses the only specimen of a boooo outside of Japan) shows that Tamik and other discoverers were surprised by the existence of the wolf because of their distinctive appearance compared to the gray wolf. The reason for the difference is that the bougainvillea has been living alone in Japan for a long time.
The Japanese booque wolf is the smallest wolf in the world, with a body length of 84 centimeters and a 30 centimeter-long wolf that resembles a dog's tail
tail. Gray thick hairs that cover the whole body, interspersed with white and brown markings, some of which are yellowish brown or off-white. This wolf has a shoulder height of about 39 cm and relatively short legs. Real wolves are big in canids, and this wolf is closer to a dog than a wolf.
Despite their small size, they were extremely feared by the Japanese. Ainus, a native of Japan, called the Japanese wolf a "roaring god" because the wolf often roared on the hillside for hours. According to a European traveler, Henry Fields, on the north side of Japanese houses, there are wolf-repellent spells hanging like street names and household names. Humans, like many animals, are in a state of tension when they feel threatened by so-and-so. The Japanese feared this little wolf because they had never seen a big wolf. Since human beings have such a terrible sense of terror, how can the Japanese booquet have any hope of survival?
Like wolves everywhere, the Japanese booquet, which rivals humans, has been hunted and killed, and its whole body has been priced. From 1859 to 1860, a European named Hodgyson recounted the Japanese trade in wolves. The main base of the Japanese booqueur is Honshu, but it also radiates to Hokkaido and The Thousand Islands. These places offered rewards for wolf hunting. In Hokkaido, the local government encouraged wolf fighting from 1878 to 1882, and the prize money for a wolf was 7 yuan, which was later raised to 10 yuan. By 1905, the Japanese booque wolf was extinct in Honshu, and the only display that locals could do for European travelers was a wolf skin. Perhaps, this is the last sighting of the "Roaring God" in the world.
4. Distribution of Wolves in China
From China's point of view, the main wolf species have two subspecies: eurasian wolf and Qinghai-Tibetan wolf, which are also known as steppe wolves and Mongolian wolves, respectively, and they belong to the same gray wolf species. Among them, the steppe wolf was originally widely distributed in Central Asia, Europe, Siberia and China's northeast, north China, northwest and southwest regions, but at present in most parts of China can not see their figure, only in Heilongjiang, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Tibet and other provinces have been distributed, the specific number is ominous, estimated to be less than 20,000.
The distribution of the Qinghai-Tibet wolf is not as extensive as that of the steppe wolf, mainly concentrated in the plateau, mountainous and other high-terrain grassland areas, the size is small, from the current point of view, China only Tibet and parts of Xinjiang have The Qinghai-Tibet wolf is infested, the number is only about 5,000.
The reason why the number of wolves inhabiting China has decreased significantly is mainly due to three aspects:
One is the impact of human activities. In the 1950s and 1970s, it was a period of very rapid population growth in China, on the one hand, the population grew in a large number, and the number and scale of towns and villages were constantly expanding; on the other hand, the population growth, the degree of demand for natural resources and energy, which included the raw materials and fuels needed for industrial production, but also the cultivated land resources needed for the development of agriculture and people's demand for food. In order to meet the rigid needs of human social development, during that period, the expansion of human society on natural space and the impact on the natural environment were continuously enhanced, and a large number of woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands were squeezed and developed, which had a serious impact on the survival of wild animals, and many species suffered a devastating blow.
The second is a large number of human hunting. Before the introduction of the corresponding wildlife protection laws and regulations, because wolves, jackals, tigers, leopards and other wild predators have a certain threat to human production and life, coupled with some economic interest factors, so that people intentionally or unintentionally drive away, hunting these wild animals, in this context, the number of wolves in China gradually decreased, in the provinces south of the Yangtze River, the original wolf subpopulation of regional extinction.
Third, wolves are challenged by survival pressures. In addition to the impact of human activities, including wolves, all animals in nature, will also be under the influence of changes in the natural environment, changes in the structure of species and other factors, all the time to carry out cruel competition for survival, for wolves, in order to maintain the stability of the population, it is necessary to overcome the natural environment changes brought about by the reduction of food sources, changes in drinking water sources, dry and warm climate change and other issues, but also to face other predators, other wolves for habitat, food, water and many other aspects of the competition, Some populations that are not adaptable are greatly squeezed out, and over time, the populations are dwindling and eventually eliminated.
Because wolves are an important part of the natural ecosystem, they play a very key role in maintaining the stability of an ecosystem, especially the grassland ecosystem, many grasslands because of the reduction or disappearance of wolves, the number of hares, rats, etc. gradually climbed, bringing a serious negative impact on agricultural and animal husbandry production, therefore, China will list the wolf as a national second-level protected animal. At present, in the case of the gradual restoration of the natural ecological environment and the continuous increase in the protection of wild animals, the living environment of wolves in China has also been greatly improved, and wild wolves in some areas are gradually returning and growing.