Many, many years ago, human ancestors were forest apes living in trees, and the advantage of living in trees was that food was within reach, and beasts of prey such as lions and tigers on the ground could not pose a threat to their lives.
But even so, living in a tree is not a harmless thing. Many people may not imagine that the instinctive reactions that still exist in our bodies today were all produced at the time of the ancient apes in the forest.
Forest apes
One is the itchy flesh on our bodies, why do we have such a big reaction when we are tickled? In fact, because many of the forest apes living in the trees at that time died from the inflammation caused by mosquito bites, until now we still can't adapt to the touch similar to mosquito bites, and we will have a natural resistance to itching.
The other is the fear of snakes by humans, and most people are very afraid of snakes. Although beasts of prey could not go up the tree to hunt the ancient apes of the forest, snakes could easily go up the tree, and many human ancestors died under the poison and strangulation of snakes.
The traditional art of snakes: climbing trees
Even today, about 30 percent of people are born with the instinct to fear snakes, and when they see a snake in a twisted body, they will stiffen and get goosebumps all over their bodies.
Even more terrifying than a snake is the fact that there are countless entangled snakes, and similar scenes appear in many horror movies to increase the sense of fear in our hearts.
But in the United States, there is a place that has been invaded by the Snake of Burmese Python, and now there are more than 30,000 Burmese pythons in the city, which is terrifying to think about.
Burmese python
Pythons belong to a type of snake, all pythons are non-venomous, but most pythons are relatively large, the main way to hunt is through strangulation, the prey is hanged, and then swallowed directly into the stomach. Large pythons can generally digest for more than a month at a time, during which time they do not need to eat again.
As mentioned above, most people will naturally have the gene of fear of snakes, but there are also a small number of people who will like snakes as strange creatures, so snakes are still more popular in the market for special-shaped pets.
Pet snakes
The python, because of its non-venomous nature, is popular with snake lovers, and pythons tend to be docile and do not actively attack humans. As a result, domesticated python species such as ball pythons, sand pythons, Burmese pythons, and so on have emerged in the python pet market.
Pet traders, seeing the vast market for pythons, began to try to transport these pythons to the American continent for sale. And so, the unexpected happened.
Most people domesticate python pets, will require the smaller python, ball python, sand python this body length of up to two meters python is very popular, while the Burmese python is a large python, the longest can grow to 5 to 10 meters long.
Too large is easy to pose a danger to the owner, and the cost of breeding is too high, the difficulty is too large, and the black-hearted businessman, for profit, falsely claims that the Burmese python is also a small python, fooling many people to buy.
Many people buy it home, but find that the more they raise it, the bigger and bigger, for their own safety, many people choose to release their own Burmese pythons. There is no Burmese python on the U.S. mainland, and naturally there will be no natural predators that control its numbers out of control. In addition, the Burmese python, with its huge size, is itself a predator at the top of the biological chain.
A giant python in the form of an animation
So in the Americas, the Burmese pythons that were released lived a very moist life. If only pet lovers are released, then it should not be a big problem, but in 1992, tropical Hurricane Andrew swept through North America, the Burmese python farm in Florida was overturned, and a large number of Burmese python larvae fled into the wild, and since then, the Burmese python has successfully become an invasive species on the American continent, and it has been flooded in the United States.
According to scientists' calculations, there are more than 30,000 pythons in the Florida region alone, and the Burmese python found in Florida can reach a maximum of 5.7 meters, and the python biosphere of this size has been unafraid of all threats and rivals, even the largest American alligator in the Western Hemisphere, which can reach more than 4 meters in length, has become one of the recipes of the Burmese python.
American pythons flood
When there is an animal in the biosphere that cannot be destroyed by other organisms, has a particularly long lifespan, and has a strong reproductive ability, then the balance of the biosphere is destined to be broken.
In Southeast Asia, although the Burmese python is still the top organism of the biological chain, many organisms feed on the eggs and larvae of the Burmese python, so the wild population of the Burmese python is not large and cannot threaten the ecological balance of Southeast Asia.
But on the American continent, where the original ecosystem is not very stable and often leads to species extinction for some reason, the burmese python's rampant breeding has immediately made the ecosystem of the Americas worse.
A giant python that kills crocodiles
Burmese pythons not only eat crocodiles, but also eat possums, birds and other moving creatures that may be eaten by it. Even humans, when encountering a five- or six-meter-long Burmese python, are also in danger of being strangled and eaten.
In the more than two decades that burmese pythons invaded the United States, the number of small animals in the area has declined dramatically, and Burmese pythons have encroached on their ecological positions. Over time, scientists have assumed that the number of Burmese pythons in Florida has approached the upper limit, and then their range of activity will spread to the surrounding areas.
You can eat anything
If left unchecked, eventually the ecosystem of the United States and even the entire North America will collapse, which will seriously affect the health of the contemporary environment, and it is impossible to survive in a continent surrounded by Burmese pythons.
The United States had long been aware of the threat posed by burmese python invasions to North America, so they began to try their best to deal with the invasion of Burmese pythons.
The United States controls it mainly through the following three methods:
Manual hunting
Although the Burmese python has no natural enemies in the wild and can even threaten the safety of humans, it is still unable to defeat powerful humans, and Florida often holds hunting activities for Burmese pythons.
American Snake Catcher Police
In these activities, many full-time hunters do their best to hunt Burmese pythons, and they even hold competitions to see who kills the largest number of Burmese pythons, the largest body, in order to stimulate everyone's enthusiasm for hunting, the local government will also give a certain degree of bonus according to the number of hunts.
But the problem is that hunting is too inefficient. The Burmese python is a creature that is very good at hiding itself, and full-time hunters are also powerless.
On Christmas Day, December 15, 2014, Florida's Environmental Protection Agency launched a three-month Burmese python hunt, but for three months, only 43 Burmese pythons were caught.
The Burmese python can lay 12 to 36 snake eggs every year, hunting for three months, and the Burmese python can immediately make up the number as long as it lays two litters of eggs. In fact, this hunting activity is more like the United States responding to the Invasion of Asian carp in the Great Lakes, the whole lake is full of carp, and they use bows and arrows to kill them.
In fact, the American people's hunting activities against burmese pythons are still more showy, and they do not really want to solve the problem of Burmese pythons invading the biosphere.
Introduce predators
As mentioned earlier, Burmese pythons actually have natural enemies, and wild cats, king cobras, ferrets and other creatures will prey on those burmese pythons that have not yet developed.
king cobra
So biologists in the United States have suggested the introduction of these animals to restrain the population of Burmese pythons and form a new ecological balance.
But this method is not as simple as we think, because the newly introduced Burmese python predator is also an invasive species. For example, the wild cat, if a large number of wild cats from Southeast Asia are introduced, it will indeed prey on juvenile Burmese pythons, but the wild cat will also prey on other organisms.
Southeast Asian wildcats
Small native creatures threatened by Burmese pythons are also further preyed upon by wildcats. And wild cats also need to be restrained by natural enemies, otherwise the final result is likely to be that the flood of Burmese pythons has not been solved, but more wild cats have been flooded.
Poisoning
Many people think of the method of poisoning, as long as the use of poison, the Burmese python poisoning, can effectively curb the number of Burmese pythons, to achieve the effect of maintaining ecological balance.
But the truth is that there are hardly any poisons in real life that target only one organism. The act of poisoning itself is disrupting the ecological balance, because a large number of non-target animals will also be harmed by poisons, and with the ability of humans to make poisons, it is believed that the damage to the ecosystem by poisoning will far exceed the damage caused by the flooding of Burmese pythons.
Dangerous agents
For example, some people once thought that the stray dogs in our country were too flooded, so they privately purchased a large number of isoniazid pills, stuffed them into the ham intestines, and put them in the place where stray dogs were infested, the results were very tragic, indeed some stray dogs were poisoned by them, but many pet dogs who were regarded as family members also died because they accidentally ate these ham sausages.
Therefore, poisoning is a method of elimination, which is too poorly targeted, and often accidentally injures those organisms that originally need protection. Even, as we humans are at the very top of the food chain, any toxins that remain in the biosphere will eventually be enriched into our own bodies.
For example, the infamous DDT pesticides and microplastics, these toxins will not be easily decomposed, only with the flow of the food chain, and eventually only endanger our own safety.
Used to be DDT pesticide advertising
From the three methods of dealing with Burmese pythons listed above, we can easily see that once invasive organisms have established themselves in the invaded areas, it becomes almost impossible to completely eliminate them.
The number of organisms that can accommodate all ecosystems is limited, and the unrestricted reproduction and expansion of invasive organisms will inevitably squeeze out the ecological position of native organisms.
Many people will think that biological invasion does not seem to be a big deal, and what kind of organisms in the ecosystem will not affect our current lives. But the reality is that every native organism is an important part of maintaining ecological balance, and missing one of them may lead to ecological imbalance.
Tumbleweed invaded the United States
And ecological imbalance will inevitably affect our normal life. For example, the southern river channel of our country is invaded by an African fish called scavenger, which specializes in eating the eggs of native fish, so that the number of our native fish has decreased sharply, and if it continues to develop, the native fish will disappear in the river, leaving only a scavenger fish. From now on, we will have a lot less delicious fish on our menu.
whitewing
This is the impact that invasive species may have on us, but we cannot completely eliminate the existing invasive species for the time being, so the most important thing at this stage is to comprehensively prevent the spread of foreign species near the country to reduce the possibility of invasive organisms.
In fact, the Burmese python in China belongs to the national second-level protected animals, this is because the wild Burmese python in our country has been very rare, and its survival in our country will not only not destroy the ecological balance, but also maintain the ecology in turn.
The only difference between the Burmese python in our country and the Burmese python in the United States is that in the United States, there is no natural enemy of the Burmese python, but there are many Burmese pythons, so the number of Burmese pythons will grow rapidly, and even destroy the local ecology.
The United States still has a long way to go to eliminate the Burmese python
From this matter, we can know that different environments will lead to different results, and organisms that look harmless to humans and animals outside the country may cause disasters when they are brought back to China, so do not bring any foreign creatures back to China without permission when traveling.