What is your first intuition about goats? Is it a kind and honest person, agile and lively figure, or is it a delicious meat in the eyes of foodies? I guessed it wrong this time. goats not only became the top 100 invasive species in history, but they can also climb trees on the wall and even stand vertically on the wall.
This wave of operations not only shocked everyone, but also did not conform to scientific common sense. Some people even joked that Newton would "reveal the coffin" after watching it.
Why can goats, which look ordinary, do what other limb mammals cannot do?
became the top 100 invasive species by their own strength
The war between humans and goats was staged a long time ago. There was a war caused by three goats on an island. Although only three goats underestimate their combat effectiveness, the three of them almost destroyed the entire island, and they are truly the "destruction king".
This island is Cologne Islands , that is, the Galapagus Islands. This place is surrounded by the sea and has many endemic and scarce species that are not found elsewhere. This island is also the place where Darwin wrote "Theory of Evolution".
Just in 1959, a fishing boat was resting on the island for a while while fishing. Just when the fishermen were collecting the net, they were not careful and ignored, and the three goats on the boat ran to the island, survived on the island, and kept eating the vegetation on the island, and reproduction frantically.
In 1990, the crazy growth flock was completely out of control, and the number increased from the first three to 250,000.
No matter how rich the vegetation in the Cologne Islands is, it cannot withstand this kind of creation. The rare plants on the island are also bare by goats, and even the roots are not left. The endemic species of Galapagus tortoise on the island cannot grab the goats. He is hungry every day, and for a moment it has gone from the original 200,000, and the number is less than 3,000.
Just as the situation was uncontrollable, the local government of the Cologne Islands, after repeated thinking and consideration, decided to send troops to eliminate the flock of sheep on the island with super fertility. At the beginning, the government adopted the model of killing sheep when seeing sheep, but the efficiency was too low and the goats ran very fast, so they did not deal with many goats in a short period of time.
They also found that this method would not work, so could only consume the helicopters of armed forces to deal with these flocks. After changing to a helicopter, the efficiency became very high, and 90% of the flock was cleaned up in one year. But the remaining 10% are not "good sluts" and are not that easy to deal with.
They fought wits and courage with people and launched guerrilla warfare , and even evolved to be able to identify the sound of helicopters, and also cleverly used something else to hide themselves.
After a period of discussion, finally decided to change the method and use stronger tactics. They sent spy ewes, installed GPS positioning on them, and then asked the GPS ewes to find the remaining goats on their own, so that the flock can be accurately positioned. After finding the specific location of the flock, annihilate it one by one.
This one-to-one guerrilla war alone took them two years. They released 900 female spy goats before and after , and finally wiped out the last goat on the Cologne Islands in 2006, and the goat assault was finally over.
And did goats successfully squeeze into the top 100 invasive species just by becoming this incident? Of course not! The story mentioned above in only reveals the tip of the goat's powerful iceberg . In fact, in addition to persecuting the Cologne Islands, the goat also launched a challenging attack on Australia.
Australia is located in the southern hemisphere of the earth. Its environment is very good and has always been a growth kingdom for major animals and plants. Australia has a very high plant coverage rate and a large variety of animals. There are no large carnivores, so the ecological chain has always been very healthy.
But because of these, Australia is often invaded by alien species, such as rabbits, camels, etc. that were previously invaded by foreign species. The wild goat that has become rampant this time also caused a headache for the Australian government. Before , some goats ran to the wild for various reasons, so they became wild goats. Their continuous breeding and expansion were ultimately unmanually controlled, causing great damage to Australia's ecological environment.
Because wild goats eat herbs on a large scale, the green pastures become bare and soil desertification is very serious. In order to improve the seriously threatened ecological environment, the Australian government even dispatched helicopters to hunt on a large scale.
There are nearly 800 goats in a park in Australia. In order to reduce the number of wild goats, the local government launched hunting activities for this park, spending nearly 70,000 US dollars, but the result was not very ideal, and only less than 500 wild goats were eliminated.
The problem in other parts of Australia is also very serious, because the killing methods used before are not effective, This time the government decided to directly use a Jewish collar and put a Judas collar on it when catching a goat. This collar can achieve positioning and tracking. When the lonely wild goat returns to the flock, it is easier to find a position and kill it. After a period of implementation of the action, the Australian government's wild goat invasion problem was completely resolved.
The magical goat that is an expert in flying eaves and wall climbing
. It is precisely because of its strong reproductive ability and a difficult and dangerous living environment. In order to escape the hunting of humans and natural enemies, goats have gradually developed the superb ability to "fly the eaves and wall climbing".
Have you imagined that a goat weighing up to 200 kilograms can walk freely on cliffs? We have to mention (also called the North Goat) of Nubian . They do not occasionally come to the wilderness areas of Nubia, but the "permanent nail households" here, but they like to stay in such bare cliffs and wilderness places.
They live here and are comfortable, neither the enemies and competitors who care about them all day long, nor humans or other species to disturb them, and they feel more secure in life.
However, there are some obvious problems in this place. Although it is safe enough, it lacks the necessary food and water resources to survive. If these sheep are hungry and want to go out to find food, they must risk being eaten and pass through the range of activities of animals such as wild wolf fox . So they also face two choices: either starve to death or be arrested.
Long-term exposure to danger, Nubian sheep have also practiced several "life-saving magic weapons". That is: flying over the eaves and walking on the walls. , including newborn lambs, is a must-have skill, which can ensure that they can walk freely on cliffs without any obstacles. This skill is mainly determined by the unique body structure of antelope .
is their eyes first. All goats have horizontal pupils, and goats are no exception. Their viewing angle can reach 320 degrees, and a wide field of view can also reduce visual blind spots. , which has almost no blind spots, can see upright cliffs as flat ground. Even if they stand on steep cliffs like dams, they will not feel afraid of heights and fall down.
In addition to eyes, their hooves are also special "helpers". Almost all goats have toes, which are characterized by narrow front and wide back and gaps in the middle.
The structure of the toe hoof can make the sheep stuck protruding stones on the cliffs, grabbing them very steadily, and the soles of the hoofs are cartilage, which can bring a buffering effect when they grab the ground. With the help of these two points, their hoofs are equivalent to the automatically equipped super invincible hiking shoes, and the grip and balance force can support free walking on the cliff.
And the goat's limbs and buttocks muscles are very developed, and the balance ability is also very good, so that the goat can maintain the balance of the body well after standing on the "stairs" on the hooves. It is also paired with the excellent jumping ability of Nubian Sheep , which allows them to move flexibly in the stairwells that are split around, becoming a veritable master of flying eaves and wall climbing.
Of course, the scenes we see are all their freedom after repeated training. In this process, some sheep were eliminated because they could not learn this skill or fell to death during the cliff.
It can be said that before becoming a climbing expert, they also had an "unknown" past.
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