The "Incredibly Impossible to Derail This Thread" thread | Page 776 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

AppleScruffJunior said

^ Exactly and horses too!

We’ve got to lose that koala solo. Koalas: it’s a trap.

Fact 3: there are more feral animals than humans in Australia. Feral pigs, goats, dogs, cats, camels, toads, horses, cattle, rabbits (Rabbits are feral! They were actually released here by an idiot who wanted to hunt them), foxes (see rabbits), birds (see rabbits), and we also regularly import insects like fire ants from New Zealand produce.

Just taking the cats for an example, its been estimated that in the semi-desert (and possibly main desert) areas, there could be up to 5 cats per square kilometre and they usually compete with a similar number of foxes, but you can imagine it’s pretty damn difficult to measure without literally fencing a kilometre off and trapping, which has been done. They’re wiping out native species left and right but on the other hand they eat a lot of insects too.

The toads were a hilariously disastrous attempt at bioengineering against a grub and the damn things have made it across the country and as the climate warms up are moving south. On the plus side they are poisonous so they might wipe out some unwary feral carnivores on the other hand the carnivores have wised up so they’re just poisonous and unkillable.

The camels are a legacy of exploration and itinerant traders. The cattle just wandered off like the pigs and goats and horses. The dogs (not the dingos which are native) and the foxes are a real menace to the domesticated goats and sheep here. Lots of imported birds live with us in cities, a few natives have hung on but you don’t see them much unless you live in a country area like mine, there’s too much competition from magpies, sparrows, pigeons, crows, etc. We do have a possum problem though, unusually it’s the most successful native wildlife that loves the suburbs. Oh I forgot the bats, there’s currently a war on bats. Oh and kangaroos come into town (I’m not joking) when it gets really dry out here.

Every few years people tell tall tales of giant cats stalking our national parks particularly down here in Victoria and Tasmania, its like our bigfoot. No one’s ever seen one just like no one has ever seen a surviving Tasmanian tiger (so very extinct like Tasmanian indigenous people). So that’s our feral population roundup today.

meanmistermustard said

So the lesson to learn is humans shouldnt mess with the animal order on the planet because we’re stupid? Hopefully we start soon.

We just have a long dumb history of doing stupid things with animals here. The toad situation is completely overwhelming. We are literally being plagued by them. In general the only successes we have against feral animals are on surrounding islands vs rats, cats and rabbits.

Starr Shine? said

I though dingos were brought over by people 4000 years ago.

They were, now they are a threatened species because they can’t compete with feral dogs. But I think 4k years is enough to cut them some slack.

If you’re interested here’s some further reading http://www.pestsmart.org.au/pe…..l-species/ I forgot all about the carp, they’ve ruined our native fish populations in our rivers. Another introduction of course.