[HN Gopher] Mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across ea...
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Mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across eastern Australia
Author : YeGoblynQueenne
Score : 104 points
Date : 2021-03-20 11:44 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| [deleted]
| senectus1 wrote:
| I lived in Kalgoorlie when a mouse plague went through there for
| a year or two... was pretty bad.
|
| the memory of the smell alone still turns my stomach. Mouse pee
| is rank.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Honestly thought it was an exaggerated title but reading the
| article says otherwise. That's a lot of mouse. Is it because the
| habitat is missing the right predators due to climate change?
| tbihl wrote:
| Can't speak to that particular environment, but the explosion
| of lyme disease in Northeastern US over the past few decades or
| so. Lyme disease is passed by deer ticks which largely live off
| of mice, which have had decades of under-predation and good
| fortune as suburbanization creates miniature grasslands that
| are too disjointed to support the predators that should be
| eating them.
| quesera wrote:
| Another theory re: Lyme disease is that the reforestation of
| old farmlands supports a higher deer population. Deer (or
| other large hosts: bear, moose, etc) are an essential part of
| the deer tick lifecycle, which in turn supports the spread of
| the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.
|
| New England has more forest area today than it has since the
| 1700s.
| war1025 wrote:
| I have a coworker that recently moved from near Boston to
| southern Massachusetts. Absolutely boggles my mind the
| amount of wildlife he comes across. I thought the East
| coast was basically fully urbanized.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Mice only came to Australia about two centuries ago. The
| ecology has been ruined by imported species.
| strken wrote:
| A mouse population spike happens every summer/autumn in the
| wheat belt during and after the harvest. I don't think this
| year's numbers have anything to do with predator populations,
| it's probably just warm weather and a good harvest.
| vidanay wrote:
| What's the root cause? Not enough birds of prey?
| Y_Y wrote:
| Too many mice.
| stan_rogers wrote:
| The introduction of mice is the root cause. They're not an
| indigenous species.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| This seems to be a recurring occurrence in Australia. China is
| the other country to experience this with some regularity.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_plagues_in_Australia
|
| Interestingly, Australia was home to another, similar explosion
| of small mammals with high reproductive rates and no or few
| natural enemies: The rabbit plagues. This seems however largely
| to have been contained with the release of several viruses that
| targets rabbits.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_plagues_in_Australia
| hourislate wrote:
| There is the Dingo, which interesting enough was introduced a
| few thousand years ago and is not native to Australia. Then
| some time in the 1800's they introduced 24 rabbits because they
| thought it would be fun to hunt and that didn't turn out to
| well. And if that wasn't enough they introduced Camels which
| now number in the millions. I am wondering what's next?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > the Dingo, which interesting enough was introduced a few
| thousand years ago and is not native to Australia.
|
| This is a pretty stunning standard. By this standard, most of
| Africa has no native population. Most life anywhere would not
| qualify as "native".
| nyolfen wrote:
| a few thousand years is not that long; humans have been in
| africa for millions of years and australia for at least
| 45k. interestingly the dingo looks very similar to many
| other breeds of feral dogs across the world, from the
| carolina dog on the american atlantic coast to the jungle-
| dwelling new guinea singing dog. its form is something like
| the primordial state of c. familiaris, with probable
| climactic adaptations.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, humans are only considered to date back about
| 200,000 years, so "millions of years" is stretching it.
|
| Hominids have been in Africa for millions of years, but
| the Bantu Expansion is just a few thousand years old. It
| is younger than recorded history -- we have Egyptian
| records of the peoples to their south, with whom they
| traded; those people are extinct today. The Bantus
| reached South Africa at about the same time Europeans
| did! They colonized it much more successfully, though,
| largely wiping out the Khoisan who were there before.
| nyolfen wrote:
| anatomically modern humans are thought to date to about
| 200kya, but early humans like h. erectus go back much
| further
| daemin wrote:
| You forgot cane toads, foxes, cats, wild pigs/boar, water
| buffalo, and horses. All are non-native and cause damage to
| the native animals and environment.
|
| People have introduced a lot of animals for their own
| purposes which are not native to the continent and are now
| pests in some way.
| fian wrote:
| Deer, donkeys, dogs (domestic distinct from Dingoes),
| goats, plus multiple bird and fish species, insects and
| plants:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species_in_Australia
| [deleted]
| laurent92 wrote:
| And literally mixomatosis was researched and "created" circa
| 1850 to get rid of said Australian rabbits. According to my
| failing memory, it goes like this: In 2 years 95% Australian
| rabbits died, and 5% were resisting. Obviously the population
| regrew. And the researcher tried to bring it back home in UK
| to get rid of the rabbits in his garden. He succeeded... to
| kill 95% rabbits of England. Which regrew from the resisting
| 5%. And same from France.
|
| It's the disease that makes rabbit have red eyes (very easy
| to spot from far away). But beware, I'm storytelling from
| memory, huge details must be wrong.
| bradrn wrote:
| I'm not sure 'contained' is quite the right word to use here.
| Perhaps populations might be less than what they used to be,
| but where I live in Sydney, you can barely walk across the road
| without seeing at least a couple of rabbits. We certainly see
| more of them than we do of wallabies, possums or any other of
| the stereotypical Australian animals.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| If only they could militarize the emu's against the mice armies.
|
| I'd buy tickets to Emu war part deux.
| Darmody wrote:
| What if emus and mice unite against the human invader? Aussies
| wouldn't stand a chance.
| JoshTko wrote:
| This is one of the result of climate crisis. As complex
| environments get disrupted over time they become less and less
| diverse allowing for more booms and busts of single species. The
| wildfires last year probably wiped out a lot of the mice
| predators.
| offby37years wrote:
| When you only have a hammer...
| Zhenya wrote:
| Maybe!
|
| But also mice are not native to australia and here is a list of
| plagues of mice in australia since the 1800s
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_plagues_in_Australia
| [deleted]
| fatsdomino001 wrote:
| This reminds me that much of the talk around climate change
| can't be considered scientific because it's simply not
| falsifiable. If everything can be attributable to climate
| change, nothing can be.
| ourcat wrote:
| I wonder if this is in any way related to the Australian
| Government deciding in 2015 to try to kill two million feral cats
| by 2020.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/magazine/australia-cat-ki...
| yumraj wrote:
| That reminds me of CCP/Mao deciding to kill Sparrows to save
| grains, only to find that they eat insects which left unchecked
| led to much more damage.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
|
| https://www.licas.news/2020/10/07/when-communist-china-waged...
| chris1993 wrote:
| No, they're trying to eliminate feral cats in the bush and
| outback areas where they are driving native animal populations
| to extinction. The mouse problem is in grain farming areas and
| is cyclical.
| seunosewa wrote:
| As an African, my first thought on seeing the pictures was that
| it's a shame that the dead mice (that were caught in traps or by
| dogs) aren't being used to make pet food or to feed zoo animals
| after cooking them thoroughly in large pots.
| saul_goodman wrote:
| If you consider those mice I'd hate to see what you consider to
| be rats!
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| What do you mean? These are definitely regular mice, they're
| small.
|
| Rats are much larger and can grow to quite large!
| sk5t wrote:
| Is stew a normal thing to feed to zoo animals?
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Is there an analogous practice in your region? (Is it also
| subject to mouse plagues, or is there another way enough
| rodents are gathered?)
| seunosewa wrote:
| People roast and eat wild rodents like rats as "bush meat"
| but to my knowledge they don't eat mice. If we had a plague
| of mice we would certainly find a way to utilize them.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Separating the digestive system from all those little
| bodies would be tedious for not a whole lot of gain, a few
| tens of grams of muscle meat and organs per mouse.
| preommr wrote:
| This happens every 10 years or so.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWVw-j8eYSk
|
| There's videos from the last one where there's just entire seas
| of mice, crawling around everywhere. It's not in this video, but
| I remember problems like mice straight up eating away at live
| pigs stuck in their pens.
| vram22 wrote:
| Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, as well as Chin State in Myanmar,
| have a huge rat problem every N years, related to a bamboo
| species flowering and fruiting. Extra food, they breed more,
| flowers/fruits gone, they starve, they raid granaries, fields,
| houses, etc., people die of famine.
|
| Edit: corrected Assam to other nearby state names, based on:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mautam
| aaron695 wrote:
| "He said the company's six qualified pilots usually worked in
| pairs on mice baiting jobs but he had baited 184 hectares with a
| single drone during one night's operation.
|
| "If you need to drive over it to spread mouse bait, you lose $35
| of grain per hectare with wheels running over it,"
|
| https://www.facebook.com/donecommander/
| tmp538394722 wrote:
| "Bait" means poison, right?
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| I'd assume so. Which means the first application would kill
| 80% of the mice, maybe more. That'd would leave a whole bunch
| of rotting mice bodies to putrify and smell and provide a
| poisonous feast to birds and other scavangers. A second
| application might knock off 60%. Then, with each application
| and multiple generations of mice, you'd end up with mice that
| are immune. Ultimately, you end up with totally ineffective
| bait.
| underseacables wrote:
| This is going to sound silly but I'm absolutely serious: where
| are the cats?
| subungual wrote:
| It sounds like the numbers they're dealing with may be well
| beyond what could be controlled by cats. Additionally, they may
| be wary, as Australia is already a case study in what can
| happen as a result of introducing one species to control
| another's population:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia
| underseacables wrote:
| I once had a cat that lived in a work shed. Almost every day
| he brought me something dead. I hear you but it was just the
| logical thought to come to mind that I wondered why
| individuals didn't have cats, or what the cats were doing.
| Granted now I've got a cat that can't be bothered to even
| chase something, she just ..looks at it.
| subungual wrote:
| Haha, yeah, fair. I imagine the cats that do live there are
| probably enjoying themselves through this but have had
| their capacity overwhelmed.
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around,
| the gorillas simply freeze to death.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I was about to say... shouldn't the cane toads take care of
| that?
| zizee wrote:
| There are probably millions of feral cats roaming australia.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| Check out the documentary "Running Wild".
|
| Cats are part of the problem, including camels, foxes, horses
| and other invasive species. They went through a lot of trouble
| to hunt down cats and contain them. Cats wreck native animal
| populations. They went so far as to fence off areas and train
| labrador dogs so that they don't hunt native predators such as
| the (tiny) marsupial "badgers".
| neuronic wrote:
| Australia doesn't have native cat species and introduced feral
| cats are considered invasive and aggressively hunted and killed
| by the government. Feral cats decimate indiginous rodents (not
| the mice here).
| [deleted]
| joncrane wrote:
| When I read that article, all I could think of was this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Pyu-Cj0gg
|
| (In case you're sensitive, it's farmers using pitchforks to turn
| soil in a fallow or recently harvested field that is ridden with
| rats, which flushes the rats. There are a handful of ratting dogs
| milling about which immediately chase and kill the rats. The way
| they do it is the dog grabs the rat in it's mouth and shakes its
| head wildly. This breaks the rat's back and stuns it. It's
| actually pretty impressive, if violent and macabre.)
|
| I think there are dogs that would find it fun as heck to live in
| that area of Australia for a few weeks.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Or this guy, who uses trained mink and dogs for rat (and
| muskrat) control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvzZLI04_is
| vmladenov wrote:
| My dog does this to his stuffed animals, blankets, etc. The
| agility of the motion is incredible.
| Nerada wrote:
| That was an incredibly interesting watch, I had no idea this
| was a thing.
|
| Is there something special about where they're digging for it
| to be plagued with such a large amount of rats? It looks like
| it would take weeks to cover all of their land with this
| digging + dog method.
| joncrane wrote:
| My guess is that it's a field that was harvested in the past
| weeks. Harvesting crops makes a lot of edible material fall
| to the ground. I believe the "leftovers" from the harvest
| attracts the rats.
| saul_goodman wrote:
| It looks maby like the remains of a row of haylage. Basically
| chopped corn, stalk and all, which is used to feed livestock.
| Usually you see this stuff in long white bags in the US
| country side, but there are multiple ways to store it. The
| stuff smells ferocious and self ferments. So they've probably
| used up the previous years haylage pile and now they are
| cleaning house so the rats don't totally mow down the spring
| planting their about to do.
| CJ808 wrote:
| I think 30 secs in shows a building on skids. It's probably
| something like a chicken house that has been moved across
| the field. The rats are in amongst the old poop.
| coldcode wrote:
| I wonder how many cats every house needs to rid it of mice.
| Given the volume, I doubt there are enough cats in Australia to
| even make a dent.
| eknkc wrote:
| I'm Turkish and I find it interesting that the US and
| European cities are dealing with mouse / rat issues. We have
| tons of cats roaming the streets. I guess that's the reason
| but I have ever seen one or maybe 2 live rats in my entire
| life.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| When I visited Athens, the massive colonies of feral cats
| were very notable. They could take over parks.
|
| American culture is specifically oriented toward preventing
| this kind of thing from happening. A feral cat is judged to
| be in need of a home. And there is a very widespread
| popular effort to say that you are doing something immoral
| if you don't spay your cat -- if a fertile cat did go
| feral, it might have children!
| path411 wrote:
| I live in a major us city and there has to be 30+ feral
| cats within my block it's crazy.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That would be a pitifully small number compared to a park
| in Athens.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| In Israel too. Although they prefer going after rubbish.
| They say the British Mandate brought them in to deal with
| the rodent problem.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Australia actually started a program to kill off feral cat
| populations a few years ago
| qiqing wrote:
| Maybe that's the root cause of the problem.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > I wonder how many cats every house needs to rid it of mice.
|
| Anecdotally, one.
| belorn wrote:
| Mice are instinctually afraid of the smell of cats, so the
| cat would not need to actually kill them to get the desired
| effect.
|
| In this case however when we have hundreds of new mice each
| day, the fear effect and eating of mice would likely just be
| a drop in the bucket. The mice from nearby farmland and
| forests are fleeing starvation. A single house can collect
| and kill thousands a week and still more are coming, and the
| flood of mice can start up from apparently nowhere if you
| live near such areas. The only good thing is that it will
| stop at some point, and the professional traps can help to
| keep the situation at bay.
| djrogers wrote:
| Cats are incredibly efficient hunters. I'd venture that 1-2
| per household would quickly make a huge difference in the
| population, although a good number of those would have to be
| outdoor / barn / feral cats to have along term effect.
|
| Disneyland has roughly 400 cats that keep the park largely
| rodent free, which is a minor miracle given the amount of
| food there is there.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Plus, you'd see a noticeable decline in local birds, which
| might not be desirable.
| dwaite wrote:
| * Except a few giant rodents they largely stay away from
| wruza wrote:
| Obligatory Andrew Ucles tutorial on cats:
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cTV6mKV6oE
| 0xfaded wrote:
| In Australia feral cats are culled since they kill the native
| animals.
|
| There's even a guy that skins them and turns then into stubby
| holders.
|
| https://youtu.be/VaB9J8JHVxI
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I am weird enough to see an optimalization problem in the
| video. How many dogs are too many? Obviously, two are better
| than one, but fifty isn't better than twenty.
|
| Just saying.
|
| Also, the comment saying "that is why dogs like squeaking toys"
| is spot on, though the idea is probably uncomfortable to
| regular dog owners.
| 34679 wrote:
| Optimization.
| 1-more wrote:
| Here's an example of a dog optimizing a simple calculus
| problem! https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/sjmiller/publ
| ic_html/10...
| joncrane wrote:
| You can also tell that some of the dogs are way more "into
| it" than others. It's a typical pareto distribution. 20% of
| the dogs are killing 80% of the rats.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| If dogs could organize their own Olympic Games, I do not
| doubt that rat chasing would qualify as a discipline.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Do deaf dogs not like squeaky toys?
| clairity wrote:
| > "The way they do it is the dog grabs the rat in it's mouth
| and shakes its head wildly."
|
| my dog is a terrier/spitz mix and shows this behavior in play
| (from the terrier side, the spitz side just makes her pretty
| =). she'll grab a stick or other small item and shake it wildly
| while bucking about. most people think it's hilarious until i
| tell them why she does it. =D
| alistairSH wrote:
| My 7lb cotton ball Maltese does the same thing. It's
| hilarious. He also loves to chase squirrels. Same dog yelped
| like he was being flayed alive when a neighborhood cat
| playfully swatted his nose. Ridiculous creature.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Many people forget that dog breeds exist for specific
| purposes and not just for looks. Just as mastiffs were bread
| to pull knights from horses, many small dogs were bread for
| rodent and pest control.
| mncharity wrote:
| Years back I worked on a "configure a dog" educational
| interactive. IIRC, dogs share a common hunting sequence of
| behaviors, and some of their domesticated diversity stems
| from being able to genetically adjust the strength of those
| behaviors. So a retriever for instance, has the "bite hard"
| and "shake it" dialed down, and the "carry it home" dialed
| up.
| chefkoch wrote:
| That's why these breads were called rattler in german.
|
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattler
| [deleted]
| checker wrote:
| If you look closely one of the dogs swallows a rat whole. Yum.
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