African 'sparrows' are flooding and besieging elephants to rob food. What should we do with 1.5 billion elephants?

This kind of "sparrow" is actually called the red-billed quelia sparrow , and it has nothing to do with sparrows in blood. However, this appearance is like the sparrow in people's impression carved out of a mold, so many people call it "African sparrow" .

Red-billed quelea

The red-billed quelea is the most abundant bird in the world . According to satellite remote sensing calculations in 2006, the number of red-billed quelea finches is estimated to be around 1.5 billion, which is the peak number after breeding that year.

Calculated according to the growth curve, the number of red-billed queliars must be more than that, so some online claims of 10 billion are entirely possible.

Red-billed quelea

The red-billed quelia is small in size, with a body length of about 13 cm and a weight of about 10 grams. Every year during the autumn harvest, the red-billed quelea will reproduce on a large scale, and then fly to the farmland in groups to eat food. Because the number is too huge, it looks like a crimson mosaic flying over from a distance.

They eat grass seeds when they run out of food, and eat leaves when they run out of grass seeds. What they have done is not an exaggeration to say that no grass grows , at least they can eat whatever they catch, or they will not attack African elephants.

Red-billed queleas eat an average of 5 to 10 grams of food per day, which amounts to half their body weight. Therefore, the total weight of 1.5 billion red-billed queleas can reach nearly 30,000 tons, and they can eat more than 10,000 tons of grass seeds or crop seeds every day. Although its favorite food is the seeds of weeds, not crops.

Red-billed quelea

But there are not many grasses in Africa, not to mention that their food utilization rate is not high. In the process of eating, 10,000 to 20,000 tons of crops will be randomly wasted, which will make the local farmland that is not rich .

cause of flooding

Why are 'African sparrows' overrun? I believe there must be some foodies who stand up, it's not easy, it's not delicious . Throughout the history of human development, it seems that no matter how large the quantity is, as long as it is delicious, it can be eaten up.

passenger pigeon

For example, there are 5 billion passenger pigeons in North America next door , which is a lot, and they were eaten up within two hundred years. Then why is the red-billed quelia bird not eaten and extinct by Africans, but flooded instead?

there are many reasons. First of all, the red-billed quelea lives in the deserted grasslands , full of ferocious beasts. Due to its small size, the weight of 10 grams is only a mouthful of meat, which is not as much as the shreds of meat stuffed between the teeth of a crocodile.

Therefore, carnivorous animals are not interested , and African locals will not risk their lives to catch sparrows even if they are hungry, so it is difficult to artificially control their number.

People have been talking about the 1.5 billion for more than ten years, and no one has used equipment to measure their number again. They only know that there are a lot of them, and they are flooding everywhere.

The second point is reproductive capacity. The red-billed quelea reproduces very quickly and can lay three to five eggs multiple times per conception. With sufficient food, it can lay eggs several times a year. Coupled with the huge base, it is difficult to completely cure it.

Red-billed quelea

Finally, due to the large number of red-billed queleas, it is difficult for general pesticides and bird repellents to work on them. Their populations do not continue to reproduce, evolving individuals or genetic antibodies immune to the agent. Therefore, the number of red-billed quelias has increased, reaching the point where one hand covers the sky today .

After all, the red-billed quelea is not a traditional pest. Their young birds also eat pests, but when they reach adult birds, as the population increases, food is scarce, so they are marked with crops.

prevent root

Why are 5 billion passenger pigeons eaten to extinction, the sparrows that were once the "four pests" have become protected animals, and the red-billed quelea sparrows in Africa are still flooding?

Let's talk about passenger pigeons first. The reason why passenger pigeons are caught and eaten by people is that they are big and have so much meat on their bodies. Passenger pigeons are 35 to 41 centimeters long and weigh more than half a catty. It's not big, but he is a pigeon in the first place. With its delicious meat quality and huge population, people naturally flock to it.

passenger pigeon

In addition, the passenger pigeon is a migratory bird. Although there is no fixed population location, it has high requirements for habitat. Coupled with people's misunderstanding at the time, it was believed that the number of passenger pigeons was so large because of the "survival strategy" it evolved. If you feed the natural enemies, you can get more populations to survive.

Whether this is true or not, it has to be said that this has exacerbated the extinction of passenger pigeons.

The reason why China's sparrows became the "four pests" was mainly because we mistakenly believed that sparrows would lead to a reduction in grain production.

mahjong

In fact, sparrow young can only feed on insects, and sparrow parents catch a lot of pests during this time. Although it eats grass seeds when it grows up, it will ruin the crops , but compared with the benefits it brings to the farmland, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

In contrast, many countries in Africa, including Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Kenya, have to regularly remove the red-billed quelia. Its methods include but are not limited to spraying chemicals, setting fires, appealing to citizens to arrest them, and even Kenya and South Africa secretly blasting the habitats of these birds at night, which is really painstaking .

Red-billed quelea

However, in such a harsh environment, we almost wiped out sparrows with only pots and pans and slingshots, and it is only now that they are alive. In Africa, these red-billed quelias, as the same ecological positioning as sparrows , will become the most birds in the world, which has to be said to be a miracle in the history of biology.