"South America is really rich in resources. We should really go there instead of wandering around here. △↗," Chen Jiayi sighed.
"Is this just wandering around? No matter how good it is over there in Colombia, it's not our turn to develop it. It's different here." Han Kongque said.
After having a meal of grilled fish at noon, the group got back into the car and headed towards a mountain range to the east.
After walking for about twenty minutes, they still hadn't reached their destination. At this time, Han Kongque was surprised: "You have come this far?"
Chen Jiayi also asked strangely: "Why do you want to come here?"
Mu Ling hesitated for a moment and said: "I found a group of pigeons, they seemed to be North American passenger pigeons. After tracking them for a while, they arrived here."
"North American passenger pigeon? Pigeon? What's so easy to track?" Chen Jiayi asked strangely.
Han Peacock burst out laughing. Chen Jiayi, who usually looks elegant, is actually a big idiot. He can still act as a quiet handsome man even if he doesn't speak. This opening exposed the corruption in his appearance.
connotation.
"Did I make a mistake?" Chen Jiayi said calmly.
Mu Ling whispered: "The North American passenger pigeon has become extinct, so I thought of tracking it to see if it is a North American passenger pigeon."
"The pigeons here are extinct, so they went to our country to introduce some. Is it strange?" Chen Jiayi still didn't think about the problem.
After Han Peacock laughed enough, he said: "Do you know how many pigeons of this kind originally existed in North America? Five billion, and they have been extinct for more than a hundred years now."
The North American passenger pigeon, commonly known as the passenger pigeon, is a kind of pigeon that particularly likes to travel. It is the most famous representative of extinct birds in modern times.
When the American pioneers were driving their carriages in the wilderness, they encountered a flock of passenger pigeons that blocked the sun for several hours. This is where the name "passenger pigeon" comes from. The "passenger" in its English name means
"People passing by".
Passenger pigeons typically live in groups, and each group can reach more than 100 million. There were once as many as 5 billion passenger pigeons living in the United States. When they flew in groups, the largest group covered an area of 1.6 kilometers wide and 500 kilometers long.
, it takes several days to travel through an area.
Due to constant hunting and Newcastle disease among poultry, and the fact that they only lay one egg at a time, the number of passenger pigeons gradually decreased until they were completely extinct on September 1, 1914.
"Five billion? So many are extinct? Don't you say that Americans are very good at protecting animals?" Chen Jiayi said in surprise.
"You listen to them, you only know honor and disgrace when you have enough food and clothing. The white people in North America. Their ancestors were some exiled criminals at the beginning. They know what it is to protect animals. Now they have enough food for two days and have become a nouveau riche.
I just put on my trousers and said that my civilized people, so many passenger pigeons, were actually eaten by them." Han Peacock said with a bit of disdain.
This Korean peacock is not an injustice to the Americans. Before the Europeans came to the North American continent, there were as many as 5 billion passenger pigeons in North America.
In the 17th century, not long after Europeans discovered the American continent. Passenger pigeons became food for these pioneers because of their delicious meat, and the nightmare of passenger pigeons began.
From 1800 to 1870, the number of passenger pigeons declined at a relatively slow rate, but when the meat of passenger pigeons became widely accepted by the public, large-scale commercial hunting began.
In New York in 1805, a pair of passenger pigeons sold for two cents. Passenger pigeon meat was transported by train from the western United States. In the 18th and 19th centuries, poor people in the United States often had no other meat except passenger pigeons. So don’t say it’s cheap.
They all ate pigeon meat, even rat meat, but unlike now, they don't even eat carp with a little bit of thorns. This is just roasted.
It was not until the 1840s that the American Bird Observation Organization discovered that the number of passenger pigeons was declining too fast, and they decided to find ways to protect the passenger pigeons.
After 1850, people began to notice that the number of passenger pigeons was declining. However, after the American Civil War, the development of railroads and telegraphs increased the working population significantly, which further promoted the demand for passenger pigeons.
In 1857, some scholars proposed a bill to the Ohio Legislature to protect passenger pigeons, but the Legislative Assembly's special committee rejected the proposal on the grounds that "the passenger pigeons are in large numbers, their habitats are everywhere, and their feeding grounds are spacious."
Legislation to protect passenger pigeons.
Between 1870 and 1890, the passenger pigeon population plummeted.
In the 1870s, after the American Civil War ended, it was difficult for ornithologists to find large populations of passenger pigeons, and there were fewer and fewer records of wild passenger pigeons found in various places.
In 1878, 50,000 passenger pigeons were killed every day in Petoskey, Michigan. This situation lasted for five months. During this period, more than 10 million passenger pigeons were killed.
In the 1880s, Professor Charles Whitman of the University of Chicago rescued several passenger pigeons from the wild and tried to raise and breed them artificially. However, after several generations, the number of pigeons became less and less.
In 1896, a group of about 250,000 passenger pigeons was hunted, which was the last known large group of passenger pigeons.
In 1897, Michigan finally enacted legislation banning the hunting of passenger pigeons for 10 years. However, by the mid-1890s, passenger pigeons were extremely rare, and after that, there were almost no wild records of passenger pigeons.
In 1898, Professor Whitman of the University of Chicago donated the few passenger pigeons to the Cincinnati Zoo, hoping to preserve this precious species through the care of zoo professionals.
At the end of the 19th century, animal rights activists began to call for the protection of passenger pigeons. Michigan passed legislation prohibiting the use of bird nets within two miles of passenger pigeon nesting sites, but this law was not strictly enforced.
On March 22, 1900, in the suburban woods of Pike County, Ohio, a 14-year-old boy hunter shot down a wild passenger pigeon with his own air gun. This was the last recorded case of a wild passenger pigeon.
The last remaining pair of passenger pigeons left the world after leaving behind a chick and several unhatched eggs. People named their chick "Martha" after Washington, the founding father of the United States.
Wife of Martha Washington.
In 1910, all artificially bred passenger pigeons died one after another, leaving only "Martha" alive in the world.
At noon on September 1, 1914, the administrator came to Martha's dovecote for inspection and saw Martha squatting on the roof, looking motionless at the sky outside.
The administrator left after cleaning the pigeon loft. About an hour later, when the administrator came to Martha's pigeon loft again, he found that Martha had collapsed in the cage and had stopped breathing forever.
Martha's body was given to the Smithsonian Institution, which owns 140 museums, and was preserved as a taxidermy but not displayed publicly.
On May 11, 1947, the United States erected a monument to the passenger pigeon in Wyalusing Park, Wisconsin, in memory of the passenger pigeon.
This is the process of the extinction of the North American passenger pigeon. In fact, in the face of huge interests, the government cannot control the greed of capitalists.
The pioneers needed more food. In addition to cutting down forests, they opened up land for farms and established various commercial trade fairs. Passenger pigeons became a popular commodity in farmers' markets because of their delicious meat.
In order to hunt passenger pigeons, hunters have come up with many ways. One method is to sew a passenger pigeon's eyelids so that it cannot see, and then tie its feet to the top of a long pole.
Raise the long pole to a height of one or two meters and then throw it down. Then the passenger pigeon will flap its wings like a landing.
This action attracted other passenger pigeons in the flock, who may have thought there was something to eat on the ground, so many passenger pigeons descended and fell into the snare.
Another way was to shoot with a gun. Audubon, the bird painter, described a mass shooting in a passenger pigeon colony: "After the great hunt, there were no living passenger pigeons to be seen here. Many people rode on
Horses, driving carts, carrying guns and ammunition, were encamped around the area. Two farmers who traveled hundreds of miles from Roswell drove their hundreds of pigs to eat these hunted passenger pigeons.
They are all people who pluck dead passenger pigeons, and after plucking the feathers, the pigeon meat is salted."
The swarming habit of passenger pigeons makes them an excellent target for hunting, and the passenger pigeon's strategy of "survival by numbers" further stimulates humans' desire to grab meat from them.
Trappers usually erect hunting nets where passenger pigeons roost. Once a passenger pigeon accidentally hits those nets, it will be difficult to escape.
A large number of passenger pigeons could be captured at once using this method, so in a short time, the forests of North America were filled with such trapping nets.
The number of passenger pigeons is decreasing day by day. When the number of passenger pigeons is reduced below a critical point, the strategy of "survival by numbers" becomes ineffective. Passenger pigeons that are not good at avoiding enemies are eliminated in batches, just like
The small ice cubes quickly disappeared under the sun.
Therefore, Han Kongque did not think that the pigeons discovered by Mu Ling and the others were North American passenger pigeons. If there were no numbers, small pigeon groups would hardly be able to survive. Unless North American passenger pigeons have evolved over the years, otherwise, North American passenger pigeons are not very common.
may reappear.
"This is it. Those rocks were found here. Someone should have brought them down from the surrounding mountains." Jin Yao stopped the car and said.
Han Peacock looked around and said: "The rocks should have been moved from the surrounding areas. No one would bring down three rocks from the top of the mountain."
Chen Jiayi jumped out of the car and said, "Then look around to see if there are any mines."
"There seems to be an abandoned quarry over there." Tu Ling suddenly said.
Han Kongque immediately said: "Come on, let's go over and have a look. Maybe this discovery will be in this quarry."
Han Peacock knows that no matter what work is done in the United States, it is all mechanized operations, and the working environment in the quarry is all mechanical operations, so even if emeralds are actually dug out, they may not see them. (To be continued.