Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumThe dog is one of the world's most destructive mammals. Brazil proves it.
Source: Washington Post
The dog is one of the worlds most destructive mammals. Brazil proves it.
By Terrence McCoy August 20
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Its a question more researchers are beginning to ask in a country where there are more dogs than children and where dogs are quickly becoming the most destructive predator. Theyre invading nature preserves and national parks. Theyre forming packs, some 15 dogs strong, and are hunting wild prey. Theyve muscled out native predators such as foxes and big cats in nature preserves, outnumbering pumas 25 to 1 and ocelots 85 to 1.
Every year, they become still more plentiful, spreading diseases, disrupting natural environments, goosing scientists who set up elaborate camera systems to photograph wild animals, only to come away with pictures of curious canines.
Its a difficult thing for people to hear, said Isadora Lessa, a Rio de Janeiro biologist who wrote her doctoral dissertation on domestic dogs causing environmental mayhem. They love dogs too much.
How the dog became one of the worlds most harmful invasive mammalian predators is as much a global story as a Brazilian one. Over the last century, as the human population exploded, so did the dog population, growing to an estimated 1 billion.
That has been great for people and even better for dogs but less so for nature, according to a growing body of academic research implicating canines, particularly the free-roaming ones, in environmental destruction.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-dog-is-one-of-the-worlds-most-destructive-mammals-brazil-proves-it/2019/08/19/c37a1250-a8da-11e9-8733-48c87235f396_story.html
virgogal
(10,178 posts)Mike 03
(16,616 posts)awesomerwb1
(4,268 posts)Trump's buddy.
Poor planet.
mindem
(1,580 posts)Humans
nmgaucho
(527 posts)We are ruining this beautiful planet
ms liberty
(8,599 posts)Oh wait...I already am!
hlthe2b
(102,376 posts)But everyone that keeps posting this seems quite willing to ignore that fact.
Just like RW controlled rural counties of this country who, unwilling to fund animal shelters, spay and neuter clinics and staff well-trained animal control officers wonder why feral dogs (and cats) become such a problem.
If there is a mammal to blame it is HUMANS and their irresponsible behaviors.