4 ms·
Twice a Century, India is Attacked by a Plague of Rats
- nodata 16y agoBurma's ruling junta offered a small cash reward for each rat tail delivered by the rat collection campaigns Great way to reward rat breeding!
- eggoa 16y agoPresumably there's a sweet spot below the cost of raising a rat but above the cost of harvesting a superabundant wild rat.
- dboyd 16y agoOnly if the reward is more than the cost of breeding the rat. I grew up in Saskatchewan, Canada. While I missed out, my father always talked about turning in gopher tails for money. My recollection is that my older brother was able to do this, and he got $1 per tail. At that price, even in the 1970s, I doubt you could have made any real money raising gophers.
- nickknw 16y agoTax the rat farms!
- camiller 16y agoThe rats can produce a litter every three weeks and the baby rats reach sexual maturity in just 50-60 days. Almost sounds like a star trek episode.
- gregpilling 16y agoYou mean "Trouble with Tribbles" ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_With_Tribbles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_With_Tribbles
- tarouter 16y agoTitle sounds a little bit misleading. :) It only happens in tiny Indian state of Mizoram. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India_Mizoram_locator_map.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India_Mizoram_locator_map.... From the article - "more than 26,000 square kilometres throughout the north-eastern state of Mizoram, extending into the Chin Hills of Burma and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh"
- ajays 16y agoIndia is a large country. This happens in a tiny part of Northeast India. The title is sensationalist. It reminds me of the cicadas that come out once every couple of decades in the US. You don't hear "US is attacked by cicadas" when that happens!
- melling 16y agoPeople aren't afraid of cicadas.
- steve19 16y agoAustralia has a mouse plague of epic proportions every four years. This video showing the mice is just incredible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH4EFgRB4bU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH4EFgRB4bU