7 ms·

“Bait” means poison, right?

• sizzzzlerz 6y ago
  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.
  • EdwardDiego 6y ago
    Nope, immunity to a given poison doesn't really work like that. The biggest issue with poisoning operations is when the animals become bait shy, then it dramatically reduces kills, hence the popularity of warfarin for rodents - they don't associate the poisoning with ingesting the bait, so don't become bait shy. I suspect in smarter social animals, bait shyness could be passed along as communal knowledge. In NZ we also use "pre-feeding" where the baits, without poison, are dropped for some time to teach the target species that they're good eating. Predator by-kill can be a real issue though, and I guess it depends on whether the predators are pests also - like foxes and cats in Australia, mustelids in NZ. There's a reason NZ is the biggest user of 1080, there's no carnivorous mammals in our forests that we want to stay there, so if they eat a poisoned possum or rodent, bonus. That said, Australia has carnivorous marsupials that are highly endangered, so it'll be a different ballgame over there.