7 Islands occupied by animals

Content

Each island has its own natural ecosystem, It may be rapidly disrupted by the arrival of new species of animals. It can be fun for tourists, but it is a real disaster for the ecology. Here they are 7 wonderful islands that have changed, and broken off its natural balance.

Rabbits – Okunoshima, Japan

Photo: Flickr

Okunoshima is a small island located in the inland sea of Japan, in the city of Takehara, Hiroshima Prefecture. It is accessible by ferry from Tadanoumi and Omishima. There are sites for camping, paths and historic sites on the island. It is often called Usagi Shima (rabbit island “Rabbit Island”?) It is known for the numerous wild rabbits that roam the island. His docility makes that she is closer to human beings.

Photo: Flickr

Photo: hoppingtonpost

When was the island developed as a park after the second world war, these rabbits settled there. Many rabbits were used in the munitions chemical plant to test the effectiveness of chemical weapons during World War II., However, rabbits were exterminated when the factory was demolished. The current rabbits have nothing to do with those that were involved in the chemical weapons tests.

Photo: opusteno

The rabbits did what better that they know how to do and the island is now home to more of 300 descendants of early rodents, earning the nickname of Usagi Shima, or the rabbit island.

Chickens – Kauai, Hawaii

Photo: suburbanmisfit

The chickens were brought to the Islands Hawaiian for the first waves of Polynesian settlers for more than 2.000 years. The chickens were kept and bred mainly for their meat and eggs, and the roosters were selected for Cockfighting. In the modern era, American and European ancestry chickens were imported to the island.

Most people suggest that the feral chicken population dates back to when Hurricane Iniki hit Kaua`i in 1992 the island and destroyed many farms of chickens. Another story is that the workers of the sugar cane plantations at the end of 1800 and principles of 1900 they brought and raised chickens, many of them escaped from farms and multiplied in freedom. The reason could be a combination of the two theories. Is likely that all visitors of Kaua ' i have a photo on the beach, or in any of a waterfall with a hen or a rooster.

Photo: Flickr

Other Hawaiian Islands also have wild chickens, but those of Kaua ' i are protected to some extent. Kaua`i is the only one of the Hawaiian islands that lacks the mongoose, the natural enemy of wild birds. Mongooses were imported to the islands of Hawaii at the end of 1800 to kill rats in the sugarcane fields.

crabs – Christmas Island

Photo: Flickr

Photo: australiangeographic

The red crab, Gecarcoidea natalis, It is a species of land crab that is endemic to Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean. Although restricted to an area relatively small, It has been estimated that around 43,7 millions of adult Red crabs live in Christmas Island, but the accidental introduction of the yellow crazy Ant is believed that he killed some 10-15 millions of them in recent years. Christmas Island red crabs eat fallen leaves and flowers mostly, but sometimes they feed on other animals, including other Red crabs (cannibalism), If the opportunity arises.

Photo: NowPublic

Photo: traveltalk

Photo: Oprah

When red crabs leave their burrows in the interior of the rainforest heading to the coast, create difficulties to pedestrians, drivers and trains (until the railway was closed in 1987).

Mice – Gough Island

Photo: dailymail

The Gough Island is more or less rectangular, with a length of 13 km and a width of 7 km. It has an area of 91 km2 and rises to a height of over of 900 meters above the sea level. Isolated as it is, Gough Island has a long history of visits of by humans dating back to the year 1505 and during one of these visits, a group of rats escaped from one of the landing crafts. Human beings were not, but yes the mice.

Photo: Flickr

Gough Island mice are three times larger than its relatives in the United Kingdom, with a weight of each 35 g.. Albatross chicks may weigh up to 10 kg, 250 times larger than their rodent attackers.

Photo: NCC-group

But, mice are adventurous with their prey and attack the chickens, causing huge wounds that slowly kill the birds after a few days. The RSPB team believes that there are around 700.000 mice on the island who have learned to eat the chickens in this horrific way. “It's like a tabby cat attacking a hippopotamus”, says Hilton

Spiders – Guam

Photo: NPR

A walk through the jungles of Guam has never been a very pleasant proposal, but lately it's downright awful. As bird populations fall sharply throughout the world, the Earth will turn into the planet of the spiders. Researchers in Guam, an island of 30 kilometers in length, 6115 kilometers to the West of Hawaii, they found that populations of Arachnids grew around 40 times. Insectivorous birds are unable to regulate the increase in the population of these spiders. It is suspected that spiders are also multiplied in other regions where the birds are in decline.

Photo: Newswatch.nationalgeographic

Photo: Flickr

As the years passed, native bird populations collapsed and multiplied the spiders that are normally kept under control by birds. The inclusion of snakes would help restore the ecological balance of Guam, but it could create more problems. In the meantime, If you don't like spiders or snakes, stay away from guam!

Cats – Tashirojima, Japan

Photo: lovemeow

Tashiro-jima is a small island in Ishinomaki city, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. It is located in the Pacific Ocean off the Oshika Peninsula., to the West of Aji-shima. It is an almost uninhabited island, with a very small population (about 100 people, front around 1000 people in the Decade of 1950). Has unveiled as “Cat Island” due to the large population of feral cats that live there as a result of the local belief that the abundance of cats will bring wealth and good fortune to the island. The population of cats is now greater than the human population on the island. (an article of 2009 Sankei News says that there are no dogs and is forbidden to take the island.)

Photo: thechive

Hundreds of semi-wild cats wander freely around the island, and they are fed by local fishermen. If you think you can keep your couches looking nice here, forget it. It's Cat Island.

Photo: Flickr

Photo: ilove.cat

Tashirojima was heavily damaged by the great earthquake of the East of Japan in March of 2011, especially since the tsunami that inundated the low-lying areas of the Islands. The cats, However, It has shown its ability to weather moving to higher ground before the tsunami.

Rats – Montecristo island, Italy

Photo: theepochtimes

The island was immortalised by the novelist Alexandre Dumas as the hideout of a buried treasure, but the small Italian island of Montecristo is now struggling with a rather less romantic reality – a plague of rats. The uninhabited island, a protected nature reserve that stretches between the coast of Tuscany and Corsica, It has been invaded by thousands of black rats.

Photo: dailymail

Photo: localidautore

Rodents are believed to have reached the island of 6,4 square kilometers as stowaways on ships from a few years ago, but now they have multiplied. The authorities intend to use aircraft to bomb the island with granules of poison in an attempt to deal with the infestation. The plan is to drop around 26 tons of pellets on the island at the end of this month. Biologists estimate that there is one rat for every square meter on the island and say they pose a serious threat to the ecology of the nature reserve., It is part of a scattered archipelago of islands off Tuscany.