Previously, herders lived a nomadic life, but there were many wild animals such as wolves, bears and lynxes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and herdsmen's cattle and sheep were often killed, so people began to raise Tibetan mastiffs. In the confrontation with wild animals, Tibetan mastiffs do have a good performance. In the era when technology is not so developed, raising Tibetan mastiff is the most effective means for herders to prevent wolves.
Tibetan mastiff
However, with the modernization of grazing methods, the role of Tibetan mastiff has gradually been replaced by science and technology, and the wild animals on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have long lost their former scale. So now most people keep Tibetan mastiffs just as a feeling, or as an ordinary caregiver.
Only later, with the rapid transmission of information, Tibetan mastiffs began to enter the sight of people all over the country. Many fierce dog lovers? Add fuel to the fire? Tibetan mastiff is hot now. At its peak, a good-looking Tibetan mastiff can even be worth millions.
But Tibetan mastiff is a fierce dog, which is doomed to be unsuitable for most people. So after a period of fanaticism, people's eyes gradually turned away from Tibetan mastiffs, and finally at 20 10, Tibetan mastiff fever? Has subsided, and a large number of Tibetan mastiffs stranded in mastiff kennels have no market.
Because Tibetan mastiffs are huge and eat a lot, most mastiff farms can't support expensive daily meals, so only a few Tibetan mastiffs with excellent appearance are left, and the rest are all abandoned on the plateau. Dogs are naturally gregarious. These stray Tibetan mastiffs gradually gathered in groups and became strong on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Wandering legion? .
Wandering Tibetan mastiff
At first, these Tibetan mastiffs just moved around the village and made a living by picking up some garbage or preying on some poultry and livestock. For example, in 68 communities near the source of Sanjiangyuan, nearly one-tenth of livestock deaths are related to Tibetan mastiffs. Later, with more and more stray Tibetan mastiffs becoming more and more wild, these Tibetan mastiffs began to move towards the inaccessible wilderness. They competed with snow leopards for food and preyed on wild animals such as rock sheep, and achieved success. Xue Shan brothers? Fashion.
Some people say that stray Tibetan mastiffs can go to the plateau? Invincible? The main reason is the lack of large carnivores on the plateau. If stray Tibetan mastiffs appear in the African savannah, they will be mercilessly killed by many wild animals and will soon disappear. Is it true?/You don't say.
Tibetan mastiffs wandering in the village rummaged for garbage.
The wild Tibetan mastiff has a strong fighting capacity.
First of all, let's take a look at the strength of stray Tibetan mastiffs. In fact, the strength of Tibetan mastiff has always been controversial, especially since? Tibetan mastiff fever? After the decline, there are more and more critical voices, so that many people will show disdain when they hear Tibetan mastiff.
However, the reasons for this phenomenon are understandable. After all, during 2003-20 10, A mastiff merchants made a lot of publicity and even spread it out in order to sell it at a good price. One mastiff versus three wolves? 、? One mastiff versus three tigers? That's really disgusting.
The evaluation of the strength of Tibetan mastiff should be objective and fair as far as possible, that is, it should not be blindly praised or criticized. So what is the real strength of stray Tibetan mastiffs?
It is meaningless to simply use data such as shoulder height, hair weight and canine bite force. The so-called actual combat is the ultimate standard for testing combat power. Fortunately, we don't lack such data in reality. From July 2065438 to July 2006, people photographed Tibetan mastiffs chasing green sheep, forcing kurama and bear back, and competing with snow leopards for food.
Tibetan mastiff fights snow leopard
Snow leopard, Tibetan brown bear and Eurasian lynx are solitary animals, while Tibetan mastiff is a social animal. Perhaps a Tibetan mastiff can't compete with wild predators such as snow leopard, but under the leadership of the mastiff king, the strength of Tibetan mastiffs in droves has doubled. On average, more than four Tibetan mastiffs can easily deal with a snow leopard, while the six Tibetan mastiffs in the picture force the Tibetan brown bears to retreat one after another, so once they become wild, they will wander around.
Tibetan mastiffs forced the Tibetan brown bear to retreat.
Referring to Australian wild dogs, domestic dogs can return to wild animals.
Many people know that some wild animals can be domesticated into domestic animals, such as cattle, horses and sheep. But few people know that domestic animals can be wild again, and Australian wild dogs are the best example.
Now wild dogs in Australia are distributed all over the country, and they can be seen in 85% of Australia. Australian wild dogs are Australia's top predators, and their niche in Australia is equivalent to that of Asian tigers and leopards in Asian forests. They feed on various small and medium-sized herbivores.
Australian wild dog
But you know what? In fact, there are no dogs in Australia. Dogs were brought in by colonists. Some people say that European colonists brought it here when they arrived, but in fact, according to some scholars' research, Australian wild dogs came here much earlier than European colonists. They followed some people in Southeast Asia more than 5,000 years ago.
At the beginning, people didn't bring many dogs. Their main functions were housekeeping, hunting and serving as backup food. Later, with the increasing number of dogs, some began to get out of human control and became stray dogs. They are the ancestors of all wild dogs in Australia today.
These stray dogs, like stray Tibetan mastiffs, just moved around the village at first and made a living by preying on some poultry and livestock. Because of these things, the bag wolf was also burdened at that time.
In people's cognition at that time, marsupials were far more threatening to human beings than stray dogs, so people took it for granted that they preyed on livestock? The culprit? It's a marsupial, don't think about dogs, which leads to many marsupials being retaliated. Later, with more and more stray dogs and stronger wildness, these stray dogs gradually became the climate and became the strongest predator group on the Australian continent.
Wolves prey on poultry.
Because marsupials were wiped out at that time, the biggest and only opponent of Australian wild dogs was marsupials. Although the marsupial wolf is fierce and has a stronger bite force than the dog, the difference is that it is small in size and its social attribute is not as high as that of the dog. Auxiliary? At present, the more gregarious Australian wild dogs have more diverse feeding habits and stronger viability, and gradually gain the upper hand in the competition with marsupials in the future, and finally completely surpass them.
After the disappearance of wild marsupials, Australian wild dogs became the only large carnivore in the area. Today, wild dogs are widely distributed in Australia, which has become a headache for many people.
Australian wild dog
It can be seen from the wild dogs in Australia that domestic dogs can also be re-naturalized? Wolf? Yes, their fighting capacity and viability are not worse than those of wild predators, and even in some respects, they are stronger than wild predators. For example, dogs are born to live in groups, and their dogs are even more United than wolves. In terms of eating habits, dogs are more adaptable and can eat both meat and carbohydrates. Therefore, we have reason to believe that Tibetan mastiffs, stronger than ordinary rural dogs, will become wild again after wandering.
Referring to African wild dogs, stray Tibetan mastiffs have obvious advantages.
What if dingoes can do it in Australia? Success? Is it because the local environment in Australia is special, there have been no large predators since ancient times, other herbivores are slow to move, the attack power is insufficient, and human activities gather together? Weather, location, and people? The advantages of Tibetan mastiffs, and once stray Tibetan mastiffs appear in Africa, those super predators on the African continent will tear them up.
But this is probably not the case. Let's look at the African continent. There is no shortage of Tibetan mastiffs projecting into the past. For example, African wild dogs are a good control group.
African wild dog
African wild dogs are small and medium-sized carnivores, belonging to canines. The average weight range is about 17-36 kg, and only larger male leaders can reach more than 40 kg.
This figure is unremarkable in the African savannah, where there are so many strong people. Even we can imagine how miserable their lives are, but in fact, African wild dogs can not only survive well, but even win a place on the African continent, comparable to the existence of Dalmatians, which is unexpected. What do African wild dogs rely on? Crowd tactics? .
Predators in forest ecosystems usually prey on animals smaller than themselves. Even the Siberian tiger, the most common prey, is nothing but red deer and wild boar. On the grassland, social animals are mainly large herbivores, even African wild dogs are no exception.
Is there any consideration in this? Cost performance? Because of the large population and large appetite, instead of wasting physical strength to catch a large number of small animals, it is better to gather population advantages to catch a wildebeest, an antelope and so on.
African wild dogs prey on wildebeests.
On the African grassland, besides directly catching prey, there are two main ways to get food, one is scavenging, and the other is robbing prey caught by other predators. In some documentaries, we can see that hordes of African wild dogs will rob the prey of Dalmatians, leopards and other beasts.
In contrast, the strength of Tibetan mastiffs has surpassed that of African wild dogs. Tibetan mastiffs are also highly gregarious animals, and their social structure is similar to that of African wild dogs. Therefore, we have reason to believe that if stray Tibetan mastiffs appear on African grasslands, they can also form a similar existence to African wild dogs and even compete with spotted hyenas? The second brother of Africa? State.
Crokuta
What opponents will Tibetan mastiffs have when they enter the African grassland?
Of course, when stray mastiffs enter the African grassland, they have to consider their niche and their strong enemies. There is no doubt that solitary animals, such as leopards and cheetahs, are basically afraid to provoke mastiffs, and even if they encounter them, they will make a detour; Although African wild dogs are strong, they have almost no advantage in the face of a large group of larger Tibetan mastiffs. Therefore, on the African prairie, the biggest rivals of stray Tibetan mastiffs are lions and hyenas. Will lions and hyenas exterminate Tibetan mastiffs? My answer is no.
lion
In the same environment, there must be interspecific competition between species with similar food habits, but we also need to take environmental factors into account when analyzing interspecific competition. If stray Tibetan mastiffs appear in the forests of Asia, tigers will not allow them to exist. You can know this by referring to the relationship between the Siberian tiger and the wolf.
Before the end of 19, there were many Siberian tigers in Russia, and the number of gray wolves in the Far East of Siberia was at a historical low. After entering the 20th century, Russian killed tigers on a large scale, which led to a sharp decline in the number of tigers in northeast China. It is observed that when the number of tigers decreases, the number of gray wolves tends to increase. By the 1940s, the number of Siberian tigers in Russia was at a historical low, while the number of gray wolves at that time was at a historical high. When Russia began to vigorously protect tigers, the number of Siberian tigers gradually increased, and the number of gray wolves dropped sharply, indicating that the Siberian tigers had a strong inhibitory effect on wolves. Trend of population change of Siberian tiger and gray wolf
Then, on the African prairie, will lions and hyenas inhibit the development of mastiffs as the Northeast Tiger inhibits wolves? I don't think it's possible. The richness of prey in the Far East of Siberia is far less than that in the African steppe, and it is difficult for forest ecosystems to feed large herds, so tigers will compete for limited resources. Murder? .
Let's take a look at the African savannah. Superlarge herds can be seen everywhere, plus some small herbivores and carrion. In the Mara River, a large number of animals die every year, which can add up to thousands of tons. Capturing a wildebeest can feed a medium-sized lion group for one day. In such a big environment, why did you choose to fight with the mastiff? Cost performance? It is really too low.
It is observed that pumas like to eat food. After in-depth investigation, it was found that most of the prey they caught were large deer, which could not be eaten at once. However, if similar people come over while eating, the cost of driving away is much higher than the cost of eating. Therefore, the puma can tolerate the same kind of eating with itself.
Puma? Enjoy the food?
In fact, there is another reason why the interspecific competition between Siberian tigers and wolves is so fierce, which is caused by the different predation methods of tigers and wolves. Tigers live alone, ambush and hunt, emphasize one? Quiet? In other words, wolves live with herds and hunt by chasing, which will inevitably make a lot of noise in the forest, thus scaring off ungulates, which is a very unfavorable factor for tigers, so tigers can't tolerate it in this respect.
On the other hand, the African savannah, whether lions or hyenas, almost all rely on team advantages to hunt prey, so it is not said that making noise will affect other predators, and once the herd is chased by predators, it will also benefit other predators, so the endurance of lions to mastiffs is much higher than that of Siberian tigers to wolves.
Tibetan mastiff
Besides, let's look at the way lions and hyenas get along, shall we? Lions have never wiped out hyenas since ancient times, so stray Tibetan mastiffs should appear on the African grasslands like kings, rather than being wiped out by other predators. Do you agree?