Becoming Rich with Daily Scavenging APP-Chapter 661: $4,000 per Rabbit

Between 1994 and 2011, Florida imported around 160,000 Burmese pythons from Vietnam.

The total number amounted to around 300,000.

A significant portion of these Burmese pythons grew beyond two meters and were released by the families that kept them.

By 2012, the local government discovered that these pythons, massively released or escaped from households, had unknowingly become the rulers of Florida.

Burmese pythons rely on constriction to eat their prey; juveniles can consume 110% of their body weight, while adults can eat prey weighing 50% of their body weight.

This weight class, in Florida's swamp-based ecosystem, has no competitors.

The other dominant predator of Florida, the alligator, struggles to prey on Burmese pythons, but the pythons can easily hunt juvenile alligators.

Even alligators can't deal with Burmese pythons, making the situation worse for other animals.

According to observations by the North American Agriculture Department, since the spread of these Burmese pythons, which can live up to 25 years, the survivability of juvenile alligators in Florida has plummeted from 50% to less than 5%.

Species like white-tailed deer, raccoons, opossums, and marsh rabbits have experienced a population decline of 90%.

The already endangered black-headed ibis and other bird species have seen a 65% reduction in successful reproduction rates.

The king snake, which used to share the same ecological niche as the Burmese python, now faces extinction due to food scarcity and lung parasites brought in by the pythons.

This drastic reduction in small animal populations has also caused the Florida panther population to decrease by 90% due to a lack of food, forcing them to frequently enter human cities to hunt pets for sustenance.

In short, the Burmese python in Florida has become another rabbit issue like that of Australia.

A rampant invader without natural predators that is destroying the entire ecosystem.

At least rabbits can be eaten after being killed.

But snakes, full of parasites, no one dares to eat them. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

What's more surprising is that life in Florida has been so favorable for them.

Initially, most Burmese pythons were about two meters long, with some reaching four to five meters, but they have started evolving overall.

Now, the adult Burmese pythons in Florida generally stretch to five meters, with some growing an additional two to three meters.

Now 300,000 Burmese pythons ravage across Florida, making even the swamps and human cities unsafe.

The Florida government is finally in a panic.

Schaefer sought Chen Yiyang's help in purchasing radio transmitters specifically for hunting Burmese pythons.

These radio transmitters will be implanted into male Burmese pythons to track their movements and locate where these male Burmese pythons hide in tree islands, elevated resting areas, and other breeding areas of Burmese pythons.

By then, python hunters can wipe out these Burmese pythons in one sweep.

Of course, this thing is costly, with each python capture costing nearly ten thousand US dollars.

Using mechanical rabbits is much cheaper.

These mechanical rabbits can be equipped with heating devices to simulate the temperature of marsh rabbits, which Burmese pythons love.

This way, the Burmese pythons will be drawn out of their snake holes by the mechanical rabbits.

Hunters waiting nearby can easily kill these Burmese pythons.

This time, with the crisis of 300,000 pythons, Florida plans to use these two methods to hunt pythons.

However, the effectiveness of this approach is expected to be not very good.

Florida has previously held python hunting challenges, with each event offering more than a hundred thousand US dollars in prizes and around two-thousand-five hundred US dollars for catching each snake.

But such contests only capture about two hundred pythons each time.

Compared to the 300,000 pythons, it's just a drop in the bucket.

Unlike in Australia, where individuals can grab a gun and hunt rabbits, or wealthy people can even use helicopters to machine-gun rabbits.

In the perilous, parasite-ridden swamps, hunting the highly camouflaged Burmese pythons, which now generally grow to five meters long, is extremely dangerous and not feasible for amateurs.

"The only lesson humans learn from history is that humans learn nothing from history."

After hearing Schaefer's science talk, Chen Yiyang couldn't help but sigh.

Hegel truly is a great philosopher; this statement is indeed insightful.

From Australia's rabbits to Florida's current Burmese pythons, humans have learned no lesson at all.

Back then, Australia's rabbits could still be blamed on human inexperience and unintentional actions.

But the Burmese pythons in Florida were transported ship by ship from Myanmar by Floridians themselves from afar.

It's essentially self-destruction.

"Stop with the nonsense," Schaefer straightforwardly said, "Florida set the cost of these mechanical rabbits at four thousand US dollars each.

How much can you do it for and ship to North America?"

Four thousand US dollars each?

Chen Yiyang was a bit dumbfounded at this figure.

For four thousand US dollars, he could get Yushu to build a rabbit that could run, jump, and even have some weapons to hunt Burmese pythons.

And the requirement from Florida was that this mechanical rabbit only needed to simulate the temperature of a marsh rabbit.

The Florida officials are making an exorbitant profit.

Chen Yiyang immediately said he plans to get a piece of the action, offering to contact the manufacturers and ensure the cost of a single rabbit won't exceed 40 US dollars.

This way, even after the Florida officials take their cut and all the parties with vested interests take theirs,

the remaining money would still be enough for Chen Yiyang and Schaefer to split.

"But speaking of which," Chen Yiyang curiously asked, "Wouldn't a mechanical rabbit costing four thousand US dollars raise suspicions?

Even building a dedicated rabbit farm and raising rabbits on a large scale to use live rabbits to allure Burmese pythons would be cheaper than mechanical rabbits, right?"

"If they dared to use live rabbits, I guarantee the animal protection organizations would sue the Florida government into bankruptcy."

Schaefer bluntly explained why live rabbits aren't being used.

In fact, the Florida government had used live rabbits before.

Back then, researchers noticed a dramatic decline in mammal numbers in Florida's Everglades.

Some once-common species nearly disappeared.

The time and locations where these species disappeared coincided perfectly with the appearance and spread of Burmese pythons.

So, researchers fitted 95 adult marsh rabbits with radio tracking devices and released them.

The result was that the researchers found over 70% of these 95 rabbits were preyed upon by the pythons.

The researchers initially intended to use live rabbits to lure Burmese pythons.

They tried using live rabbits as bait, and 22 pythons were attracted by nine rabbit cages.

But after the information was disclosed, various animal protection organizations raised objections.

Using these poor, innocent, cute rabbits, loved by children, as bait to catch pythons.

It's outrageous and deserves an apology and compensation!