read an interesting take that North American bison are (were) an invasive species from europe that wound up in NA by crossing some land-bridge at some point in prehistory.
To continue this tangent with an assortment of fun facts:
Earthworms were mostly extinct through most of North America. They do a tremendous service to soil health, but in NA most of the vegetation has evolved to work with harder to access nutrients and the introduction and rapid spread of earthworms has mostly helped invasive plants take over as they're better adapted to take advantage of the nutrients earthworms make available
Mustangs (wild horses) are an introduced species, but NA had its own wild horse that went extinct about 10k years ago. Texas may have 2-5k wild tigers today due to lack of pet regulation and people not realizing how difficult it is to take care of a fucking tiger. Part of me wonders if introduced wild cat species can play the same role Smilodon and other native wild cats played before their extinction
Bison population reached over 60 million in pre-colonial turtle island, but this likely only happened due to humans successfully driving out other megafauna that might've hunted them. The famous grasslands of turtle island are only possible because of bison however. Without them, they would be overgrown by woodland ecosystems. Elephants often play a similar role in ecosystems
bell-cot|3 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison#Evolution_and_genetic_hi...
Though "invasive" is usually not used when they showed up ~150,000 years ago, and appear to have evolved through a couple distinct species since then.
culi|3 years ago
Earthworms were mostly extinct through most of North America. They do a tremendous service to soil health, but in NA most of the vegetation has evolved to work with harder to access nutrients and the introduction and rapid spread of earthworms has mostly helped invasive plants take over as they're better adapted to take advantage of the nutrients earthworms make available
Mustangs (wild horses) are an introduced species, but NA had its own wild horse that went extinct about 10k years ago. Texas may have 2-5k wild tigers today due to lack of pet regulation and people not realizing how difficult it is to take care of a fucking tiger. Part of me wonders if introduced wild cat species can play the same role Smilodon and other native wild cats played before their extinction
Bison population reached over 60 million in pre-colonial turtle island, but this likely only happened due to humans successfully driving out other megafauna that might've hunted them. The famous grasslands of turtle island are only possible because of bison however. Without them, they would be overgrown by woodland ecosystems. Elephants often play a similar role in ecosystems
quesera|3 years ago
Texas is estimated to have 2-5K tigers privately owned in zoos and kept as pets. This is a terrible but legal idea, because Texas.
I can't find any estimate for a number of wild/feral tigers in TX, but it's surely not anywhere near that number.