11 replies to this topic

[velma]

Hey

There are these caves called Elephanta caves in India. Recently I heard that there were 200 mongooses released in there to help cure the problems of snakes as many people have been bitten .

I wonder though whether this idea will work out or will it tip the scales and form a unnatural number of mongooses.

Either way I loved the idea for it is much better than letting the locals beat the snakes to death.

How about telling me about what you think about this idea will it work or not?

[salamangkero]

velma, on Apr 7 2007, 02:01 PM, said:

Recently I heard that there were 200 mongooses released in there to help cure the problems of snakes as many people have been bitten.

I wonder though whether this idea will work out or will it tip the scales and form a unnatural number of mongooses.

I personally have no idea whether 200 mongooses are significant enough to noticeably disturb ecology. I do think that there is more to this than just 200, though. What if those mongooses breed as successfully as wabbits? Are they all male mongooses? Sterile?

Maybe this should be better implemented only as a short-term solution? Something like allowing those mongooses to root out the snakes for a month then going in and retrieving all 200 mongooses. While this still is not as accurate in predicting long-term effects, it might help buffer the effects of suddenly incorporating all those mongooses in a habitat that wasn't their own.

For example, after one month of mongoose reign, retrieve them all. Now, observe. If the snakes fire up again, then re-introduce the mongooses for another month. And so on and so forth. Now, isn't that much better than installing them as a permanent fixture in the caves?

Well, of course not. People up there will definitely be concerned with the cost of transferring mongooses to and fro ever and anon. "Won't it be much more inexpensive to just let them be? After all, they seem to be happy with their meals in those caves," they might say.

Well, what happens when the mongooses run out of snakes? What, or who, will they eat, or attack, next?

[husker]

Usually people shouldn't mess with the food chain, because there can be some unpredicted results. However, I think that killing snakes in just that area shouldn't mess up anything. But salamanggkero brings up a good point. What happens if there is no more snakes to feed off of? The mongooses would have to be taken out. Then the snake population might increase again if some snakes managed to survive. I don't quite know what will happen though. It could be a big success or a complete failure.

[Johnny]

That's just plain cool. I can totally see how this plan came about.

"Hey guys, snakes are biting us!"
"Let's throw 200 mongooses in there!"
"Yeah, they'll battle to the death!"
"Hooray!"

[dolrich06]

Can a mongoose be domesticated? i want one in my house!

OnTopic: Maybe if they could adapt to a cave environment.

[Phoenix.Illusion]

Quote

That's just plain cool. I can totally see how this plan came about.

"Hey guys, snakes are biting us!"
"Let's throw 200 mongooses in there!"
"Yeah, they'll battle to the death!"
"Hooray!"

That is Funny ..., Thats is a Good plan though,
I know a Few members that could of said that.

- Dark

[inverse_bloom]

Personally i would have gone for the "beating the snakes" option as its much more gratifying..... Just kidding.

[sheepdog]

LOL, well, I don't know that much about mongooses, but if they had just turned a pair of Wire Haired Fox Terriers into the caves, they wouldn't need all those mongooses! And you really would only want to use 2 dogs. Any more than that and they would just fight amoungst themselves. But 2 would have a great party killing snakes. Mine love to play tug of war with any witless snake that happens to crawl into their space. And 2 little dogs is not going to have that much impact on the enviornment, or be a problem to be dealt with when the snakes were all gone, they could just go back to being someone's pet.

[nirmaldaniel]

ah , they are gonna solve snake problem ?? then how are they gonna solve mongoose problem ?? who knows ? This wont be an apt solution to solve snake problem. This is like one problem leads to another problem.

[buxgoddess]

There are pest control problems throughout the world. In our part of the country, rats are a big problem. The government has taken initiative many times to prevent losses in the harvest. But every year out of nowhere these rodents would come out and devastate the crops. There are the pest control measures that are being taken throughout multiple sessions but most of them have failed. The first to implement was to give poisoned food to the rodents, it brought to the sales of the grains down because people fear poisoning of the food. The next was introduction of scavenger birds. It failed miserably became the birds flew off to new areas in no time. And with just a few birds left in the whole area the problem never solved. Finally now a particular drive is being introduced in this area where the people are asked and trained how to catch and destroy rodent areas. To some extent this has been fruitful but getting the right area where these rodents are digging in is still a survey to be done.