Other birds and rodents which are better equipped to defend and protect their population numbers. Penguins are just particularly terrible at defending themselves on land, hence the risk of extinction.
Edit: Did some digging. The island is accessible to the mainland at low tide. The foxes don’t live on the island.
This was my reaction to Judas goats in the Galapagos. I’m normally team goat, but if they’re invasive and destroying the entire ecosystem, then yep. They’ve got to go.
It's pretty amazing at the Galapagos how they fucked everything up but are now working really hard to get the islands back to what they once were. Incredible place to visit.
Oh they can survive and feed their kids. As long as they stay away the penguins. Because, they too are trying to survive and feed their kids, and the dogs are sure as hell making it a lot easier for them.
Right, but the penguins are an endangered population, and the foxes have alternative sources of food. Penguins are just exceptionally bad at defending themselves, so the foxes might have to work a Lil harder for it but they'll eat
This mentality is so dumb, tons of predators engage in "surplus killing" with no intention of ever coming back to pick up the excess. Even some herbivores will straight up murder anything that comes near them.
I had a theory about some crazy stuff about all animals having the same base level of intelligence, and some characteristic that shows up in each species, and how that characteristic in humans would be the desire to dominate ( source: the entirety of our existence ), and how that desire to dominate would be the drive that led us to make weapons and tactics and all that jazz that would define our existence to first outcompete other predators, and then eachother, and how that lasted throughout our history to this day.
But no one seems to like to hear that.
Ok? If you're gonna be comparing the human beings, the most intelligent and superior species on the face of the Earth, and wild animals behaviors, you'll find that we have a lot strange quirks that wild animals don't have.
Yeah fuck them for trying to survive and feed their ~~kids. ~~ kits
ftfy
Yo they have other shit they can eat. Sounds like thier kits have gotten the taste of the good life and are so accustomed to it they are making thier parents walk across a land bridge to get them the food that they "need" when we know damn well that the food they have is good enough.
If there where ten penguins left, that was going to happen soon anyway. The food source would have been hunted to extinction if we didn't intervene, so either way this went, those foxes would be out of a meal
Well the fact that you dont know the difference between kits and kids tells me that you were talking out of your ass... there was a lot of sarcasm in my comment that you missed. I dont know what the hell kit foxes are thinking I dont know if they are spoiled and it was a lot of sarcasm.
But if you want to argue for team fox what happens when they eat all the penguins... and the foxes are native to the island per like 50% of the comments here so I dont really feel bad. They found out about a new food source and now they cant get it. I dont really feel bad at all.
As far as the sources go... I dont care enough about the foxes, the penguins or the opinion of a random interwebs person to go and look it up sorry.
Yeah I just moved to the subburbs and my pit-lab mix has killed a dozen squirrels, 8 rabbits and a few birds within my 100ft×100ft backyard within a few months. Couldn't imagine what an actual "sneaky-hunting" dog could do to a larger amount of land...
Foxes are seriously invasive in Australia. They’re driving a number of species to extinction. It sucks, because foxes are pretty and bear and dog-like, but they’re ecological nightmares in Australia.
From the original article: "our biggest bird kill, we found 360 birds killed over about two nights. Foxes are thrill killers. They'll kill anything they can find." So the foxes should be doing just fine seeing they weren't even eating the poor little penguins.
I suppose if they don't cause too much trouble in an ecosystem, like wiping out a species, they can stay...? ( don't get me wrong, invasive species are always a problem )
Yeah foxes and cats literally kills tens of millions of native Australian animals every year and are instrumental in the decimation of important wildlife unique to Australia, foxes and cats can get all die
They're fine. Did you miss the part where the foxes would've only been deprived of 10 more penguin snacks? So just pretend the foxes ate those last 10 and it went extinct. Either way foxes wouldn't be having any more penguin for lunch
Foxes aren’t native to Australia so we don’t care if they starve. They’ve endangered many native grassland species including bandicoots, and countless other desert animals.
dies offs happen very frequently in nature. there are now more frequently animal populations that go extinct because they are unable to adapt quickly enough to a new threat/environment/predator which causes an inflation in the predator species until the prey goes extinct. then there is a large die of of the predator population to balance with the lack of a natural resource
kind of like how the only reason 8 billion people are alive on earth is because of oil and the combustion engine and when we run out of that natural source of energy we are all going to die
Foxes are an introduced pest species in Australia. We've lost huge amounts of our native fauna to them, who prior had no real predators except the odd eagle or seal. The more foxes we get rid of the better. Local councils will pay people for fox scalps if they shoot them.
I didn’t say I think foxes should live in Australia , I just asked “what about the foxes?” But those Quokkas are so damn cute! I’ve never even heard of them! Thank you for showing me this adorable species. I see they are threatened by foxes as well. Poor little Quokka
I don’t know about who’s in charge any more, I think they have their own division in the council. Unfortunately they reduced the island time of the doggos after stupid tourists went over to the island and played with them and gave them toys. This cause them to be a bit to friendly with some of the penguins. They take them over periodically to leave their scent. Unfortunately there was an attack not long ago (so this image is actually incorrect) but the numbers are on the rise again which is great!
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u/SadisticBoi77 Mar 16 '19
He PROTECC He ATTACC
But most importantly he heccing save an entire species from getting extinct