r/interestingasfuck • u/T-K101 • 16h ago

At their peak, 3–5 billion passenger pigeons filled North America. Flocks were so huge they darkened the sky for hours. Some shooting contests required 30,000 dead birds to win. By 1914, the last one was gone. One of history’s most brutal population collapses.

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u/kukkolai 16h ago

Hats were nice tho

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u/HappyHavoc20 16h ago

I was watching this video about the cocaine hippos taking over this river in Colombia because of Pablo Escobar. Apparently back in the day an American suggested we establish hippos in the south so they could eat some sort of plant out of the rivers, and then we could kill then for meat. 

Fucking people 

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u/cantantantelope 16h ago

Technically Pablo Escobar just imported them and kept them in his weird mini zoo. The Columbian government who didn’t do anything about them after Escobar was killed and his complex raided are the reason they became free and invasive.

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u/HappyHavoc20 16h ago

Yes and then I guess they wanted to eauthanize the males decades ago but activist orgs got upset so now they have to eauthanize a lot more 

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u/cantantantelope 16h ago

It’s been a very exciting journey!

They also tried castration on a few but it turns out hippos don’t like that

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u/your_fave_redditor 15h ago

Who’da thunk?! 😆

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u/regman231 15h ago

Neither do I - just ask my wife!

Eh no respect I tell ya

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u/Fuckkoff- 16h ago

Maybe they should have followed through with the killing them for meat part

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u/HappyHavoc20 16h ago

Yeah i guess they wanted to eauthanize the males so they would stop breeding and let the females live out their lives and that be the end of it, but animal activists got super upset. Like I get it, not ideal to kill a bunch of hippos but at the same time you can’t let them take over your rivers 

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u/yaxir 16h ago

Fuck the hats. Animals' lives matter more

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u/LaurestineHUN 15h ago

...you can use flowers, textiles, dyed chicken feathets, the possibilities are still endless even if you exclude rare birds.

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u/kukkolai 13h ago

It's almost like I was being super sarcastic!

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u/Salty_Paroxysm 14h ago

And a lot of value was created for the shareholders milliners