Gators (and people) are the only local species that eat grown nutria, but gators actually eat very seldom and nutria breed quickly. Birds will eat smaller ones. There aren’t any cougars in south Louisiana
Yeah. They’ve pushed that idea for a while. The only public policy that has really worked is just the bounty program for killing them.
Jefferson Parish has trained sharp shooters by driving around New Orleans suburbs shooting nutria that come out of sewer drains
That came up in Mira Grant’s NewsFlesh series. Every mammal could carry the virus that caused them to become zombies, but only bodies massing over about 25 kg could actually “turn.” Yes, there were zombie moose. (A story set in Australia, of course, had zombie kangaroos.)
always curious about word origins (it’s a sickness, i tells ya!). so,“Nutria” sounds like…they might be good for your diet?? nah…
nutria (n.)
“fur or pelt of the coypu,” a kind of large, beaver-like rodent native to southern South America, 1836, from Spanish nutria “otter,” also lutria, from Latin lutra “otter,” an unexplained variant of PIE *udros (see otter).
Yeah, despite the recent influx of deer, fox, groundhog, and other wild animals I have yet to convince the county wildlife commission to implement my plan of reintroducing a counterbalancing of cougar, bobcat, and/or wolves. Something about a danger to the community. So of course, instead of human-phobic wild animals that tend to run away, we have coyotes which are so acclimated to humans I’ve had them wander into my workshop while I’m smithing at night. No danger there!
You don’t want to be a lost kid at one of those cheap carnivals.
The local Nextdoor community discussion site regularly features OMG COYOTES postings. Comments are roughly split between “lock up you children and pets!” and “we and the cats are the invasive species here.”
I hope someday coyotes become acclimated enough that you can employ their young ones in your shop. Maybe set up a treadmill to run the bellows.
^^ Dinner.
Me, I worry about giant squirrels.
Mini-capybara!
For like half a second, as I was scrolling down, I thought it was real people on a massive rat of some kind…
Also… 28 posts in and no Princess Bride? You people are slipping!
Has this plan ever worked, nipping a firmly established invasive species in the bud?
Well, the title is what it is. Having watched the trailer, the documentary doesn’t seem to be only about the subject rodents’ size, but about the altogether unprepossessing local people and their handling of the Nutrias. My stated view (as to the doco’s intent) does not capture my feelings… but I am guessing that the unusual doco title doubles up on the targets (one being the Nutrias, and the other being…)
You scrolled past it.
Ah… I guess I did.
Saw this on Hoopla and reviewed it back in 2019. Intriguing, but very heavy on slaughter, skinning, dismembering and eating. Reminded me a bit of Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story. Probably not for most kiddies.
Well it seemed to work when they imported cane toads to Australia to control the cane beetle.
If you’d like a few of those cane toads back I’m sure that they’ll do a nice job on the rats, being as how they are poisonous (but the rats don’t know that).
