According to Guinness Book, the greatest concentration of animals ever speculatively guessed concerned what scourge of crops?
"Rocky Mountain locust The Rocky Mountain locust (""Melanoplus spretus"") is an extinct species of locust that ranged through the western half of the United States and some western portions of Canada until the end of the 19th century. Sightings often placed their swarms in numbers far larger than any other locust species, with one famous sighting in 1875 estimated at in size (greater than the area of California), weighing 27.5 million tons and consisting of some 12.5 trillion insects, the greatest concentration of animals ever speculatively guessed, according to ""Guinness World Records"". Less than 30 years later, the species was"
"rare, these ideas cannot readily be tested. In 2010, Currie, though still favouring the hunting pack hypothesis, admitted that the concentration could have been brought about by other causes, such as a slowly rising water level during an extended flood. In 2009, researchers hypothesized that smooth-edged holes found in the fossil jaws of tyrannosaurid dinosaurs such as ""Albertosaurus"" were caused by a parasite similar to ""Trichomonas gallinae"", which infects birds. They suggested that tyrannosaurids transmitted the infection by biting each other, and that the infection impaired their ability to eat food. In 2001, Bruce Rothschild and others published a study"
"Wolverine The wolverine () (also spelled wolverene), ""Gulo gulo"" (""Gulo"" is Latin for ""glutton""), also referred to as the glutton, carcajou, skunk bear, or quickhatch, is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae. It is a stocky and muscular carnivore, more closely resembling a small bear than other mustelids. A solitary animal, it has a reputation for ferocity and strength out of proportion to its size, with the documented ability to kill prey many times larger than itself. The wolverine is found primarily in remote reaches of the Northern boreal forests and subarctic and alpine tundra of the Northern"
"2013, authorised the culling of 1455 kangaroos due to overgrazing. Overgrazing Overgrazing occurs when plants are exposed to intensive grazing for extended periods of time, or without sufficient recovery periods. It can be caused by either livestock in poorly managed agricultural applications, game reserves, or nature reserves. It can also be caused by immobile, travel restricted populations of native or non-native wild animals. Cows are the main things that causes overgrazing and ""overgrazing"". However, ""overgrazing"" is a controversial concept, based on equilibrium system theory. It reduces the usefulness, productivity, and biodiversity of the land and is one cause of desertification"
"Archimedes's cattle problem Archimedes's cattle problem (or the problema bovinum or problema Archimedis) is a problem in Diophantine analysis, the study of polynomial equations with integer solutions. Attributed to Archimedes, the problem involves computing the number of cattle in a herd of the sun god from a given set of restrictions. The problem was discovered by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in a Greek manuscript containing a poem of forty-four lines, in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany in 1773. The problem remained unsolved for a number of years, due partly to the difficulty of computing the huge numbers involved in"
"400 swans and 400 herons, 113 oxen, six wild bulls, 608 pikes and bream, 12 porpoises and seals, 1000 sheep, 304 calves, 2000 pigs, 1000 capons, 400 plovers, 200 dozen of a bird called 'rees' (i.e. ruffs), 4000 mallard and teals, 204 kids and 204 bitterns, 200 pheasants, 500 partridges, 400 woodcocks, 100 curlews, 1000 egrets, over 500 stags, bucks and roes, 4000 cold and 1500 hot venison pies, 4000 dishes of jelly, 4000 baked tarts, 2000 hot custards with a proportionate quantity of bread, sugared delicacies and cakes, and 300 tuns of ale and 100 tuns of wine. As"
"disgorge food. A conspicuous species, the cattle egret has attracted many common names. These mostly relate to its habit of following cattle and other large animals, and it is known variously as cow crane, cow bird or cow heron, or even elephant bird or rhinoceros egret. Its Arabic name, ""abu qerdan"", means ""father of ticks"", a name derived from the huge number of parasites such as avian ticks found in its breeding colonies. The Maasai people consider the presence of large numbers of cattle egrets as an indicator of impending drought and use it to decide on moving their cattle"
"particular interest. Taking into account the context in which these remains were found, the remains could be from wild cattle (""Bos primigenius""), domestic cattle (""B.primigenius"" f. taurus), African buffalo (""Syncerus caffer""), or a giant buffalo species belonging to the genus ""Pelorovis"". Unfortunately the specimens at Bir Kiseiba were not well preserved enough for comparative analysis. However, by referring to the size of the found remains, it is unlikely that the material comes from giant buffalo. The measurements do suggest that these animals were at least as large as wild cattle, but there is not enough information of the sexual dimorphism"
"Gaur The gaur (, ""Bos gaurus""), also called the Indian bison, is the largest extant bovine. This species is native to South and Southeast Asia. It has been listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 1986. Population decline in parts of its range is likely to be more than 70% during the last three generations. However, population trends are stable in well-protected areas, and are rebuilding in a few areas which previously had been neglected. The gaur is the tallest of wild cattle species. The Malayan gaur is called ""seladang"", and the Burmese gaur is called ""pyoung"" ."
"combination general store-museum in Henry's Lake, Idaho. Sherwood named the beast ""Ringdocus"". This stuffed trophy, the only piece of physical evidence, was never examined by qualified scientists and went missing for some time, before it was rediscovered in December 2007. Cryptozoologists suggest that the Native American folklore can be explained by prehistoric mammals such as hyaenodons, dire wolves, members of the subfamily Borophaginae (hyena-like dogs), or ""Chasmaporthetes"" (the only true American hyena). Others suggest more mundane explanations. For example, between December 2005 and November 2006, an unusual-looking wolf killed 36 sheep (and injuring 71 more) in McCone and surrounding counties"
"kids (""Capra aegagrus hircus""). Francolin (""Francolinus"" ssp.) and guineafowl (""Numina"" ssp.) as well as waterfowl, herons, egrets, bustards, pigeons, crows (""Corvus"" ssp.), doves, chickens (""Gallus gallus domesticus"") and a great sparrowhawk (""Accipiter melanoleucus"") have been the recorded avian prey. In Tanzania, out of a sample size of 41 from 26 nests, 53.7% of remains were of hyraxes, 29.3% of francolins, guineafowl and chickens, 12.2% of antelopes, 2.4% of hares and rabbits and 2.4% of mongoose. Tortoises made up 145 of 5748 from 73 sites (2.5%) in South Africa. Rarely, snakes and lizards may also be taken and even termites have"
"and ""always moved with surrounding cover amongst hedges and woods"" Ultimately, the Marines were recalled from the field, after which the attacks on the local sheep allegedly increased. By 1987, the creature was connected to over 200 farm animal deaths. More recent attacks were reported in 1995 and 2001. The Ministry continued to study the reported sightings into the mid-1990s, before concluding that the Beast was either a hoax or myth and that the alleged sightings had been mistaken identifications of creatures native to the Exmoor area. In January 2009 a carcass of an animal that has washed up on"
"Bovini The tribe Bovini, or wild cattle are medium to massive bovines that are native to North America, Eurasia, and Africa. These include the enigmatic, antelope-like saola, the African and Asiatic buffalos, and a clade that consists of bison and the wild cattle of the genus ""Bos"". Not only are they the largest members of the subfamily Bovinae, they are the largest species of their family Bovidae. The largest species is either the gaur (""Bos gaurus"") and wild water buffalo (""Bubalus arnee""), both weighing between 700 and 1,200 kilograms. In addition to their massive size, they can be differentiated from"
"Bovini The tribe Bovini, or wild cattle are medium to massive bovines that are native to North America, Eurasia, and Africa. These include the enigmatic, antelope-like saola, the African and Asiatic buffalos, and a clade that consists of bison and the wild cattle of the genus ""Bos"". Not only are they the largest members of the subfamily Bovinae, they are the largest species of their family Bovidae. The largest species is either the gaur (""Bos gaurus"") and wild water buffalo (""Bubalus arnee""), both weighing between 700 and 1,200 kilograms. In addition to their massive size, they can be differentiated from"
"disease to people. The natural reservoir for Ebola has yet to be confirmed; however, bats are considered to be the most likely candidate species. Three types of fruit bats (""Hypsignathus monstrosus"", ""Epomops franqueti"" and ""Myonycteris torquata"") were found to possibly carry the virus without getting sick. , whether other animals are involved in its spread is not known. Plants, arthropods, rodents, and birds have also been considered possible viral reservoirs. Bats were known to roost in the cotton factory in which the first cases of the 1976 and 1979 outbreaks were observed, and they have also been implicated in Marburg"
"never happened before 2010. The event in Arkansas was attributed primarily to an unexpected temperature change causing turbulence, visible on NEXRAD Doppler weather radar images, above their roosting areas which disoriented them. In addition other news sources have reported more masses of dead animals in the year 2012. Some Christians assert that this particular cluster of animal mass deaths is a sign of the Apocalypse. They reference a passage in the ""Book of Hosea"" in the Hebrew Bible which reads: ""By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood,"" and the"
"narrative is imprecise on the identity of this animal. Some postulates that it was probably the largest animal in Africa, perhaps a pachyderm such as: hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, etc. The word ""Mbocor"" means ""The Mother"" (or """"Mother"""" in old Serer) − mother of all animals except the jackal. It is also probable that ""Mbocor"" is the same as ""Ɓoxo-koƥ"" (the dog of the forest − ""jackal""). However, at present, nobody knows what kind of animal ""Mbocor"" was. In any case, the Ɓoxo-koƥ (i.e. the jackal) is believed by most Serers who adhere to the tenets of Serer religion to be"
"the ""A Song of Ice and Fire"" series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin; in particular, roasted aurochs are sometimes served at banquets. In the 2012 movie ""Beasts of the Southern Wild"", the six-year-old main character imagines aurochs, though the fantasy creatures are portrayed by ""costumed"" Vietnamese Pot-bellied piglets. This article incorporates Creative Commons license CC BY-2.5 text from reference. Aurochs The aurochs ( or ; pl. aurochs, or rarely aurochsen, aurochses), also known as urus or ure (""Bos primigenius""), is an extinct species of large wild cattle that inhabited Europe, Asia, and North Africa. It is the"
"The famine centred on a sequence of harvest failures in 1315, 1316 and 1321, combined with an outbreak of murrain, a sickness amongst sheep and oxen in 1319–21 and the fatal ergotism, a fungus amongst the remaining stocks of wheat. Many people died in the ensuing famine, and the peasantry were said to have been forced to eat horses, dogs and cats as well as conducted cannibalism against children, although these last reports are usually considered to be exaggerations. Poaching and encroachment on the royal forests surged, sometimes on a mass scale. Sheep and cattle numbers fell by up to"
"that were impounded when Chillingham Park was enclosed. But in the absence of adequate genetic or archaeological evidence, these proposed origins must remain purely speculative. However, the traditional view that these cattle have an unbroken line of descent, without intervening domestication, from the wild-living aurochs was already being called into question in the 1800s. Over the years a large popular literature has built up relating to the herd, which has been analyzed in relation to prevalent concepts of ownership and attitudes of people towards big, charismatic animals. Simon Schama described the famous contemporary woodcut by Thomas Bewick as ""an image"
"the base. Gaurs are among the largest living land animals. Only elephants, rhinos, the hippopotamus (""Hippopotamus amphibius"") and the giraffe (""Giraffa camelopardalis"") consistently grow heavier. Two species that naturally co-exist with the gaur are heavier: the Asian elephant (""Elephas maximus"") and Indian rhinoceros (""Rhinoceros unicornis""). By most standards of measurements, gaur is the largest wild bovid alive today. However, the shorter-legged, bulkier wild water buffalo (""Bubalus arnee"") is similar in average body mass, if not maximum weight. Gaur historically occurred throughout mainland South and Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Myanmar, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China and Nepal."
"is a reproductive strategy similar to mast reproduction in oaks, overwhelming predators with sheer numbers allowing a percentage of the population to survive to reproduce. Mormons often cast this disaster in Biblical terms like the . According to traditional accounts, legions of gulls appeared by June 9, 1848. It is said that these birds, native to the Great Salt Lake, ate mass quantities of crickets, drank some water, regurgitated, and continued eating more crickets over a two-week period. The pioneers saw the gulls' arrival as a miracle, and the story was recounted from the pulpit by church leaders such as"
"large corn fields, up to nine individual bears have fed close by each other in a single vicinity. Animal prey is usually quite small, but these bears can prey on adult deer, llama (""Lama glama"") and domestic cattle (""Bos primigenius taurus"") and horses (""Equus ferus caballus""). A spectacled bear was captured on a remote video-monitor predaceously attacking and killing an adult mountain tapir perhaps nearly twice its own body mass, although adult horse and cattle killed by spectacled bears have been even heavier. Animal prey has included rabbits, mice, other rodents, birds at the nest (especially ground-nesting birds like tinamous"
"seen advertised are not sustainably harvested."" Pteropus Pteropus (suborder Yinpterochiroptera) is a genus of bats which are among the largest in the world. They are commonly known as fruit bats or flying foxes, among other colloquial names. They live in the tropics and subtropics of Asia (including the Indian subcontinent), Australia, East Africa, and some oceanic islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. There are at least 60 extant species in the genus. Flying foxes eat fruit and other plant matter, and occasionally consume insects as well. They locate resources with their keen sense of smell. Most, but not all,"
"in Asia was estimated to be enough to feed 200 million people. Most of the damage worldwide is caused by a relatively small number of species, chiefly rats and mice. In Indonesia and Tanzania, rodents reduce crop yields by around fifteen percent, while in some instances in South America losses have reached ninety percent. Across Africa, rodents including ""Mastomys"" and ""Arvicanthis"" damage cereals, groundnuts, vegetables and cacao. In Asia, rats, mice and species such as ""Microtus brandti"", ""Meriones unguiculatus"" and ""Eospalax baileyi"" damage crops of rice, sorghum, tubers, vegetables and nuts. In Europe, as well as rats and mice, species"
"vegetation. Food items include the leaves, seeds, fruit, and flowers of grasses and shrubs. The nene is the world's rarest goose. It is believed that it was once common, with approximately 25,000 Hawaiian geese living in Hawaii when Captain James Cook arrived in 1778. Hunting and introduced predators, such as small Asian mongooses, pigs, and cats, reduced the population to 30 birds by 1952. The species breeds well in captivity, and has been successfully re-introduced. In 2004, it was estimated that there were 800 birds in the wild, as well as 1,000 in wildfowl collections and zoos. There is concern"
"Sometimes called ""Africa's feathered locust"", the red-billed quelea is considered a serious agricultural pest in Sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, they eat wheat in the dry season, rice in the early rainy season, and sorghum/millet in the rainy season. An individual red-billed quelea eats around of grain in a day, hence a flock of 2 million individuals—not an unusual size—can consume of grain in a day, or in a month. Their wide range, enormous population and fecundity make control difficult. Traditional methods to protect crops are mainly used in subsistence farming. When the crop is vulnerable, people go into the fields,"
"being taken up by fungi such as ""Cortinarius caperatus"" which is in turn eaten by sheep whilst grazing. The United Kingdom was forced to restrict the movement of sheep from upland areas when radioactive caesium-137 fell across parts of Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and northern England. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster in 1986, a total of 4,225,000 sheep had their movement restricted across a total of 9,700 farms, in order to prevent contaminated meat entering the human food chain. The number of sheep and the number of farms affected has decreased since 1986, Northern Ireland was released from"
"Overgrazing Overgrazing occurs when plants are exposed to intensive grazing for extended periods of time, or without sufficient recovery periods. It can be caused by either livestock in poorly managed agricultural applications, game reserves, or nature reserves. It can also be caused by immobile, travel restricted populations of native or non-native wild animals. Cows are the main things that causes overgrazing and ""overgrazing"". However, ""overgrazing"" is a controversial concept, based on equilibrium system theory. It reduces the usefulness, productivity, and biodiversity of the land and is one cause of desertification and erosion. Overgrazing is also seen as a cause of"
"killed or trapped approximately 11,397 animals. According to Theodore Roosevelt’s own tally, the figure included about four thousand birds, two thousand reptiles and amphibians, five hundred fish, and 4,897 mammals (other sources put this figure at 5,103). Add to this marine, land and freshwater shells, crabs, beetles and other invertebrates, not to mention several thousand plants, and the number of natural history specimens totals 23,151. A separate collection was made of ethnographic objects. The material took eight years to catalogue. The larger animals shot by Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt are listed on pages 457 to 459 of his book"" African"
"vulnerable, including klipspringers (""Oreotragus oreotragus""), steenboks (""Raphicerus campestris""), both species of grysbok ( on average), oribis (""Ourebia ourebi"") and perhaps up to half a dozen larger duikers, potentially weighing from . One duiker dispatched via strangulation weighed an estimated , the largest known raptorial kill for any species on the African continent. Among extant birds of prey, only wedge-tailed eagles, reportedly capable of killing sheep and female red kangaroos (""Macropus rufus"") weighing up to , and golden eagles, credited with taking adult female deer of several species with weights estimated at and capable of apparently dispatching domestic calves weighing up"
"outspoken, particularly as scientific studies provided new data suggesting the threat of devils to livestock had been vastly exaggerated. Numbers may have peaked in the early 1970s after a population boom; in 1975 they were reported to be lower, possibly due to overpopulation and consequent lack of food. Another report of overpopulation and livestock damage was reported in 1987. The following year, ""Trichinella spiralis"", a parasite which kills animals and can infect humans, was found in devils and minor panic broke out before scientists assured the public that 30% of devils had it but that they could not transmit it"
"leaves of crops, stunting their growth or killing the plants. They are pests on a variety of commodities. Since the late 1900s, ""T. paludosa"" and ""T. oleracea"" have become invasive in the United States. The larvae have been observed on many crops, including vegetables, fruits, cereals, pasture, lawn grasses, and ornamental plants. In 1935, Lord's Cricket Ground in London was among venues affected by leatherjackets. Several thousand were collected by ground staff and burned, because they caused bald patches on the wicket and the pitch took unaccustomed spin for much of the season. The phylogenetic position of the Tipulidae remains"