Question

Many animals were brought from Europe to the Americas, but few animals went from the Americas to Europe. Why was that?

Answer 1

Columbian Exchange - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exchange
Wikipedia
Traders returned to Europe with maize, potatoes, and tomatoes, which became ... exchange of animals largely went through one route, from Europe to the New World, as ... Many had migrated west across Eurasia with animals or people, or were ... Similarly, yellow fever is thought to have been brought to the Americas from ...

Answer 2

Stahp xD

Answer 3

huh

Answer 4

When Columbus and the first landed in the Americas, he was confronted with a totally new world. This was not just new in the sense of people and land, but also in an ecological one as well. Columbus had stumbled across a land that, although already populated by people, was basically untouched. The people who lived in these new lands were completely in sync with nature. They valued the land for what it was worth and as such, they preserved it.

Then came the waves of Europeans, and as we all know, things changed. Not only were the lives of the Amerindians drastically changed, but also the ecology of the Americas was completely and permanently altered. Although the Europeans helped in these changes to the ecosystem, their part was minor when compared to the true criminals: the European animals. It was the European animals that were introduced into the New World that had the most destructive effects on their new environment and forever altered the ecology of the Americas.

Before taking a look into the effects the European animals had on the environment, we must first view the way things were prior to their introduction. During the time which pre-dated the arrival of the Europeans, the Americas were basically untouched. The land was populated with not just Indians, but also vast numbers of plants and animals. The land provided almost all of the needs of the Indians and in return, the Indians took care of the land.

The Amerindians used animals sparingly in work. The domesticated animals which they had included: dogs, guinea pigs, and various types of fowl (Crosby, 74). They had no types of ridden animals and they chose to use themselves as beasts of burden. This is due mostly to the fact that there were no comparable animals in the Americas to horses, asses or oxen. The Amerindians were also lacking in a domestic source for meat and leather. Any and all meat and leather products came from wild game in the area.

The arrival of the Europeans brought drastic changes to the way things were previously done in the Americas. As with most other new lands that the Europeans found, it wasn't perfect until it was more like Europe. Such was the case for the Americas. Since the Europeans were livestock people who practiced mixed farming with a heavy emphasis on herding, seeing very few domesticated animals truly shocked them.

To compensate for this lack farming necessity, the Europeans brought over their domesticated animals. Among these included horses, cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, and many others species with them (Crosby, 172). This helped the Europeans not just in farming, but also in controlling the Amerindians. These animals had never before been seen by the Amerindians, which led to a fear of some of the animals that the Europeans took advantage of.

The Europeans had no idea as to just what they unleashed upon the New World when they introduced their domesticated animals. Many of these animals flourished in their new environment beyond the wildest hopes of their European masters. This however, turned out to be a double-edged sword for the Europeans for while the animals were doing well, in some cases, such as the pig; they were doing too well.

Pigs played a significant role in the changes wrought on the ecology of the New World. The first eight to enter the New Wold came with Columbus on his second voyage to the Americas (Crosby, 183). Although useful to the Europeans as a source of food, these animals soon became a more of a problem than anything else did. The pigs brought over by the Europeans thrived in their new environment. There was enough moisture, shade, and an abundance of food for the pigs to live on which caused their numbers to increase. Due to the fact that there were no natural predators for the pigs, and that healthy sows give birth to up to 10 or more piglets at once, the pig population skyrocketed in just a few years (Crosby, 174).

With the pig population increasing, food and space became a problem. The pigs would eat anything due to their omnivorous nature, be it roots, nuts, grasses, or other smaller animals. This became a problem with other smaller animals that could not out-compete the pigs for food. As a result some of the smaller animals began to die out either from predation by the pigs or starvation (Crosby, 177). The pigs began to spread all over the Americas due to the ever-increasing size of their herds. Some began to migrate northward, while others were taken out to islands by pirates, explorers, and whalers to guarantee food for themselves later (Crosby, 175). After a few years in the wild, the once domesticated pigs began to grow more and more feral. The pigs grew longer legs and snouts, became slab sided, narrow headed, faster, and grew long tusks (Crosby, 175). These once docile pigs became vicious as they developed into what are known today as razorbacks. Everywhere these pigs went however, they continued to eat and strip land of vegetation.

Cows were also contributors to the damage in the ecology of the New World. Originally brought over to the New World as draft animals, they were also used as a domestic source of meat, milk, fiber, and leather (Crosby, 177). These animals, much like the pigs, thrived in their new environment and bred at what the Europeans believed to be unbelievable rates. While the cow population increased, some began to stray northward, eventually reaching up to present day New Mexico. The cows bred so quickly in fact, that it was believed that every fifteen years, the cow population doubled and was eventually estimated at around 48 million (Crosby, 177).

The cow population, being as large as it was, ate a great deal. Huge tracts of land were stripped of vegetation from the cows. This caused many of the indigenous herbivores of the Americas to starve and die and also allowed for invasive European vegetation to move in and outcompete the native vegetation. This caused the extinction of many types of New World vegetation (Neil, 122). Eventually, the cattle were in the wild long enough to become feral, much like the pigs. These feral cows were faster, leaner and more aggressive than their domesticated brethren were.

Although cows and pigs were brought over primarily for their agricultural purposes, the horse, which also had damaging effect on the environment, was brought over for an entirely different purpose. Although on could argue that the horse makes an excellent beast of burden, the Europeans saw it as an integral part of their arsenal in the New World. The Amerindians, who had never seen a horse before, were terrified of this new beast. As a result, the Europeans used this to their advantage and brought over as many horses as they could. As with most of the other animals, the horses bred quickly, although not as quickly as the pigs or cows. Although initially this helped the Europeans greatly, it proved very costly to the land. The horses, as with the other animals, grew to numbers so vast that they began to migrate north. Although some were shipped to Africa to help colonies there, the horse population continually rose.

The horse population was so large that some herds covered entire plains. The lands where the herds were found were not only torn apart by the horses' hooves but also stripped clean of vegetation, thus making more room for invasive European vegetation. Many native species of grasses were eaten to extinction by the herds (Neil, 124). These horses remained high in numbers up until the days of the Gold Rush when herdsmen would drive large numbers of them off cliffs to make room for livestock.

While the Europeans introduced many animals to the New World intentionally for practical purposes, there were some unintentional and unwanted animals that joined their domesticated brethren here. One such example is the rat. Although rats existed in the Americas far before the arrival of the Europeans, the European rats were far more aggressive and adaptive than their New World counterparts (Crosby, 199). Many rats were stowaways on Iberian boats heading for the New World. Some of these rats were smaller than those indigenous to the Americas yet they were better climbers, while others were larger, fiercer and better burrowers. These rats were quick to breed in the Americas and soon could be found everywhere. The rats fed on crops and plants and were able to outcompete some of the other indigenous species of rats. This led to the extinction of some of the native species of rats in the Americas (Crosby, 191).

One of the more significant relationships between the European animals and the New World ecology is that as the animal populations increased, Amerindian populations decreased. Since the Amerindians lived off of the land, they were in competition for food with these animals. The European animals would wander into Indian settlements and devour the gardens that these people depended on. Not only did these animals eat the food that the Amerindians relied on, but also the European animals carried animal viruses which killed many of the beasts upon which the Amerindians relied (Crosby, 94). Animal populations were so large and problematic that fences were erected to not keep animals in, but to keep them out (Crosby, 174).

These animals also proved to be a nuisance to the settlers who brought them to their new environment. Not only were the animals everywhere the settlers went, but it was discovered that the wild, feral animals had begun to breed with the settlers prized animals. This infuriated the settlers but for as many animals as the Europeans could kill, there were thousands of others to take their place.

When Columbus and the other Europeans first landed in the Americas, they were only the first invaders to a New World. The second wave of invaders was the animals they later brought with them and true to European nature, they excelled in destroyed their surroundings. These animals were introduced to an environment where they had no predators, the climate encouraged population growth, and there was an abundance of food and space to live. Soon, these animals overran the land and ate clear huge tracts of land. They were able to outcompete their American counterparts and the Amerindians by taking food from them and out-breeding them thus taking up more space. This caused not just destruction to the land, but also a decline and in some cases, extinction in the native plant and animal species. These animals not only had a destructive effect on their new environments, but also permanently altered the ecology of the Americas thus forever marking their spot in history. There.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

lyfe

Answer 7

@Heavenlight

Answer 8

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Answer 9

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