Twice a century, India is attacked by huge rat armies that devour crops in massive destructive waves and leave people without any food. Scientists long dismissed it as an urban myth...until they discovered that it really happens, and why.
A massive bamboo forest covers about 26,000 square kilometers in a region encompassing northeastern India and parts of Bangladesh and Myanmar. For forty-nine out of every fifty years, bamboo is a godsend for farmers, who can use the plant as building material, clothing, and even food. But in the fiftieth year, the bamboo inadvertently creates a rat army of almost mythical proportions that wreaks havoc on the entire ecosystem.
Bamboo is a very aggressive plant, and it tends to muscle out any other surrounding plants. This creates a huge bamboo carpet throughout the forest. Bamboo has a life expectancy of about fifty years, and when the plant nears the end of its life cycle, it releases all its seeds in one fell swoop. The problem is that the bamboo that makes up the carpet is all on roughly the same schedule, meaning all the bamboo plants release their seeds more or less simultaneously once every fifty years.
Greenwich University Steve Belmain explains this process, and why it sets the stage for disaster:
"It's a way for the bamboo to ensure that the seeds survive. But when the bamboo seed falls - you end up with 80 tonnes of seed per hectare on the ground. That's 80 tonnes of food just lying there waiting to be eaten."
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